The God of Peace Crushes Satan

This whole series has been about war. Amalek that never surrenders. Sin crouched at the door. Tearing things out, putting things to death, storming gates, resisting to blood. And it ends, on purpose, with the strangest sentence in the New Testament about the enemy's defeat, a sentence that seems to have the wrong God in it.

"The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you" (Romans 16:20).

Read it slowly, because Paul could have written the God of war, and it would have fit everything you just walked through. Instead he wrote the God of peace, and put the crushing of Satan right next to it, in the same breath, as if there were no tension at all. The God of peace crushes Satan. The most peaceful authority in the universe is the one who breaks the enemy under your feet, and if you feel the strangeness of that, you are close to the point of the whole thing.

The violence was always in the service of peace

Here is why it is the God of peace and not the God of war, and it undoes every way this series could have been misread.

The violence was never the point. It was always in the service of a peace. A man makes war on the evil in himself so that his home can be at peace. He tears out the sin so his wife can stop bracing. He puts the appetite to death so his kids inherit a father and not a war zone. The whole ferocious fight, the amputation, the mortification, the storming of gates, all of it was aimed at a peace it could not create by fighting alone, and the God who finishes it, who actually crushes the enemy, is the God of that peace. The war served the peace the entire time. A man who forgot that and fell in love with the fighting itself missed the point so badly he became dangerous.

That is the guardrail this whole series has been building toward. War on evil, peace with men. The violence was always aimed at the darkness and always in the service of the people, and the proof is right here in the last sentence, where the one who crushes the enemy is not the God of war but the God of peace. If your fighting has produced more war in your home instead of more peace, you have been fighting the wrong enemy the whole time.

Under your feet, by his hand, soon

And look at whose hand does it, and where the enemy ends up, because it is not where you would expect after a series like this.

The God of peace will crush Satan under your feet. Under your feet, so you are in the fight, the enemy really does end up beneath you, you are not a spectator. But it is the God of peace who does the crushing. It is his strength, his victory, his hand bringing the enemy down, and your feet are simply where the already-defeated serpent lands. You fought, really fought, this whole series called you to it and meant it. And in the end the crushing is his, not yours, and that is the last humility and the last relief, because it means the outcome never rested on how hard you are.

Soon, Paul says. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. So fight, hard, ruthless with the evil, gentle with the people, all the way to the end. But fight as a man who knows how it finishes, by the hand of the God of peace, with the enemy under your feet, soon. You were called to be dangerous to the right things and safe for the right people, and the God who gets the last word over the darkness is the God of peace. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.