While the name “Jesus Christ” does not appear in Scripture until Matthew 1:1, the Son of God is present and accounted for from the first verses of the Bible; even in the works of creation according to John 1:3, Colossians 1:16, and Hebrews 1:10. The first explicit mention of the Son in the text occurs in the midst of God’s “judicial inquest”[1] which begins in Genesis 3:8. This section can be divided into three portions: the testimony of the guilty parties in verses 9-13; the pronouncement of the divine judgment in verses 14-19; and the various recorded responses and subsequent events recoded in verses 20-24. Most relevant to the development of the gospel in this narrative is the judicial curse on the serpent in 3:15 and the divine act of mercy in 3:21. In these two instances the redemptive nature of the person and work of Jesus Christ is typologically preached to man for the very first time. This post will deal with both of these subjects in turn.
The Judicial Curse
In Genesis 3:15 God makes a promise to Satan. He says to the Serpent:
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.
Several important elements of this promise must be noted.
First, this is the first hint that the reader receives that the Serpent’s program of rebellion has not been entirely successful. True, he has introduced great pain and chaos into God’s order, but he has not succeeded in stealing the loyalty of all God’s image bearing children. He is cursed in verse 14, but mankind does not receive identical condemnation. Rather than dragging humanity down the pit with him, there is a promised conflict. The enmity which will exist between him and the woman (and the fact that this enmity extends to their respective offspring) is a precursor and a testimony to the struggle between the forces of grace and evil which will define humanity until the final parusia.[2]
Second, this promise of enmity (which is by its very nature gracious in that it points to at least a partial rejection on the part of men of the disastrous and false lordship of the Serpent) will not simply be between their respective offspring, but will engender a “one on one” direct conflict. Midway through the curse, the language becomes very personal and singular: he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heal. It would appear that like David and Goliath fought as representatives of their respective nations, a champion will be provided to fight on behalf of the children of God against the devil.
Third, this situation of enmity is not perpetual. God’s champion wins. While there will be a cost to the representative of God’s army (the bruised heel), the injury inflicted on the Serpent (the bruised head) will be catastrophic and final. [3] There will come a day when the anti-lord is no more, sin is defeated, and death is drained of its sting. This promise that the struggle will have an eventual terminus with the victory of God’s champion reintroduces to man the concept of eschatological hope. He has a promise to cling to and a greater existence to yearn for. However, rather than enter into this glory through his own personal fidelity to the covenant of works, man will receive the fruit of the promise by faith in the grace of God alone.
It should be clear from the above three observations[4] that Genesis 3:15 is talking about Jesus Christ. He is the great champion who will go out like David against Goliath in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel (1 Samuel 17:45). As Goliath received a crushing blow to the head and fell defeated, Satan likewise received a crushing blow when he saw all the ground he had gained shattered by the sin-canceling vicarious death of Christ on the cross. While he remains dangerous,[5] he is a defeated and ultimately impotent foe who knows his final doom is coming in eternal fire.[6] Amen, Come Lord Jesus![7]
The Divine Mercy
The person and work of Christ is not only present in the garden narrative in the judicial curse/Messianic prophecy of 3:15, it is present in the divine mercy shown in 3:21 as well:
And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
Much more meaning should be assigned to this event than the mere covering of physical nakedness. Again, several observations are in order.
First, the providing of a better covering for Adam and his wife is a monergistic act of grace. A situation wherein favor could be more unmerited is hardly conceivable. Cosmic rebellion of the first order has occurred, yet God acts in his mercy to comfort and care for sinners. Their own attempts at covering their shame are apparently insufficient, and so God takes sovereign initiative. Note that he does not merely provide them the opportunity to slay animals on their own, nor does he even command them to clothe themselves. It is God who provides the animal, God who makes the garment, and God who clothes them. This is always the pattern of divine grace to sinners. It is God who sees the need, God who sends the preacher of the gospel, God who brings regeneration, God who gives the gift of faith, and God who preserves the sinner; all by his grace alone.[8]
Second, the slaying of the animals introduces the concept of penal substitution. The penalty for the breach of the commandment was death (2:17). While humanity did then and does now continually experience the spiritual death which results from this first sin,[9] and at this point the prospect of physical death became the reality of all men, the only physical death to occur immediately upon breach of the commandment is not among the personally guilty parties. Death does occur, but it is the death of another. An animal (an innocent party in relation to the first sin) is the one who dies, and that to meet the needs of the guilty! This concept of penal substitution introduces the idea of imputed guilt, and continues in the sacrifices offered to God by His people throughout the Old Testament economy. Yet even in the later historical epoch of a more fully developed temple sacrifice system, David is able to confess in Psalm 51 that God does not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. Rather, the repentant king offers up a broken and contrite heart, begging God to purge him with hyssop, that he might be truly clean. Animals can only be a picture of substitution. Real sin bearing has to be accomplished by a real man, yet that real man must be sinless and able to absorb an eternity of punishment. There is only one who can be the ultimate and final sacrifice: the God-man Jesus Christ. His penal substitution is the final consummation and fulfillment of the grace pictured in the first penal substitution of Genesis 3:21.
