Road signs are important for many reasons. Signs not only point people into the right direction toward their destination, but they are like promises that the place to where we are headed is actually there. Signs are important ways to minimize confusion and chaos and to create order and peace.In Genesis 3 the Lord provides us with a road sign of redemption. There He promises: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15).
In this one verse we are redirected from the spiritual catastrophe of sin's rebellion to the spiritual cure of the Savior's righteousness. It is the Word from God that speaks a new order of things. Curses are given because holiness must be satisfied. At the same time the promise of a new intimacy with the Lord is spoken for those who bear His image (Adam and Eve) as well as to "her seed" (v15) - those who will trust the Lord's provision for righteousness. What we see in this verse is God's provision for the sin of humanity.
Theologically this verse has been referred to as the protevangelium, or, the first mention the gospel because it shows God acting graciously and mercifully to those who had rebelled against the His glory and authority. This verse also suggests that the events that follow it represent the pursuit of God to restore paradise and His image in man that sin distorted. The rest of the scripture is an unfolding and fulfillment of this prophetic Word from the Lord. In fact, the story of the Bible can be summarized using this meta-narrative:
Paradise (Genesis 1-2)
Paradise lost (Genesis 3:1-14)
Paradise restored (Genesis 3:15-Revelation 22)
While the hope of redemption promised in verse 15 is to the man and the woman, the sentencing God is announcing in it is directed towards the serpent. It is his curse! The reason this is the case is to show that, while the redemption of man is important, it is penultimate. Man's reconciliation to the Lord is incidental to the Lord's true focus: His glory!
Redemption is chiefly about God's rule and authority which He will show in supreme fashion in the cross of Christ. This would demonstrate the crushing of the serpents evil design and deception by the last Adam (Christ) who overcame the serpent's assaults. Hence, the Genesis 3:15 states: "he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."
Paul, seeing it this way, views the cross from the perspective of Christ being Christus Victor. This speaks to Christ achieving victory for us in His defeat of the devil by His obedience to the Father which would necessitate the cross (Philippians 2:5-11). This act of Christ Paul pictures as victorious in this way:
13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made
alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt
that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He
disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in
him" (Colossians 2:13–15)
Christ is the fulfillment of the seed of the woman who conquers the seed of the serpent. The word seed does not refer to people. It represents, either, the continuation of the seed of God (those who trust Christ) or the seed of Satan (those who oppose him). This is important since those who would proclaim to be the seed of God may, in actuality, be promoting actions, beliefs and morality that reflect the seed of the enemy.
Jesus makes this clear when, in speaking to the Pharisees - the religious elite of the day - He addressed them as being from a different father. Jesus highlights the enmity they have toward Him and, then, situates it in the activity of the devil in the garden, proving that they are acting like the devil's seed and not God's:
"42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I
am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I
say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and
stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own
character, for he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:42–44, emphasis mine).
Jesus says to these religious leaders that they are behaving just like their father, the one who birthed them, the devil. Their actions toward Him were mirroring the devil's actions toward Eve in the garden: deception, lies and murder! Therefore, to be of the seed of the woman (Christian), must go beyond profession. It means being born again. This is why Jesus would say to Nicodemus who came to him by night (secretly and deceptively), "Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God”(John 3:3).
The gospel, then, is not merely good news. It is that, but much more is to be understood about it. The gospel is a transformative and powerful message that creates new life with new affections, and a new will. It plants the seed of God in the soul of a man or woman such that, when cultivated by the power of the Holy Spirit, produces spiritual life. As an old saint, Henry Scougal, stated in the title of one of his books, the gospel produced "The Life of God In the Soul of Man." Being the seed of the woman is to be re-created such that we are new creations in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). Genesis 3:15 promised, therefore, what Jesus accomplished: "Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8).
God would redeem humanity by becoming like them, dying for them and invading them with His Spirit. Because of this, there is now a clear distinction between the seed of the serpent (non-Christians and the seed of the woman (those who are born again):
8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the
beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one
born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on
sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God,
and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor
is the one who does not love his brother.
I ask each of us to answer this powerful questions once posed to a player by coach Boone in the movie "Remember the Titans": "Whose your daddy?"
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