Don’t feel bad. There’s a website with photographs of beautiful celebrities who have horrible looking feet. There they are in all their glossy glory and down below, at the end of their legs, supporting this dazzling magazine-worthy icon, are two appendages that resemble gnarled roots subsisting in the Mojave. Oddly angled toes, knobby joints, pachydermish skin. Yet somehow, these deformed mutants find a way to get up in the morning. They stand on their hideous feet and press on.
Our culture has a noticeable aversion to feet. There are even some people who actually have a fear. Podophobics are afraid of feet—some are even afraid of their own. Something about the little piggies just puts them off. Tonight, a few will even go to bed wearing their shoes.
Most of us have come to terms with the aesthetics short-comings of our feet. But all of us would probably admit that even the most elegant metatarsals are a distant second to hands. Let’s be honest. If your hands looked like your feet, you’d probably become an adamant aficionado of gloves.
Feet have a clear disadvantage. As lower extremities, they must deal with more difficult circulation. Most of the time, they’re crammed into the dark sweatiness of shoes, forced to cultivate odors that make the whole world wince.
All in all, and in many ways, feet stink.
But like all things demeaned, there are not only redeeming qualities, there are actually admirable aspects. In the right light, feet are not that bad. In some cases, in some eyes of some beholders, they have their own kind of beauty.
The dreamy romantic in Song of Solomon burst out with “How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O prince’s daughter” (Song of Solomon 7:1). But the charm of feet reaches a whole new level when they are approached on a more spiritual level. “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace and brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation, And says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” (Isaiah 52:7). The true beauty of feet is found in their ability to bring good news. This same passage is quoted later on to emphasize that few things are more lovely than the feet that deliver the message of life to the lost (Romans 10:14-15). There’s no doubt about it. When it comes to transporting truth, nothing can compete with feet.
This might be why God gives special attention to the feet when He emphasizes the need for spiritual armor. In the midst of describing the essential roles of the breastplate and the helmet, He also pinpoints the necessity of wearing the gospel of peace, just like you would a decent pair of shoes (Ephesians 6:15). When you’re going into battle, the condition of your feet is key.
It makes you wonder if this was yet another reason why Jesus washed the feet of the Apostles (John 13:5-9). He taught them humility by kneeling before their grimy soles (souls). He foreshadowed the necessity of baptism. But it makes sense that He was also teaching them that their feet needed to be prepared to deliver the good news. As soldiers on the front line, they would need clean feet, reading to wear the gospel, equipped to fight with the truth.
The literal soldier of worldly wars knew all about the importance of feet. One might think that this particular part of the uniform would only be of special concern to someone like the fabled Achilles. But any real soldier understood. If you were going to be of any use in a fight, you had to make sure your feet were protected.
In the first few verses of Judges, the notorious violence begins right away. A king is captured and with efficient brutality, his captors edit his extremities. “But Adoni-bezek fled; and they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and big toes” (Judges 1:6). It turns out that King Adoni-bezek had done this very same thing to seventy other kings when he had had his turn as victor. He had captured his opponents and removed their thumbs and big toes. It brings a whole new meaning to “opposable thumbs” and it makes sense that any thumb-less man would no longer be effective at soldiering (or hitchhiking) since he could not hold a sword or even a bow.
But why the big toe? Was that just to balance out the numbers? You can’t have ten toes when you only have eight fingers. Go ahead and trim those off as well. You can bet, pondered these details, haunted by the 140 big toes he himself had collected.
However, the removal of the big toes had a specific purpose. Whether or not a soldier survives any battle is determined by his footing. You’ll notice throughout Ephesians 6, as God details the armor, that He keeps going back to the importance of how we must “stand firm.” And believe it or not, if someone removes your big toes, back then your career as a soldier may have very well been over. You can’t run very well. Your dodging and darting skills are hindered. The main thing you can’t do very well at all any more is stand firm.
The firmness of your stance is always key. “My steps have held fast to Your paths. My feet have not slipped” (Psalm 17:5). David also wrote about how God “keeps us in life and does not allow our feet to slip” (Psalm 66:9). The peace and safety provided by God was appropriately described as a kind of stability surrounded by chaos. “He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm” (Psalm 40:2). Your very survival depends on the positioning and strength of your feet.
God continues to emphasize this same idea in the New Testament. “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable” (I Corinthians 15:58 ). “Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (I Corinthians 16:13). Any Christian who is truly aware of the spiritual conflict knows that you better make your feet are placed firmly.
For any soldier, great attention was given to footwork. Modern fencers spend hours doing drills designed to ingrain footwork into their mind to the point of it becoming instinct. A swordfight is so busy focusing on the swords, little if any attention can be sacrificed on what the feet are up to. A soldier has to be so confident in the stability of his stance that he can focus on the actual fight.
It all comes down to one basic fact that any real soldier knows. If you fall, you die.
You can’t let your enemy throw you off balance.
You can’t let the enemy trip you up. Because if you go down, you are at an incredible disadvantage and most likely—you’re toast.
A Christian is a soldier who better wear his armor. And you better make sure your feet are wearing the peace that only comes through the gospel. The Word gives you a confidence in your stance. “The law of his God is in his heart; His steps do not slip” (Psalm 37:31). In order to fight the good fight, you have to have firm footing.
Your feet are probably like a lot of feet. They aren’t necessarily easy on the eye. They might be even a little repulsive. But if you have the Word in your heart, you have the most important message every carried. It gives you peace and it gives you stability that balance your life in elegant ways. And that makes your feet—even yours—quite beautiful.
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