More Than Conquerors
More Than Conquerors
The word seemed to climb off the page. I’d noticed it before, of course. Many times. But why hadn’t it ever struck me like this before?
I’d been reading Romans, chapter eight. And in the midst of this familiar portion of Scripture I read again the familiar verse:
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (v. 37).
More?
What does it mean to be more than a conqueror? You’d think it would be enough to conquer in the “things” Paul refers to—things such as trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and the sword (v. 35). What MORE could we possibly do?
I’ve pondered that. And I may have gained some insight into that verse recently in an unusual place: the middle of a newspaper story. It was an article about a young Christian woman with two artificial legs. About halfway through the story, the reporter captured a surprising statement: “Just as I began to believe that I had conquered this thing called ‘disability,’ ” the young woman said, “I learned that it was not a thing to be conquered. Rather, it was something to accept.”
That girl’s story got me thinking. The world could expect someone like her to “conquer” the limitations of her severe disability—to defeat, to overthrow, to subdue her problem to the point where she gains mastery over it. To do so would make her an admirable conqueror.
But God expects us to go a giant step further. Through Christ we can do more than merely conquer; we can accept. We can embrace. We can welcome. We can, as the apostle suggests, “consider it pure joy” (James 1:2).
That’s exactly what the woman with the artificial legs did. In Christ, she did not simply defeat or “conquer” her difficult circumstances. No. She joyfully accepted each as an opportunity to share in the sustaining, empowering grace which made her more than a conqueror.
You needn’t have two artificial legs to understand what that young woman was talking about. You could have two artificial humanoids for teenagers. Or twenty-two nagging, insistent demands on your time and energy. Or any number of nettlesome situations you feel need to be conquered in order to be lived with.
To conquer is a human accomplishment, something achieved through willpower, grit, and sheer determination.
To accept goes beyond that. It requires something more than human strength. Something more than a conqueror.
It requires the intrusion of Christ.