Page:On The Spiritual Battle.pdf/37

 announced by the truth of the gospel and spiritual feet are shod in it, as the readiness that comes from the gospel intends. When God was here in the flesh–poor, wretched, and hungry–He walked being in need and rejected by people. He suffered for our sins here and was like a pilgrim without a home, not having anywhere to lay His head, being hated by evil people, and shoved aside as unworthy by them right up to His death for us. “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Matthew 8: 20)

The gospel announces such things to us about the Son of God. That is why our desires that love honor, praise, luxury, physical ease, gluttony, vanity, the lust of the flesh, vile promotion above others, and revenge should be shod in this kind of readiness of the gospel. When a person faithfully considers what the gospel proclaims to us about us and our Savior, then we subdue those desires through that footwear, lining up with what we find in that gospel so that we reject the world with its vanity just as our Lord did, being in the flesh. Rejecting the world, he was likewise despised by the world. And just as he was scorned for us, let us also choose to be despised with Him by choosing poverty, humility, defamation, constraints, and unrest in the world with Him. When a person with faith seriously girds himself up and has his desires like virtuous and sound footwear, the world opposes that person in abhorrence and oppression like dung. Such a person sees the meaning of the entire gospel and what it leads to so that his desire is never shown to be without it like an unshod foot, for which a person would be ashamed before others. Therefore, the Lord God says to Jerusalem through the prophet, “Take warning, O Jerusalem, or I will turn away from you. Keep your feet from being unshod. ” (Jeremiah 6: 8) The Lord God chastises Jerusalem for its wickedness, exposes its shamelessly naked feet, and says, “for according to the number of your cities are your gods…” (Jeremiah 2: 28) That was the shameless unshod foot of such pitiful craving for idolatry in the people who professed the one God, the Creator of the whole world. And such knowledgeable people, having intimate fellowship with God, taking many gifts from Him and being established in righteousness through His commandments and prohibitions, also were not ashamed for so many idols, bowing down to them and multiplying them on the mountains, thus maligning God and making their perverted desires naked for disgrace before all of the pagan nations. Therefore, God also says to them, “You have had a harlot’s forehead ” (Jeremiah 3: 3), because, like a harlot, unashamed to expose her forehead and the figure of her whole body so whorishly, she will be recognized for such shameless lewdness. Her forehead, eyes, and entire sumptuousness bear witness to her debauchery. You have made yourself like that woman because of many idols, Jerusalem, like a forehead exposing its destitution, shamelessness, deviation from God, and the heinous stripping of those spiritual feet.

That is why she has ugly unshod spiritual feed in this discourse of God. Oh, how those spiritual feet are unshod among Christians and exposed to be plainly naked! These Christians are alive in the flesh and shamelessly fulfill its desires. Pride, stinginess, murder, thievery, and all falsehood call out brightly in the streets as shamelessly unshod and bare feet, for when a Christian prides himself in worldly things he exposes a naked foot. There are unshod, naked, and shamelessly displayed spiritual feet there for the eyes of all onlookers when a Christian seeks out the lusts of the flesh, people’s affections, greed in eating, a profusion of possessions, gratification in vain things, mirth, trickery, degradation, wildness in the freedom of the flesh, shamelessness, obscenity in speech, the mastery of the flesh, and ornate adornment of the body. In the eyes of people his feet stand handsomely, his trunk nice and tight, his arms with