The Gospel of Eden Part I: Introduction

The general contours of Genesis 2:4-3:24 are familiar.  When man was created he was placed in a garden.  He was given certain charges and admonitions, and he enjoyed a sweet communion of blessing and fellowship with his Creator-Lord.  This communion was violently broken when a Serpent intruded, the first man and woman chose the path of death, and their garden home became a deserted monument to a fall of the most catastrophic proportions.  The preceding events are commonly associated with the themes of lost innocence, temptation, failure, and sorrow.  While these melancholy themes are indeed self evident in the text, they are not exhaustive.  In recognizing the tragedy of Eden one must not miss the undercurrents of grace and redemption which pulse below the surface of the story.

The Bible is a book about how God saves sinners.  This fact remains true on every page, even those early pages of Genesis which are so deeply associated with the fall and curse of mankind into sin and death.  I'd like to take a few posts to unpack this idea, specifically to look at how in the Biblical account of Eden and its immediate aftermath God is still writing a story about how He saves sinners.  Even in the Garden of Eden, God is pointing His people to the gospel of grace.  It is therefore our aim to enter the garden narrative in search of the gospel of Eden. 

In this introductory post I'd like to simply define what will be our central theme and then defend the legitimacy of this topic.

The Central Theme Defined

  

If the gospel of Eden is to be presented with any clarity then the first task is to define the gospel.  It must always be immediately asserted that the heart of the gospel is the vicarious penal atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross for sinners.[1]  The gospel is the “good news” of what the perfect Lamb has done on the behalf of His sinful sheep.  Nothing else can ever take the central place of the cross of Christ.  If there is no cross then there is no atonement, no salvation, and no gospel.

However, while the cross is the sine qua non of the gospel, it is not the gospel in toto.  If we are to understand why Christ had to be made a sacrifice for His people, we must first understand our own sin.  If we are to understand our own sin, we must first understand the character and attributes of the God we have sinned against.  Once these truths are grasped, an understanding of how we are to react in faith and repentance is necessary as well.  The Biblical gospel is therefore a message about God, man, Christ, and faith.  It is about God as the holy and sovereign lawgiver, about man and his rebellious sin, about Christ and His work as our salvation, and about faith and repentance as the response of the penitent sinner.[2]  These truths are the marrow of the gospel of grace, the message which is the central theme of this paper.  Having defined this theme, it becomes immediately necessary to defend the proposition of locating this gospel in the Garden of Eden.

The Legitimacy of the Topic Defended

What does the Garden of Eden have to do with the gospel of grace?  Indeed, what does the Old Testament have to do with Jesus Christ?  While all evangelical Christians would agree that the Old Testament often looks ahead to the coming Messiah and most would grant that Genesis 3:15 is both the first of these Messianic prophesies and is located in the heart of the garden narrative, not all would immediately agree with the thesis of this post.  Is it proper to speak of the gospel in the Garden?  This question will be most directly answered by way of the actual exegesis of the text, but a brief defense can be made here as to the legitimacy of the topic. 

Jesus Christ held to the position that the Old Testament was about Himself.[3]  In his post-resurrection roadside hermeneutics seminar with the two disciples recorded in Luke 24:13-35, we read that beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. “All the Scriptures” is surely a figurative way of saying that Christ demonstrated that the theme of all previous canonical special revelation (the Old Testament) was the coming redemption of men through the person and work of the Messiah. [4]  More directly, “Moses” as a division of the Old Testament refers specifically to the Pentateuch.[5]  It is therefore proper to say that Christ’s preaching about Himself found its genesis in Genesis.

Furthermore, Christ in his teaching ministry displayed his own belief that the Old Testament taught the truths of the gospel.  Christ’s conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 is rightly thought of as one of the most gospel rich sections of the Bible.  Yet in this beautiful explanation of the new birth and the eternal purpose of God to save sinners, Christ expresses surprise that a teacher of Israel does not already understand these things (John 3:10).  Even the illustration He provides of His impending sacrifice and the faith by which sinners will be justified in verses 14-15 is taken again from the Pentateuch: And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.  

