What Does “God Will Soon Crush Satan Under Your Feet” Mean? (Romans 16:20)

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. This last week we concluded our series in Romans, looking at Romans 16. And in Romans 16, there’s this curious verse that says that God will soon crush Satan under your feet. And we said that’s one picture of the gospel, referring back to Genesis 3:15 when God says the seed of the woman will crush Satan — the seed of the woman, he will have his heel bruised, but Satan will have his head crushed.

So we see this partial fulfillment or reference back to that in Romans 16, that God will soon crush Satan under your feet. But that brings up a couple of questions. First, why is Romans 16 written in the future tense? Didn’t Jesus already crush Satan on the cross?

Isn’t that when his heel was bruised because he’s pushing up on the cross with his heel? Wasn’t the decisive victory against Satan already won, or is it yet to come? This alludes to what we see often in the biblical story, of both the already and the not yet. Something has already happened.

It is decisive, it is final, but also it has continuing ramifications that will continue into the future for an ultimate culmination someday. And so yes, Jesus had decisive victory over Satan, sin, and death. They no longer have a hold on us. They no longer have a claim over us. They were defeated.

They were taken into the grave. Jesus rose and triumphed over them. All the sin that Satan had a role in orchestrating to put Jesus on the cross, that didn’t defeat Jesus. Jesus defeated it. He rose to life again. And so it has already happened. And yet there is a future fulfillment of it as well, because Satan is not thrown into the lake of fire at the end of time yet.

That is yet to come. He is still loose in the world, causing problems. Those problems do not have final say over us. Anything Satan does to us, Christ will turn for our good. There will be a resurrection of sorts, right? So it has no claim over us. Whatever Satan does to us can’t ultimately ruin us anymore.

Christ won. But also he’s still out in the world doing things. So there’s a yet to come as well. God will soon crush Satan in the future, when there will be no temptation or evil or sin or death. That will all be thrown away into the lake of fire, never to see the light of day ever again. And so we look forward to that day.

So there’s an already and a not yet fulfillment of “God will soon crush Satan under your feet.” The second question about that verse is why is it that God will crush Satan under our feet, or your feet, as Paul says? Isn’t it Christ’s feet that crush Satan? Why does this say your feet, meaning people?

I thought Jesus was doing it. And so for that, we looked to 2 Corinthians 3, where Paul says, in Christ, all things are yours. The world to come, life and death, all things are yours in Christ. That we have Christ’s victory, that his victory is our victory. That we are in him. That we are hidden in him, as Paul says in Colossians.

So Christ’s victory applies to us, and so it is our feet that crush Satan, because we are in Christ and it’s his feet. All the promises of God are fulfilled in Christ, including this one. And so yes, it is our feet. We couldn’t do it on our own. There’s a curious verse in Jude, verse 9, where it says, when the archangel Michael was disputing with Satan over the body of Moses — there’s a lot about that verse that we don’t understand, but for our point today, Michael didn’t fight Satan directly. Instead, he said, the Lord rebuke you. He called on Jesus to rebuke whatever was going on between him and Satan. Even Michael, this powerful archangel we assume, didn’t directly confront Satan. He called on the name of the Lord.

Why? Because it is the Lord who will crush. So when Satan’s crushed under our feet, it’s not us doing the work. It’s Christ in us, or us in Christ. Christ is doing the work. We’re in him, therefore Satan is crushed. So we hope that adds some clarity to that verse. And we’ll see you next time.