Joshua 1:3

What is the special excellence of Joshua? His generalship, and the distribution of the inheritance, and the taking possession of the Holy Land.

"Every place," he says, "whatever you shall ascend upon with the tread of your feet, I will give it to you." What are the places which "we ascend upon with the tread of our feet"? The letter of the law is set upon the ground and lies below. Nowhere therefore does he ascend who follows the letter of the law. But if you are able to ascend from the letter to the spirit and to climb up from the history to a loftier understanding, then you have truly ascended to a high and lofty place, which you will receive from God as an inheritance. For if in those things which are written you understand types and perceive them to be forms of things heavenly, and if in mind and thought you "seek the things which are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God," then you will also receive that place as an inheritance, as our Lord and Savior says: "where I am, there shall my minister also be." If therefore you attain even to "Christ seated at the right hand of God" by faith, life, purity, and virtue, and if with those "treads of your feet" which Jesus washed you walk into that "place," God will give it to you; then you will be made not only "an heir of God," but also "a co-heir of Christ."

But let us also see this: what it is that Jesus promises to his soldiers. "Every place," he says, "whatsoever you shall put under the treading of your feet, shall be yours." He had said this to those who then existed, concerning the regions of the "Canaanites," the "Perizzites," the "Jebusites," and the other nations, whose regions, when the unworthy inhabitants had been driven out, they themselves took as an inheritance; but let us see what is promised to us in these words. There are certain nations of adversary powers, diabolical, against whom battle is waged for us and contests are toiled at in this life. Therefore however many nations of these we shall "put under our feet," however many we shall conquer in the contest, we shall take their regions, their provinces and kingdoms, with Jesus our Lord apportioning them to us. For they were once angels, they were "magnificent" in the kingdom of God. Or do we not read what Isaiah says concerning one of them: "How has Lucifer fallen, who rose in the morning?" This Lucifer without doubt had his seat in the heavens; but after he became an apostate angel, if I am able to conquer him and "put him under my feet," if I am granted that the Lord Jesus "may crush Satan under my feet," I shall consequently be granted to receive the place of Lucifer in the heavens. Thus, therefore, we understand that it is promised to us by Jesus our Lord that "every place which we shall put under the treading of our feet shall be ours." But let us not suppose that we can enter into this inheritance through idleness and negligence, yawning and dozing. Wrath has an angel of its own kind; unless you conquer this within yourself and cut away from yourself all the motions of anger and fury, you will not be able to take, in the inheritance, the place which that angel once held, for the reason that by your slothfulness you have in no way driven him out of the land of promise. Likewise also of pride and jealousy and avarice and lust there are certain instigating angels and inciters of these evils, whose vices unless you conquer within yourself and exterminate them from your land, which has now been sanctified through the grace of baptism, in no way will you receive the fullness of the promised inheritance.