More Than Conquerors # 1

More Than Conquerors # 1

Romans, Chapter 8 verse 37: "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us."

This 8th chapter, as many of you know, begins a new section in this wonderful epistle to the Romans.

The 7th chapter is a chapter of gloom, the 8th chapter is a chapter of glory. The 7th chapter is a chapter of condemnation, the 8th chapter is a chapter of emancipation. The 7th chapter is a funeral march, the 8th chapter is a wedding march. It's the song of a "soul set free," to use the phrase of a lovely hymn. Romans 7 is a chapter on the tomb. Romans 8 is a chapter on triumph. (If you want to use the phrase of John Milton,) The 7th chapter is the chapter of paradise lost. It's a chapter of depravity. The 8th chapter is a chapter of deliverance and delight.

Now this is a magnificent chapter. If you want to make a special bonding here, chapter 7 is a chapter of misery and condemnation. The 8th chapter is a liberated soul. You can explain this by this fact: chapter 7 is a chapter on a self-centered person. The 8th chapter is a chapter about the Christ-centered person. In the 7th chapter you read that first person over and over and over until you get weary of reading "I, I, I, I..." "I want to do this, but I can't...", and "I find I'm in bondage..." and so forth and so on. If you count you'll discover 41 times you find that "I", and no mention of the Holy Spirit. In the 8th chapter there is no mention of the "I" except in two verses where he says " reckon" and "I am persuaded" (where there is no alternative.) But the difference in the 8th chapter is that there is all the mention in the world about the Holy Spirit. Nineteen times the Holy Spirit is mentioned.

"There is therefore now no condemnation..." So, the chapter begins away in the heights - there is no condemnation. And it ends - "there is no separation." "What shall separate us from the love of God?" But it does not say there is no tribulation. In fact, it marks tribulation out for us very, very carefully. A wretched, sin-bound man in the 7th chapter and no Holy Spirit. A liberated man in the 8th chapter, and over and over again he pays tribute to the Holy Spirit of God.

This is an amazing Word of God. Here is a man talking about emancipation. He's talking about an individual having under his feet the world, the flesh, and the devil. We'll get to it a bit later, but he says "In all these things..." and he doesn't leave you to fill in the blanks. He fills them in himself.

I love to read the apostle Paul! You know why, he'd go out and snub the devil! The devil never pushed the apostle around. He pushed the devil around! I'm going to make a guess that when Paul died they had a half-day's holiday in hell. They were so glad about it. satan never had the victory over the apostle Paul. He tried. No man ever had such a massive theology as Paul. No man ever saw further, deeper into the pit of human depravity.

I think one of the most alert writers today - that is no scholarly, or sensational stuff, but a deep writer - is that wonderful man of the Labri Fellowship, Switzerland. That gracious man, Shaeffer, said in his book "Death in the City," God has given up on the cities in America. He's written "Finished!" on them. That's why they're dead in their rebellion. That's why we've got whole cities that are bankrupt. The whole world has been asking, "Why is the greatest city in the greatest country in the world, New York, why is it bankrupt?" The millionaires of different cities are saying we are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. But you see, our biggest problem is we are morally bankrupt! We are spiritually bankrupt!

I remember again that gracious man says, "For 40 years we've watched America going down the drain." He's like Jeremiah. He saw the nation after nation with fits of depression and  and darkness and devils. Then coming around and trying to say they were the chosen people of God. Then slumbering down in the mire again. He reminds us that eight centuries ago, every town and city in China had a thriving New Testament church. Eight hundred years ago. Where is she tonight?

Nobody, I say, saw the depth of depravity Paul saw. He saw that because men had rejected the message of the Son of God, God gave them up to uncleanness. If you want to read a very vivid, dramatic, stirring, disturbing account of that, read J. B. Phillips translation of the first chapter of Romans.

Paul doesn't say how terrible the malady is. He's not concerned about the malady. He's concerned about the remedy! He said in Hebrews 7:25, "He is able to save to the uttermost" and the "guttermost." Therefore, at the end of this amazing chapter he said, "We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us."

The only reason there is an America tonight is, not because we signed the Declaration of Independence, but because 34 years before that time there was a revival that struck this country.

I quote Dr. Tozer, he said to me, "as soon as man got alienated from God, he got interested in 'things'." Now I was reading through these chapters, and I noticed how many times Paul says that, "They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the Spirit mind the things of the Spirit."

And then that very famous, popular verse: Romans 8:28. "All things work together for good." Not some things. ALL THINGS. Losses as well as gain; invisible things as well as visible; those that are bitter as well as those that are sweet. All things work together for good. Mr. Chadwick used to tell us the only way to read that verse is backwards. "To them that love God, to them who are the called, according to His purpose, all things work together for good." It you read it the right way, the forward way, it doesn't make too much impression. But if you read it from the back, so then that love God, all things work together for good. To them that are called according to His purpose. Now verse 31, "What shall we say to these THINGS? If God be for us, who can be against us?"

He says in verse 37, "Nay in all these THINGS..." You can almost hear his contempt there, can't you? "Things. So what?" And then he finishes the verse there in 38. I believe he throws his shoulders back and laughs in the face of the devil and says you haven't an invention in hell that can separate me. That's what he says, doesn't he? Because he says here, at the end of verse 38, "I am persuaded." Are you persuaded tonight? Paul was a persuaded man. He was persuaded that God was able to keep that which he'd committed unto Him.

~Leonard Ravenhill~

(continued with # 2)