Crushed Under Our Feet

  

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

CRUSHED UNDER OUR FEET

Rom 16:20-27

20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. 21 Timothy, my fellow worker, sends his greetings to you, as do Lucius, Jason and Sosipater, my relatives. 22 I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord. 23 Gaius, whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy, sends you his greetings. Erastus, who is the city's director of public works, and our brother Quartus send you their greetings.   25 Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him— 27 to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.

NIV

This is the last of his conclusions to the letter he wrote to the church in Rome. It is simply a last salutation, however, there are a few very interesting statements that he makes. The first is somewhat in the form of prayer, yet also prophetic in some sense. He says that the God of peace will soon crush Satan under their feet. We will take those words for our own lives as well, knowing that God fights our battles for us against the dark forces of evil in this world. However, could we also think that this prophetic word has not yet happened until the last battle that will take place, wherever that might be, either in the valley of Megiddo, which is also called Armageddon, or on Mt Moriah, where the great city of Jerusalem stands? Although it has been traditionally thought of as Armageddon, it was Jerusalem where Jesus defeated death, was resurrected, and then ascended into heaven. It would make sense this is where he would crush Satan forever under the feet of man. Nevertheless, this could also mean that God will crush Satan under our feet during our daily lives, that Satan has no authority, no power, he is already crushed beneath our feet. Perhaps our battle is not so much with Satan, but with our own self. This war that wages within us that is that battle about the things that we do not want to do, we still do, and those things that we want to do, we do not. Still, God has supplied us with his armor to fight against the enemy of our souls, yet as we have also discovered some time ago, each piece of that armor describes an aspect of Jesus, thus  God has clothed us in Jesus, to ward off the attacks if that toothless lion that roams around trying to destroy us, but he has already been crushed, he is toothless, and thus crushed beneath us. Because we are saved or redeemed by the blood of Jesus and as our faith is in Jesus, we have been given the right to be called children of God, who has declared us holy and blameless in his sight. Therefore, as his children, he defends us, battles for us, and protects us by clothing us in Jesus, and thus Satan is crushed under our feet. That is we, as the children of God, clothed in Jesus, declared holy and blameless, can stomp all over Satan because we have been given that authority from God.