A CRUSHED SNAKE

   ’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.