For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
The times were very uncertain and unstable as Paul wrote to the Romans. The Jews had been kicked out of Rome under Claudius, hostilities against Christians were heated, and as always evil was present.
But Paul was rejoicing. Because in the midst of this, their obedience was being told about around the world. Much like for years people spoke of the endurance of the Chinese Christians under great suffering, and now the Nigerian church that continues to meet together even under the threat of death. Or at one time the steadfastness of the Korean church in prayer.
What does he know about our faith? Or your personal faith?
But even in this, Paul presents a warning: BE WISE.
Why wisdom? Because deceivers come not looking like deceivers. Deceivers who distort the Scripture ever so slightly come dressed in nice clothes, speaking articulately, and have fine sounding arguments. We have to be wise. And we have to know the Word very well.
Then Paul warns them to be innocent of evil. We don’t flirt with evil. We don’t play games with it. We don’t excuse or justify it by saying that it is ok because we know the difference between right and wrong.
Instead, we have nothing to do with it. We run from it. We refuse to engage even though others try to convince us it is harmless fun.
It does not mean we run from people and from unbelievers. But we run from evil practices.
Then Paul ends with great hope. And it is worth restating.
“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet”
Sometimes you look around and it seems like the enemy is coming in like a flood. That it is exploding all around us and the ones who are standing up are getting fewer and fewer. And that everywhere you look evil is getting a victory.
But don’t worry. In time, the God of peace will crush Satan. Under whose feet? Your feet.
That is a powerful statement.
Those who persist in righteousness and holiness, pursuing the kingdom of God (and not the kingdoms of man), will ultimately get the victory. God will do it. And he will do it through us.
Now the persecution wouldn’t stop for another 300 years. But in this time, satan could not stop the explosive growth of the church. The gospel went far and wide throughout the world as people were cast out by persecution into the entirety of the world.
As Tertullian said, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
It wasn’t easy. And it wasn’t the victory that same might have assumed in a life of comfort. But satan was crushed under their feet very quickly. It’s why we must look to the kingdom that is not of this world to see the fulfillment.
Paul ends with this: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.”
It’s a good word. We need the grace that saves (Eph 2:8-9), the grace that teaches us to say “no” to ungodliness (Titus 2:10-11), and the sufficiency of his grace that carries us through very difficult things while we are in this world of evil (2 Cor 12:9).