If God is for us, who can be against us?
—Romans 8:31
The battleground where the war between good and evil is fought isn’t a place; it’s a person.
Paul identifies two forces on this battleground.
The first force is the enemy. This terrorist’s weapons are trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword (Rom 8:35). Some of these words have been variously translated as hatred, hunger, threats, backstabbing, suffering, distress, pain, and death.
You have been assaulted by one or more of these and may even be wrestling one of them at this moment.
But Paul exposes the enemy’s ultimate defeat by revealing the second force: God. Daunting as the enemy seems, he is no match for God, for God can turn even the bad into good (Rom 8:28).
Bitter battles of this life may be
reclassified as gifts of grace in the next.