I include the following because it is tremendously encouraging, and I want to prepare you for the times when you face opposition or trial. And I want to show you a great example of what we mean when we talking about making the gospel real in our daily lives.

In today’s reading in For the Love of God, Volume 1, theologian D.A. Carson asks: “What does it mean for Christians to be “more than conquerors” (Rom. 8:37)?”

He answers his own question. Here are the highlights.

“First, the “us” to whom the apostle refers includes all Christians.

“Second, the actual evidence that they are “more than conquerors” is that they persevere regardless of all opposition… The glories of life will not finally seduce them; the terrors of death will not finally sway them; neither the pressures of the present nor the frustrations of the future will destroy them (8:38). Neither human powers nor anything else in all creation, not even all the powers of hell unleashed, can “separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:39).

“Third, as the last sentence already makes clear, that from which Christians cannot be finally separated is the “love of Christ” (8:35) or the love of God in Christ (8:39)… We are not simply acquitted, we are loved.

“Fourth, the guarantee that we shall prevail and persevere, and prove to be “more than conquerors” in this sense, is nothing other than the sovereign purposes of God (8:29-30), manifest in the death of his Son on our behalf (8:31-35). “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (8:32). No greater security is imaginable.”

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