'The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your
feet shortly.'--ROMANS xvi. 20.
There are three other Scriptural sayings which may have been floating
in the Apostle's mind when he penned this triumphant assurance. 'Thou
shalt bruise his head'; the great first Evangel--we are to be endowed
with Christ's power; 'The lion and the adder thou shalt trample under
foot'--all the strength that was given to ancient saints is ours;
'Behold! I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and
over all the power of the enemy'--the charter of the seventy is the
perennial gift to the Church. Echoing all these great words, Paul
promises the Roman Christians that 'the God of peace shall bruise
Satan under your feet shortly.' Now, when any special characteristic
is thus ascribed to God, as when He is called 'the God of patience'
or 'the God of hope,' in the preceding chapter, the characteristic
selected has some bearing on the prayer or promise following. For
example, this same designation, 'the God of peace,' united with the
other, 'that brought again from the dead the Lord Jesus, that great
Shepherd of the sheep,' is laid as the foundation of the prayer for
the perfecting of the readers of the Epistle to the Hebrews in every
good work. It is, then, because of that great name that the Apostle
is sure, and would have his Roman brethren to be sure, that Satan
shall shortly be bruised under their feet. No doubt there may have
been some reference in Paul's mind to what he had just said about
those who caused divisions in the Church; but, if there is such
reference, it is of secondary importance. Paul is gazing on all the
great things in God which make Him the God of peace, and in them all
he sees ground for the confident hope that His power will be exerted
to crush all the sin that breaks His children's peace.
Now the first thought suggested by these words is the solemn glimpse
given of the struggle that goes on in every Christian soul.
Two antagonists are at hand-grips in every one of us. On the one
hand, the 'God of peace,' on the other, 'Satan.' If you believe in
the personality of the One, do not part with the belief in the
personality of the other. If you believe that a divine power and
Spirit is ready to help and strengthen you, do not think so lightly
of the enemies that are arrayed against you as to falter in the
belief that there _is_ a great personal Power, rooted in evil,
who is warring against each of us. Ah, brethren! we live far too much
on the surface, and we neither go down deep enough to the dark source
of the Evil, nor rise high enough to the radiant Fountain of the
Good. It is a shallow life that strikes that antagonism of God and
Satan out of itself. And though the belief in a personal tempter has
got to be very unfashionable nowadays, I am going to venture to say
that you may measure accurately the vitality and depth of a man's
religion by the emphasis with which he grasps the thought of that
great antagonism. There is a star of light, and there is a star of
darkness; and they revolve, as it were, round one centre.
But whilst, on the one hand, our Christianity is made shallow in
proportion as we ignore this solemn reality, on the other hand, it is
sometimes paralysed and perverted by our misunderstanding of it. For,
notice, 'the God of peace shall bruise Satan _under your feet_.'
Yes, it is God that bruises, but He uses our feet to do it. It is God
from whom the power comes, but the power works through us, and we are
neither merely the field, nor merely the prize, of the conflict
between these two, but we ourselves have to put all our pith into the
task of keeping down the flat, speckled head that has the poison
gland in it. 'The God of peace'--blessed be His Name--'shall bruise
Satan under your feet,' but it will need the tension of your muscles,
and the downward force of your heel, if the wriggling reptile is to
be kept under.
Turn, now, to the other thought that is here, the promise and pledge
of victory in the name, the God of peace. I have already referred to
two similar designations of God in the previous chapter, and if we
take them in union with this one in our text, what a wonderfully
beautiful and strengthening threefold view of that divine nature do
we get! 'The God of patience and consolation' is the first of the
linked three. It heads the list, and blessed is it that it does,
because, after all, sorrow makes up a very large proportion of the
experience of us all, and what most men seem to themselves to need
most is a God that will bear their sorrows with them and help them to
bear, and a God that will comfort them. But, supposing that He has
been made known thus as the source of endurance and the God of all
consolation, He becomes 'the God of hope,' for a dark background
flings up a light foreground, and a comforted sorrow patiently
endured is mighty to produce a radiant hope. The rising of the muddy
waters of the Nile makes the heavy crops of 'corn in Egypt.' So the
name 'the God of hope' fitly follows the name 'the God of patience
and consolation.'
