But the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ [be] with you.
Paul ends a letter full of greetings with a warning about people who cause divisions. Then comes a promise: the trouble has a source, God will crush it soon, and He does it under the feet of His people.
Why "the God of peace"
The title matches both the problem in this chapter and the way believers are to handle it.
Romans 16:17 is individual. Verse 20 shows the character of God I am to display in my separation or withdrawal — that character is "peace." He sees the root of the trouble and says He will crush Satan under our feet soon. Then He at once adds, "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." In quarrelling I do not display the God of peace.
The enemy behind the dividers
The people described in verses 17–18 are not the real problem. Someone works through them, and his method is charm, not force.
Satan is the adversary; his name means that. He engineered every bit of trouble that ever came on the church of God. All the persecutions that the saints of God have ever suffered lie at his door. But he has a more subtle way of working. He is not Satan only, but that old serpent, who "by smooth talk and flattery deceives the hearts of the naive." Verse 18 describes his way of working well.
What the crushing means
The word points to a complete crushing, not a knock. And the feet under it have a history.
The one who has brought all the unrest into the world is to be completely crushed, as the word implies, and this under the feet of the saints. What a wonderful triumph of God this is! Without God the feet of men are "swift to shed blood" (Rom. 3:15). But the feet of the saints have come under the control of Christ, and He has guided them into the "way of peace." So they stand in moral superiority to all the evil Satan has brought in, and, being in moral accord with the God of peace, they are available to Him in His dealing with it.
The oldest promise in the Bible, finished
The picture of a crushed serpent goes back to Eden, and the surprise here is the pronoun.
Let us repeat to ourselves the word "soon." The career of the great disturber is nearing its end. Christ will soon "destroy the works of the devil," according to the divine purpose (1 John 3:8). The first of all prophecies — the word spoken in Eden — will then be completely fulfilled: "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head" (Gen. 3:15). The saints will be associated with Him in His mighty victory, so the Apostle says "your feet" in Romans 16:20.
Being associated with a victory is not the same as producing it. Some read this verse to mean the church defeats Satan by its own efforts here and now.
Every Christian must acknowledge that God alone can either bind or crush Satan. He may employ an angel, or associate the saints with Himself, as it is said in Rom. 16:20... The church is united to Christ, and will then be with Him in person, who as the woman's seed is to bruise the serpent's head. But the power is in Christ, not in the church... It is by the church in its heavenly condition, not while we are on the earth, that Satan will be thus crushed.
Our part while we wait
The crushing is God's work. So our part is the instruction just before it: be wise about what is good.
To resist the evil we are to be wise to that which is good. There is no need to try to get to the bottom of the evil. Light banishes darkness. Truth repels error. Occupation with evil may ensnare saints, for they have in them a nature which can respond to it. If on the other hand they are wise to that which is good, they will discern the evil and refuse it... God alone can do that. We cannot. Our part is to be wise to that which is good.
The grace that carries the gap
The verse does not end with the promise. It ends with a gift for the waiting.
To walk in simple obedience will be a path of peace. On that path we find that, very soon, all the evil will be dealt with, when the God of peace crushes Satan under our feet. Until then the Apostle commits the saints to the all-sustaining "grace of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Summary
- The trouble — Divisions and smooth-talking teachers are only symptoms. God names and targets the adversary behind them.
- The title — He names Himself the God of peace on purpose. Peace is the character believers show when they separate from evil, and peace is what He secures in the end.
- The crushing — The word means ground to pieces, and God alone does it; the power is in Christ, not in the church.
- Your feet — Feet once swift to shed blood are now guided into the way of peace. Those are the feet He joins to His own victory, finishing the promise made in Eden.
- The grace — Until that day our work is not to master evil but to be wise about good, kept by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.