For the six weeks of the church season of Lent, as well as for “Holy Week” (the week before Easter), I will try to explore how fully invested the Lord Jesus was in regard to securing our salvation.  The penalty for our sin was no small thing, and it exacted a huge toll on him.  Yet he was determined to be our holy Substitute. 

Each week I’ll share some thoughts on yet another part of Jesus’ body which he committed to the cause.  These posts will form the basis of our Wednesday evening worship discussions.  I pray they provide wonderful food for thought, and blessed encouragement to all of us!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sometime after he was born, even in the midst of the craziness of the events of his birth, Mary and stepfather, Joseph, must have held Jesus’ tiny feet in their hands, marveling at God’s creation.  And marveling that God would be made Man to be the Savior.  As they counted his tiny toes, how could they have understood all that those feet would do for them, and for all people?

Those little feet would grow larger, until eventually they supported Jesus’ entire body.  They would walk many miles on the dusty, rocky Palestinian roads, carrying the Son of God through his ministry.  Countless steps throughout the region of Galilee, south through Samaria to Judea, and then back north again, including a few side trips to Phoenicia on the West, and Perea and the Decapolis on the East.

The only time we hear of Jesus riding an animal was on Palm Sunday, when he rode “on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Mt. 21:5) in order to fulfill the Messianic prophecy of Zechariah (9:9).  He boarded boats a few times for journeys across the water.  Otherwise, it seems that wherever he went he walked.  Sometimes he even walked on the water!  (Jn. 6:19)

And while he walked he taught his disciples.  Wherever he walked, his feet carried him to opportunities to proclaim God’s Word, and to heal and help God’s people.  Many were the times Jesus directed his feet on special excursions to meet with very specific people in order to minister to them.

Wherever his feet carried him, they carried the loving Lord.  His feet were the means by which the compassionate heart of God was transported from place to place on earth, enabling Jesus to demonstrate who he really was with his powerful words and his actions.  They were the same feet, in fact, that positioned and repositioned Jesus before the twelve sets of stinky, dirty feet of his disciples so that in serving love he could wash them at his last Passover meal (Jn. 13:3-5).

Those feet were also the feet anointed with tears and expensive perfume by a sinful woman (Lk. 7:37-38), Mary of Bethany, and wiped with her hair just days before Jesus died and was buried.  (Jn. 12:1-3).  This remarkable act of sorrowful repentance (and perhaps also sorrowful recognition of Jesus’ impending death) was finally what prompted greedy, thieving Judas to betray Jesus to the Jewish leaders (Jn. 12:4-6, Mk. 14:10-11). 

How interesting that the washing of his feet would lead to them being pierced and stained in blood shortly thereafter. 

Archeologist Kristina Killgrove describes how the Roman crucifiers affixed the crucified’s feet to the cross.  “Once the crossbar was in place, the feet may be nailed to either side of the upright or crossed.  In the first case, nails would have been driven through the heel bones, and in the second case, one nail would have been hammered through the metatarsals in the middle of the foot.”  Dr. William D. Edwards writes that “Only very rarely, and probably later than the time of Christ, was an additional block (suppedaneum) employed for transfixion of the feet.”

Every depiction of the crucified Jesus I have seen shows him with his feet crossed and nailed through the top.  Is this assumption or based on oral tradition passed down through the millennia?  Regardless, either method of securing the feet to the cross was horrific.  And either would be supported with the resurrected Jesus’ invitation to his fearful disciples to “Look at my hands (wrists?) and feet (ankles?)” (Luke 24:39-40).

As I reflect on the feet of Jesus, those holy feet cruelly nailed to a cross as part of the atoning cost of the redemption of sinners, I can’t help but remember the words of two Old Testament prophets regarding feet bringing wonderful news.  Nahum was inspired to write these words regarding the ultimate defeat of the Assyrians: “Look, there on the mountains, the feet of one who brings good news, who proclaims peace! … No more will the wicked invade you; they will be completely destroyed” (Nahum 1:15).  Isaiah shared a very similar message (52:7) that Gods’ people would be rescued from Babylon’s control.

Both passages refer to feet bringing the stunning news of earthly deliverance, but both ultimately speak of an even more stunning spiritual deliverance as well – a deliverance brought about by the Messiah whose hands and feet were nailed to a cross on “Mount” Calvary.

David was inspired to write the remarkable and oft-quoted prophecy that the Lord (the Father) promised the Lord (Jesus), “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet” (Psalm 110:1).  This was a reference to the common custom in ancient days for a conqueror to place his foot on the head of a foe as a display of victory. 

Ultimately this prophecy will be completed on the Last Day when Jesus returns, but much of it came to fruition already with Jesus’ death and resurrection.  As the Lord’s very first promise of the Savior declared way back in the sin-tarnished Garden.  Speaking to Satan, the Lord stated,  [“The offspring of the woman – the Christ] will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15).  Or as Paul explains to the Corinthians, “For [Jesus] must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.  The last enemy to be destroyed is death.  For he ‘has put everything under his feet’” (1 Corinthians 15:25-27).

From tiny feet at his birth, to feet that walked throughout Palestine on a ministry of love, to feet anointed with perfume and tears then cruelly pierced with nails, thereby crushing Satan’s head, to feet that carried the victorious Savior out of the tomb on Easter morning, our fully invested Lord dedicated even his feet to the process of winning our salvation.  And thanks be to Him that he did!

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!” Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy.  When the LORD returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes.  Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the LORD has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem” (Isaiah 52:7-9).