Perhaps most compelling is the way in which primitive Biblical anthropology is so theologically relevant to the development of Biblical Christology.    This connection is not the fruit of an overly zealous hermeneutical reliance on type and antitype which reads symbolism and significance into every exhaustive detail of the text;[6] it is the simple testimony of the Scriptures.  The two key passages which establish this connection are Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:20-23, 45-49.  From these texts it would appear that a proper understanding of Adam is necessary to a proper understanding of Christ.[7]  Adam is a type of Christ and Christ is the Second Adam.  While this connection is not the direct topic of this paper, it does help to bolster the connection between the garden and the gospel.[8]

According to the example of Christ and the general testimony of the Word, it is a legitimate and worthy pursuit to seek out the gospel in all sixty-six books of the Bible.  The Puritan John Flavel wrote

 The knowledge of Jesus Christ is the very marrow and kernel of all the Scriptures; the scope and centre of all divine revelations.  The ceremonial law is full of Christ, and all the gospel is full of Christ: the blessed lines of both Testaments meet in him; and how they both harmonize, and sweetly concentre in Jesus Christ, is the chief scope of the excellent epistle to the Hebrews, to discover; for we may call that epistle the sweet harmony of both Testaments.  This argues the unspeakable excellency of this doctrine, the knowledge wherof must needs therefore be a key to unlock the greatest part of the sacred scriptures… the right knowledge of Jesus Christ, like a clue, leads you through the whole labyrinth of the scriptures.[9]

If Flavel is correct that the knowledge of Jesus Christ is… the centre of all divine revelations then he offers the final word necessary in defense of the legitimacy of our topic.  What is the gospel if not an explanation of the necessity and nature of the work of Christ?  It is therefore legitimate (to say the least) that we seek out Christ and the gospel with Him in all the Bible, no less in the Garden of Eden.  

The Gospel of Eden

Having defined the theme of these posts and defended the legitimacy of their topic, the actual interaction with the Biblical text can now commence.  It is important to note that this series is not an exhaustive exegetical exercise.  Rather, we simply seek to demonstrate that even the first chapters of the Old Testament are Christ-centered and contain all the necessary elements of the gospel, if only in seed form.  This treatment will unfold along the “gospel outline” already noted: God, man, Christ, and faith.  In the next post we will unpack what it means to see God in the gospel of Eden.

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[1] Isaiah 53; John 10:11-18; Romans 3:25, 5:8-11, 8:32; 1 Corinthians 1:8; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Ephesians 2:13-16; Colossians 1:20-22;  1 Thessalonians 1:10; 1 Timothy 2:5-6; Hebrews 2:9; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 2:2.  To these texts could be added many others proclaiming this central truth of the gospel: the atonement accomplished upon the cross of Christ.

[2] J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, 57-73.  While these categories are helpful, it must be remembered that there are just that: categories.  Within each of these four headings there is a wealth of information which adds crucial detail and contour to the biblical gospel.

[3] In his article The Skull Crushing Seed of the Woman: Inner-Biblical Interpretation of Genesis 3:15, James Hamilton writes that “…from start to finish, the OT is a messianic document, written from a messianic perspective, to sustain a messianic hope (p. 30).”  Hamilton also points his readers to endnote five of his article, which expands and explains this important observation about the messianic nature of the Old Testament.

[4] Luke 24:27.

[6] This “overly zealous hermenutical reliance on type and antitype which reads symbolism and significance into every exhaustive detail of the text” is sometimes prevalent in Biblical Theological studies.  While it is true that all historical writing (even inspired historical writing) is by definition selective, it should be remembered that sometimes a detail is present simply because the events are recorded as they actually occurred, not because of some deeper theological implication or connection.  

[7] Fesko, Last Things First, 29-37.  Fesko argues throughout this book that protology deserves status as a category within Systematic Theology (p.32).

[8] A fuller treatment of the garden narrative would delve much deeper into the relationship between the first and second Adams, the relevance of man as image bearer to the fall and to redemption, the Covenant of Works, and the various ways Christ fulfills and restores the Creation order, especially as it relates to the Garden of Eden as the prototypical temple.  For a fuller discussion of these themes see J.V. Fesko, Last Things First; Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue; Robert Gonzales Jr., The Covenantal Context of the Fall: Did God Make a Primordial Covenant with Adam?, and Man: God’s Visible Replica and Vice-Regent; and  Edmund Clowney, The Unfolding Mystery.

[9] John Flavel, The Fountain of Life Opened: or, A Display of Christ in his Essential and Mediatorial Glory, 3.