What does Paul mean in Romans 16:20 when he tells the church, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under *your* feet?”

Here’s an excerpt from a sermon by Pastor Jeff Wiesner from Isaiah 59-60, “Conquering King, Unshakable Kingdom:”

“In the Bible, Satan is crushed in three stages—he has been defeated, he is being defeated, and he will be defeated. The first and last of these victories—in the past and in the future—both belong to Christ. We play no part. He alone disarmed the power of Satan by his death on a cross (Colossians 1:15) and he alone will destroy Satan once and for all at the end of the age (Revelation 20:10).

We do, however, have a role in the second of these three stages—the right now stage. In Romans 16:20, Paul promises that Satan will be ‘crushed under your feet.’ How do we make sense of this?

Keep Genesis 3 in mind. How did the serpent deceive the man and the woman? He came to Eve offering both her and Adam the knowledge of good and evil. He said, ‘You won’t die! For in the day you eat of this tree, you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:5).’Now understand: Adam and Eve’s sin was not that they desired to be wise about good and evil but that they desired knowledge that was contrary to God’s revelation. He told them, “Don’t eat it!”

Now look at the preceding verse—verse 19—what does it say? ‘For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to—pay attention!—what is good and…what is evil.’

How do we conquer this present age, in Christ? Not with a sword or by force of law or by electing our preferred politicians, but by devotion to the truth of God. The first Adam was a son of God given authority by God to guard God’s garden-temple. He should have kept out sin and falsehood by crushing the serpent’s head, but he didn’t. Christ, the incarnate Son and last Adam, was given authority by God to do the same and succeeded where the first Adam failed. Now in these last days, between Christ’s first and second coming—and Satan’s first and final defeat—Christ has delegated his temple-guarding, serpent-crushing authority to his churches. And that authority is located precisely in keeping out falsehood by the right preaching of the true gospel.

The gospel is corrupted today by false teaching characteristic of antichrist in these last days (Rom. 16:17-18; cf. Tim. 4:1)—false teachers who offer us knowledge contrary to God’s revelation. And when we bite what they offer, we sin against God and our light is dimmed, even extinguished. The devil “wins.”

But when we are wise unto what is good and evil according to God’s Word, our faithfulness to the gospel further crushes the already crushed devil and causes us to shine as lights in the world (Phil. 2:15)—the kind of lights to which God’s elect from every nation will flock, as promised in Isaiah 60:

‘The nations come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising (v 3)…they shall call you the City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel” (v 14).’”