Mark how the Apostle, in his lofty and enthusiastic way, is not
content here with simply saying that he and his fellows conquer. It
would be a poor thing, he seems to think, if the balance barely
inclined to our side, if the victory were but just won by a hair's
breadth and triumph were snatched, as it were, out of the very jaws
of defeat. There must be something more than that to correspond to
the power of the victorious Christ that is in us. And so, he says, we
very abundantly conquer; we not only hinder these things which he has
been enumerating from doing that which it is their aim apparently to
do, but we actually convert them into helpers or allies. The '_more_
than conquerors' seems to mean, if there is any definite idea to be
attached to it, the conversion of the enemy conquered into a friend
and a helper. The American Indians had a superstition that every foe
tomahawked sent fresh strength into the warrior's arm. And so all
afflictions and trials rightly borne, and therefore overcome, make a
man stronger, and bring him nearer to Jesus Christ.
Note then, further, that not only is this victory more than bare
victory, being the conversion of the enemy into allies, but that it
is a victory which is won even whilst we are in the midst of the
strife. It is not that we shall be conquerors in some far-off heaven,
when the noise of battle has ceased and they hang the trumpet in the
hall, but it is here now, in the hand-to-hand and foot-to-foot
death-grapple that we do overcome. No ultimate victory, in some
far-off and blessed heaven, will be ours unless moment by moment,
here, to-day,' we _are_ more than conquerors through Him that
loved us.'
So, then, about this abundant victory there are these things to
say:--You conquer the world only, then, when you make it contribute
to your conscious possession of the love of Christ. That is the real
victory, the only real victory in life. Men talk about overcoming
here on earth, and they mean thereby the accomplishment of their
designs. A man has 'victory,' as it is phrased, in the world's
strife, when he secures for himself the world's goods at which he has
aimed, but that is not the Christian idea of the conquest of
calamity. Everything that makes me feel more thrillingly in my
inmost heart the verity and the sweetness of the love of Jesus Christ
as my very own, is conquered by me and compelled to subserve my
highest good, and everything which slips a film between me and Him,
which obscures the light of His face to me, which makes me less
desirous of, and less sure of, and less happy in, and less satisfied
with, His love, is an enemy that has conquered me. And all these
evils as the world calls them, and as our bleeding hearts have often
felt them to be, are converted into allies and friends when they
drive us to Christ, and keep us close to Him, in the conscious
possession of His sweet and changeless love. That is the victory, and
the only victory. Has the world helped me to lay hold of Christ? Then
I have conquered it. Has the world loosened my grasp upon Him? Then
it has conquered me.
Note then, further, that this abundant victory depends on how we deal
with the changes of our outward lives, our sorrows or our joys. There
is nothing, _per se_, salutary in affliction, there is nothing,
_per se_, antagonistic to Christian faith in it either. No man
is made better by his sorrows, no man need be made worse by them.
That depends upon how we take the things which come storming against
us. The set of your sails, and the firmness of your grasp upon the
tiller, determine whether the wind shall carry you to the haven or
shall blow you out, a wandering waif, upon a shoreless and melancholy
sea. There are some of you that have been blown away from your
moorings by sorrow. There are some professing Christians who have
been hindered in their work, and had their peace and their faith
shattered all but irrevocably, because they have not accepted, in the
spirit in which they were sent, the trials that have come for their
good. The worst of all afflictions is a wasted affliction, and they
are all wasted unless they teach us more of the reality and the
blessedness of the love of Jesus Christ.