“MORE THAN CONQUERORS”
Romans 8:38
William E. Hull
“I hate life,” wrote Voltaire to a friend, “and yet I am afraid to die.” This distressing sentence
echoes the deepest dilemma of human existence. For every person shares only two experiences
common to the human pilgrimage: each of us must live, and each of us must die. Yet around these
two all-encompassing realities there gather a multitude of uncertainties, anxieties, frustrations, and
defeats. The most universal tilings that we do are to live and to die, and yet how hard they are to do!
How full of bafflement and bewitchment, how punctuated with disappointment and despair, how
marked with conflict and chaos.
The New Testament, brave book, is realistic about our dilemma. Paul in one place makes
a list of the formidable foes which confront the human spirit to imperil its well-being: “tribulation,
distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword . . . angels, principalities, powers . . .” (Romans
8:35, 38). One could scarcely accuse him of seeking to soften the dark shadows which fall across
each mortal pathway. In the midst of this catalog of calamities, the Apostle inserts a summary
statement, “. . . neither death nor life . . .” (v. 38), clearly suggesting that these, too, can become
threats to our ultimate fulfillment. Yet for Paul the issue was clear: come what may, “. . . neither
death nor life . . . will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
It is exceedingly important to understand just what Paul is saying to us here. He does not
suggest that Christians will be spared those misfortunes which are the common lot of every life. As
long as we live in this kind of world, disaster is certain to strike. But the Apostle does emphatically
assert that no catastrophe will ever be able to sever the bond of divine concern which is our present
comfort and future hope. Make no mistake: adversities are sure to come, but they cannot overcome
