35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
As it is written — quote from Psalm 44:22 — Yea, for Thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.
Separate — (executioner, v.33) Separation from God is death.
Tribulation = suffering which results from pressure on the soul.
Tribulation is a word that has an interesting history. The English word comes from the Latin name for a flail. A piece of wood, a little longer than a broomstick, has attached to it by a leather thong a shorter piece of wood. The laborer swings the flail through the air and the shorter piece of wood beats upon the wheat, separating the grain from the chaff. There came a time when believers were so persecuted that it seemed as though they were being beaten out like wheat. This came to be called tribulation. — Barnhouse, page 191.
Distress = anguish, shut up without the possibility of escape.
The Greek word [distress] is a combination of two words, the one meaning narrow and the other meaning space. It conveys the thought of being hemmed in. — Barnhouse, page 192.
More than conquerors = super-conquerors, super-victorious
Him that loved us — the tense indicates past action continuing into the present.
Not only do we win the battle; we are more than conquerors for these adversities serve to draw us into still closer fellowship with Him, thus enriching our Christian experience. — Stam, page 214.