Then we come to the name in my text, built perhaps on the other two,
or at least reminiscent of them, and recalling them, 'the God of
peace,' who, through patience and consolation, through hope, and
through many another gift, breathes the benediction of His own great
tranquillity and unruffled calm over our agitated, distracted, sinful
hearts. In connection with one of those previous designations to
which I have referred, the Apostle has a prayer very different in
form from this, but identical in substance, when he says 'the God of
hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.' Is not that
closely allied to the promise of my text, 'The God of peace shall
bruise Satan under your feet shortly'? Is there any surer way of
'bruising Satan' under a man's feet than filling him 'with joy and
peace in believing'? What can the Devil do to that man? If his soul
is saturated, and his capacities filled, with that pure honey of
divine joy, will he have any taste for the coarse dainties, the leeks
and the garlic, that the Devil offers him? Is there any surer way of
delivering a man from the temptations of his own baser nature, and
the solicitations of this busy intrusive world round about him, than
to make him satisfied with the goodness of the Lord, and conscious in
his daily experience of 'all joy and peace'? Fill the vessel with
wine, and there is no room for baser liquors or for poison. I suppose
that the way by which you and I, dear friends, will most effectually
conquer any temptations, is by falling back on the superior sweetness
of divine joys. When we live upon manna we do not crave onions. So He
'will bruise Satan under your feet' by giving that which will arm
your hearts against all his temptations and all his weapons. Blessed
be God for the way of conquest, which is the possession of a supremer
good!
But then, notice how beautifully too this name, 'the God of peace,'
comes in to suggest that even in the strife there may be
tranquillity. I remember in an old church in Italy a painting of an
Archangel with his foot on the dragon's neck, and his sword thrust
through its scaly armour. It is perhaps the feebleness of the
artist's hand, but I think rather it is the clearness of his insight,
which has led him to represent the victorious angel, in the moment in
which he is slaying the dragon, as with a smile on his face, and not
the least trace of effort in the arm, which is so easily smiting the
fatal blow. Perhaps if the painter could have used his brush better
he would have put more expression into the attitude and the face, but
I think it is better as it is. We, too, may achieve a conquest over
the dragon which, although it requires effort, does not disturb
peace. There is a possibility of bruising that slippery head under my
foot, and yet not having to strain myself in the process. We may have
'peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation.' Do you remember
how the Apostle, in another place, gives us the same
beautiful--though at first sight contradictory--combination when he
says, 'The peace of God shall garrison your heart'?
'My soul! there is a country
Far, far beyond the stars,
Where stands an armed sentry,
All skilful in the wars.'
And her name is Peace, as the poet goes on to tell us. Ah, brethren!
if we lived nearer the Lord, we should find it more possible to
'fight the good fight of faith,' and yet to have 'our feet shod with
the preparedness of the gospel of peace.'
'The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet'; and in
bruising He will give you His peace to do it, and His peace in doing
it, and in still greater measure after doing it. For every struggle
of the Christian soul adds something to the subsequent depth of
its tranquillity. And so the name of the God of peace is our pledge of
victory in, and of deepened peace after, our warfare with sin and
temptation.
Lastly, note the swiftness with which Paul expects that this process
shall he accomplished.
I dare say that he was thinking about the coming of the Lord, when
all the fighting and struggle would be over, and that when he said
'God shall bruise him under your feet shortly,' there lay in the back
of his mind the thought, 'the Lord is at hand.' But be that as it
may, there is another way of looking at the words. They are not in
the least like our experience, are they? 'Shortly!'--and here am I, a
Christian man for the last half century perhaps; and have I got much
further on in my course? Have I brought the sin that used to trouble
me much down, and is my character much more noble, Christ-like, than
it was long years ago? Would other people say that it is? Instead of
'shortly' we ought to put 'slowly' for the most of us. But, dear
friend, the ideal is swift conquest, and it is our fault and our
loss, if the reality is sadly different.
There are a great many evils that, unless they are conquered
suddenly, have very small chance of ever being conquered at all. You
never heard of a man being cured of his love of intoxicating drink,
for instance, by a gradual process. The serpent's life is not crushed
out of it by gradual pressure, but by one vigorous stamp of a nervous
heel.
But if my experience as a Christian man does not enable me to set to
my seal that this text is true, the text itself will tell me why. It
is 'the God of peace' that is going to 'bruise Satan.' Do you keep
yourself in touch with Him, dear friend? And do you let His powers
come uninterruptedly and continuously into your spirit and life? It
is sheer folly and self-delusion to wonder that the medicine does not
work as quickly as was promised, if you do not take the medicine. The
slow process by which, at the best, many Christian people 'bruise
Satan under their feet,' during which he hurts their heels more than
they hurt his head, is mainly due to their breaking the closeness and
the continuity of their communion with God in Jesus Christ.
But, after all, it is Heaven's chronology that we have to do with
here. 'Shortly,' and it will be 'shortly,' if we reckon by heavenly
scales of duration. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in
the morning. 'The Lord will help her, and that right early.' 'The
Lord is at hand.' When we get yonder, ah! how all the long years of
fighting will have dwindled down, and we shall say 'the Lord did help
me, and that right early,' and though there may have been more than
threescore years and ten of fighting, that, while we were in the
thick of it, did not seem to come to much, we shall then look back
and say: 'Yes, Lord, it was but for a moment, and it has brought me
to the undying day of Eternal Peace.'