“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” (Romans 8:35-37).
Few things test your faith in Christ’s love for His sheep like tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword in your life. For some, Satan’s lies during such hardships create doubt and then disbelief.
As a glorious, breathtaking display of His extreme power, Christ does not remove these hardships from the lives of His disciples. Instead, He provides uber-victory in them.
Just as the apostle Paul was not delivered out of the infirmity, weakness, reproach, need, and distress his thorn in the flesh—because God’s grace was sufficient for him (2 Corinthians 12:9-10), Christ’s other sheep are not all spared the gruesome hardships of life because it is in these things they are hypernikomen (from hyper—“above” and nikao—“victor” [Nike was the Greek god of victory]). They are uber-victors.
Because of Christ’s love and power, everything Satan hurls at you for the purpose of destroying your faith is transformed into building blocks and stepping stones for your preeminent victory.
To live is Christ. To die is the gain of an uber-victory.
“He is no fool to give up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