Third, the covering of Adam and his wife is a picture of the work of Christ applied to sinners. It quickly becomes clear that something deeper than the embarrassment of physical nakedness is at stake, for if that was the only issue then their fig leaves would have been quite adequate. Leaves hide the body as well as skins. Clearly there is a deeper significance to this covering. Adam and his wife first became concerned with their nakedness when they defied God and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Prior to this, they were naked but were not ashamed (2:25). The sense of shame they feel at their physical nakedness is therefore a synecdoche for the devastation sin has wrought in the totality of their humanity. They are right to feel that their shame must be covered, but they are unable to cover it themselves. The covering must come from God, and it must come through the shedding of blood.[10] The covering over of the shame of sin by the sovereign hand of God is a familiar way in which the Scriptures present salvation. Isaiah 61:10 is typical:
I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness[11].
The covering of sinners is ultimately achieved through their personal, spiritual union with Christ and the resultant imputation of his righteousness to their account which when coupled with the imputation of their guilt to him results in their justification. Yet as all good Protestants know, justification is by faith alone. The next and last post in this series will deal with the garden’s witness to that very topic: saving faith in the Garden of Eden.
[1] Gonzales, Where Sin Abounds, 40.
[2] Pastor Greg Nichols refers to Genesis 3:15 as God’s “emancipation proclamation.”
[3] James Hamilton is refreshingly blunt when he writes “Bad guys get broken heads in the Bible (The Skull Crushing Seed of the Woman: Inner-Biblical Interpretation of Genesis 3:15, 34)”.
[4] All three of these observations are summarized well by Anthony Hoekema when he writes “The enmity placed between mankind and the serpent implies that God, who is also the serpent’s enemy, will be man’s friend. In the prediction that ultimately the seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head we have the promise of the coming redeemer. We may say that in this passage God reveals, as in a nutshell, all of his saving purpose with his people (The Bible and the Future, 5).”
[5] 1 Peter 5:8
[6] Revelation 20:10
[7] Revelation 22:20b
[8] Ephesians 2:8-10
[9] Romans 5:19a
[10] There is perhaps some significance in this observation as it relates to the rejection of Cain’s offering (of the fruit of the ground) and Abel’s (firstborn of the flock). If this construct is appropriate, Cain’s agricultural offering would roughly equate to the fig leaf coverings, while Abel’s bloody offering would align with the bloody covering of skins. While Moses may or may not be drawing a connection, it should be remembered that the primary reason he writes as he does is that he is accurately conveying actual historical events. Gonzales has demonstrated that the most significant contrast between the respective offerings of the brothers was that Abel’s devotion to the Lord was authentic and heartfelt; Cain’s was not (Where Sin Abounds, p.59).
[11] Meredith Kline is extremely helpful on Genesis 3:21. He distills the essence of the above three observations in one sentence, writing “When Adam and Eve left paradise they did so bearing a sign of restoration, a sign obtained by God’s wielding the fiery sword of the cherubim against a sacrificial animal substitute.” Kingdom Prologue, 153. It is interesting to note that Calvin takes an opposite view, that God clothed Adam and Eve in skins for “degrading appearance.” He writes that “God therefore designed that our first parents should, in such a dress, behold their own vileness, -just as they had before seen it in their nudity, -and should thus be reminded of their sin (Genesis, 182).”
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