Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
35What will separate us from the
love of Christ? Affliction or distress or persecution or hunger or nakedness or
danger or sword? 36Just as it is written that, “On Your behalf we
are being killed all the day; we are accounted as sheep of slaughter.” 37But
in all these things we are being more than conquerors through the One loving
us. 38For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor
rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers 39nor height
nor depth nor any other creation will be able to separate us from the love of
God which [is] in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
I’ve always struggled just a bit to understand v.36, “As it is written, ‘For thy sake we are killed all the day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’” This is a quote from Psalm 44:22, almost exactly taken from the Septuagint. To me, it seems strangely negative in the middle of all this conquering and victory. I vaguely understood that we as believers accept in this life whatever the Lord allows – and that sometimes that does include difficult times. However, it still just didn’t “fit” in the passage. It seems like it would be nicer if we just went from v.35 straight to v.37.
What I see now is that this verse is actually a victory in itself. This is a little deep, so I may not do a very good job of explaining what I see, but I want to try. It is generally true that, in this fallen world, we believers often conquer specifically by dying. How did Jesus win His great victory over death and hell? By dying, of course. Granted, He rose from the dead, but our redemption was won through His death. In Col 2:13-15 we learn, “When you were dead in your sins … God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the Cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the Cross.” By the Cross. Jesus won by dying.
We’re reminded too of Tertullian’s quote, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.” Those words were originally written in Latin and could be translated, “We multiply when you reap us. The blood of Christians is seed." His familiar point was that the church only multiplied the more the Roman government persecuted them. That early church literally conquered the world by dying. Jesus’ words were true to them then and remain true for us, “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (Phil. 1:29).
I have always been inclined to believe that Paul’s conversion actually began the day they murdered Stephen. The entire reason they so hated Stephen was because “they could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke” (Acts 6:10). The young, very intelligent Saul of Tarsus was there that day as Stephen admonished the entire Sanhedrin. For Saul and everyone else “they saw that his face was like the face of an angel” (v.15). Then, all the way through Acts chapter 7, Stephen did exactly what Paul would do later – he very logically and Biblically exhorted them with the truth.
That truth of course infuriated them and so they murdered the good and holy man Stephen. They thought by murdering him, they could silence the truth he’d spoken. However, chapter 8 begins with the words “And Saul was there, giving approval to his death.” The seemingly arbitrary insertion of that verse is what inclines me to believe that was the beginning of Saul’s conversion. It is true that his experience on the Damascus Road (chapter 9) would be dramatic, but Jesus converts no one against their will. I suspect that as Saul listened to Stephen’s admonition, he knew in his heart it was true, but his fallen, proud, Adamic heart wasn’t ready to bow, and so, he resorted instead to his murderous rage against believers.
Truth is, however, a stubborn thing. That day, listening to Stephen and watching him bravely (and humbly) die for his faith, young Saul of Tarsus suddenly had a crack in his armor. No doubt every day that he lived his murderous rage, that crack only widened as he watched one Christian after another suffer and die just like Stephen. Finally he was ready and that day Jesus met him and changed him from Saul of Tarsus to the Apostle Paul – the man who would carry the Gospel to the four corners of the civilized world and end up writing 2/3 of the New Testament!
My whole point in all of that is to illustrate how true were Tertullian’s words, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.” Stephen’s death appeared that day to be nothing more than that – a man murdered because he dared to challenge the status quo. His murderers thought it was no more than that. Yet, if I’m right, and I think I am, that very death was instead the Lord’s tool to raise up the Apostle Paul and everything that would mean. Stephen probably didn’t know any of this at the time, yet it would be literally true that it was through his death that he conquered the world! His life (and death) certainly illustrated the truth of our verse, “For Thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter,” yet we also see that he truly was “more than a conqueror!”
You and I probably have no idea what
the Lord is accomplishing through our lives (and maybe deaths). I’ve said
before, I don’t feel like I do much good at all. I’m certainly no Billy Graham
or Mother Theresa. I’m guessing you feel the same. We’re trying. We want the Lord
to use us. We pray He would. Yet, I rarely see that I have any influence at
all. Stephen’s death would teach us all to leave our “influence” in God’s
hands. Our job is to love God and love people the best way can, whatever that
means on any given day, in any given situation, with the gifts (however
seemingly few) God gives us. His job is to take our feeble efforts and actually
touch people’s hearts. Naomi’s quiet love produced a Ruth – that produced a
David! So then, “… none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself
alone. If we live, we live to the
Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or die, we belong
to the Lord” (Rom. 14:7,8).
All of this is why it is true that “we are more than conquerors.” The worst the world can throw at us is to kill us. However, because we are the Lord’s, He overrides their evil and instead uses even our death to touch this world for all eternity!
That then leads us back to the larger context of what we’re studying. What is our hope in suffering? And in Romans 8, when we say suffering, we’re not just talking about dying a martyr’s death. We’re talking about the everyday miseries of life in this cruel world. With all creation, our Bible itself says we’re “groaning.” What is our hope? That we are the Lord’s and He will use it all for His glory, even to the point of our death. Once again, you and I have no idea whose heart He is touching as we simply try to rise above our own miseries and go on loving the people around us.
In this world’s eyes, you and I may just be “sheep for the slaughter.” … but they don’t know who our Father is! Who but Him could ever take the curse of sin, even death itself, turn it around and use it for eternal good?
What a mighty God we serve!
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