Romans 8:35-39 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril… It is a rough sort of life that most resolute Christians lead. I do not speak of commonplace professors, many of whom shuffle through easily enough. But those, of whom the apostle himself was one, have a severe and sifting ordeal to pass. "As it is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." It was thus that Immanuel Himself was treated. It was a doomed life He led on earth. The rudest language and the harshest treatment were reckoned good enough for Him. It is enough for the servant to be as his Lord. But just as Jesus conquered it all, so each disciple will overcome it too. Like the little boat that follows in the great ship's wake, which receives the blast somewhat abated by the statelier form ahead, but in other respects backs the same billows and plunges down into the same sea-trough; so the believer follows the Forerunner, encountering in mitigated fury the head-wind which opposed His course, but riding the same billows of tribulation, distress, and peril which He breasted on His path to glory. But, like the cord which connects the little boat and the great ship together, there is that which joins the Saviour and the believing soul to one another. Tribulation, distress, persecution cannot sever them, and in the same haven of security, the same sea of glass, where the mightier sail is already furled, and Immanuel's own anchor is already dropped, the fragile little bark which follows will soon come to its quiet mooring, "more than conqueror through Him" who went before it. (J. Hamilton, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? |
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