“Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).
Like the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, and Alexander the Great which preceded it, the Roman army was a feared and fierce military force. By the first century A. D., the city of Rome welcomed its visitors with arches of triumph which commemorated past military conquests. The Arch of Titus—memorializing Rome’s obliteration of Jerusalem and its temple in A. D. 70—was erected in A. D. 81 and remains standing on the Via Sacra in the modern-day city.
Like the Greeks, the Romans had a goddess of victory. Her name was Victoria; the Greeks’ goddess was named Nike.
To contrast the superiority of conquest a Christian has—although he may be suffering tribulation, distress, persecution, starvation, nakedness, peril, or sword at the hands of the Roman government—the inspired pen of the apostle Paul coins the word hypernikao (hyper—“above” + nikao—“victory”).
There is no military conquest, there is no powerful army or Emperor whose triumphs can compare with the surpassing victory found in Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Even when His followers are killed all day long, even when Christians are treated as sheep to be slaughtered like the marauding Roman army did after conquering its enemies, the Good Shepherd provides victory in all things.
All who are in Christ and are walking after the Spirit are more than conquerors.
Rome’s power—memorialized in arches of triumph into its capitol city—is puny and pathetic in comparison to the abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom supplied by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:11).
