According as it is written, For thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we have been reckoned as sheep for slaughter.
Paul has just asked what can separate a believer from the love of Christ — trouble, hunger, danger, the sword. He answers with a line of Scripture: God's people are a flock marked for killing. That raises the hardest question faith faces. If suffering is the settled portion of those God loves, does it prove He has left them?
The sentence is a quotation. It belongs to a psalm in which God's people describe themselves as cast off, scattered and sold cheap, yet insist they have not turned away from Him.
They are cast off and scattered. The enemy and avenger is among them; they are scattered among the nations, sold by God for no price (v. 17-22). Yet they have in no way swerved from their integrity. On the contrary, it is for His sake they are killed all the day long, and counted as sheep for the slaughter. (Note, the moment the Messiah was rejected, this began in principle: compare Rom. 8:36.)
Paul does not blur the difference between the psalm's speakers and his readers. He settles the Christian's own standing first. Only then does he reach back for words that fit both.
It was necessary to point out our distinctive position before quoting a psalm (v. 36) that pictures us in circumstances like theirs. Both are true. We share much with all saints until Christ comes. But we and they each have what is our own and distinctive.
Paul breaks off mid-psalm. One writer explains why he stops there, and whose voice the rest of the psalm carries.
On turning to Romans 8, we find a quotation from Psalm 44 — "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered" — and there the apostle stops. Turning to the psalm, the next words are ones a child of God could not now speak, for the Father loves him as He loved His Son. They could be the words of a Jewish remnant, who do not know the Father, nor the blessedness of the redemption the Son has accomplished.
The phrase does not mean one execution. It means a whole life lived under a death sentence.
Believers were "killed all the day long" for Christ's sake — living a chronic death, so to speak, on His account. Danger and sword pursued them. They lost everything here. Yet the love of Christ remained theirs. It was their security, their sun, their shield, their everlasting arm, their unfading treasure when everything else failed.
Three words name the cause: for your sake. The suffering is not random. It comes because of Christ, and it proves how real His love is.
It is for Christ's sake that these afflictions are allowed to come to the believer. They come to prove more deeply the reality of His love, and the power of that love. When that love is known in the soul, it is far more than a match for the worst ordeals anyone can face. We know this has been proven in practice in the cases of countless martyrs.
Scripture named this suffering long before it came. So it can never be a verdict against the people it falls on. It proves the opposite.
Paul quotes it as evidence of the portion of the remnant (v. 22 with Rom. 8:36), and since the Holy Spirit recognises it as the portion of the accepted remnant... it was evidence of anything but their rejection. And so the testimony of evil becomes the evidence of acceptance, to secure the faith of those on whom the evil falls when it comes...
In this verse, believers are on the receiving end. That reverses the world's whole idea of winning.
The conquerors whose names stand high in the world's temple of fame won their great place by killing. They strode through seas of blood to the goal of their ambition. God's children become more than conquerors by being killed, and killed all the day long... Those who killed them did so for their own pleasure — "to make a holiday for Romans," or to stamp a hated Name out of the world. Yet they did not know that they were crowning their victims with imperishable crowns.
Where the sword is absent, the same principle still finds its shape in smaller costs.
To suffer reproach, to be misunderstood, to be pushed aside, not to be wanted — in all these things we may be more than conquerors, if it is all for Christ's sake... His love is the great compensation, and no suffering can separate us from His love. On the contrary, suffering gives Him the opportunity to make His love a living, bright reality.
- Quoted — Paul borrows Psalm 44:22, where God's people are cast off and scattered yet have not swerved from Him. He stops before the psalm's next words, which a child of God could not pray today.
- Caused — the suffering has a stated reason: for your sake. It comes because of Christ, and it proves how strong His love is under pressure.
- Counted — "all the day long" means a life under a standing death sentence. In the world's eyes, such people are a flock kept for killing.
- Confirmed — Scripture named these sufferings beforehand. So the evidence of evil becomes evidence of acceptance, not of rejection.
- Conquering — the world's conquerors win by killing. God's children win by being killed, and the love of Christ stays theirs through it all.
But in all these things we more than conquer through him that has loved us.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.