Category: redemption

The Significance of Eve’s Seed in the Plan of God

The description of the virgin birth of Jesus harkens back to Genesis 3:15.

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I am constantly amazed at the “new” things I see in reading the Bible year after year. I read the Bible for the first time in a World Religion class in college in 1978, and I have been reading it ever since. In the last 5 years (6, or 7, I don’t know), I have read the through the Bible from beginning to end – from Genesis to Revelation – in chronological order and in other ways.

At the beginning of this New Year, I am going to try writing some shorter articles, as I have noticed my articles are getting progressively more wordy and lengthy. The Bible is a rich tapestry, but some threads are longer than others, so I am going to try to pull on some shorter threads from time to time.

In this article, I am focusing on Genesis 3:15 inspired by a brief comment in a sermon I heard during the Christmas season. People often credit the following verse in Genesis as a foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus. God speaking to Eve after the fall said:

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

Genesis 3:15 niv

I confess that this foreshadowing never seemed crystal clear to me. Jesus is the offspring of Eve, but so are billions of people. Thus, that connection didn’t seem obvious to me. I saw nothing in that verse that seemed to be specifically about Jesus.

I always figured that theologians connect the second phrase of Genesis 3:15 to Jesus: Eve’s “offspring” (Jesus) will “crush” the serpent’s (Satan’s) head, and the serpent will “strike” his heel. Crushing the head and striking the heel is imagery that doesn’t seem to tie in specifically to what happened with Jesus, except in a very general way. It isn’t completely inappropriate (Jesus certainly had the victory!), but the imagery doesn’t closely fit the details of the crucifixion (like Isaiah 53 does, for instance).

Crushing a head is a fatal blow. Striking a heel is not fatal. Satan’s blow wasn’t fatal, though it seemed to be the dramatic end to Jesus. The crucifixion turns out to be more like the striking of a heal, because Jesus rose from the dead! And that “blow” was crushing to Satan and his purposes.

The end!

Mic drop….

While this is generally accurate, the imagery doesn’t remind us of Jesus in the same way that other Old Testament passages clearly foreshadow him, like Isaiah 53 (by his stripes we are healed).

Hindsight helps us see Jesus in these words spoken by Isaiah hundreds of years earlier. Jews before the time of Jesus knew that many passages in the Psalms, the Prophets, and other places spoke of a Messiah to come. Scholars also go back to Genesis 3:15 to see the foreshadowing of the Messiah (an offspring of Eve crushing the serpent that fooled Adam and Eve into sin).

But, there is more in Genesis 3:15 than the crushing of the serpent’s head that may point to Jesus, and it points to Jesus uniquely and poignantly. It also reveals another thread that runs throughout Scripture.

To see the thread I want to pull on today, we need to focus on the first part of the verse:

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers….

Genesis 3:15a
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Comments on Why God Became Incarnate and Died for Our Sins

kevingdrendel3 Comments

Daniel Mann does a good job of explaining Why Christ, as God Incarnate, Had to Die for Our Sins. In reading his explanation, my mind goes to statements like God’s “transcendent love” and “total abhorrence for sin”, God’s “righteousness” and “divine forbearance” for sin, and the price that had to be paid “to satisfy God’s righteous character”.

Daniel describes his own reaction to these concepts formerly, as a non-Christian. He felt God was a “deceiving sadist” until one day he realized that Jesus was God incarnate, that God did not merely sacrifice a created being – God sacrificed Himself in human form!

Indeed, that is the central point of Christian belief, which is described beautifully and poignantly in Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2:5-8):

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature [form of] God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature [form] of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

These things would be small consolation, also, if not for the victory on the other side of the cross (Phil. 2:9-11)

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

That Jesus was fully man and fully God incarnated into a man is key to the understanding of Christianity. That God is three “persons” in one is also key, as it provides some explanation how God can incarnate Himself into the form of a man and die (in human flesh), though God remains self-existent and eternal, the Creator (and not a created being).

Not that there is no mystery in this. I concede this is hard for creatures who are limited dimensionally to wrap our heads around these ideas.

Finally, it explains how (and why) death to Jesus in the flesh had no power over him. As God incarnate, death “could not hold him”. (Acts 2:24)

But, I am not writing to clarify these aspects of Christian doctrine. I want to focus on Daniel Mann’s personal revelation that Jesus was God incarnate, and his death was voluntary – God sacrificing Himself, and not God sacrificing some created being.

This realization made all the difference for him. When he really understood this distinction, he began to see the love of God that was demonstrated in that act of self-sacrifice – something God did not have to to, but He did it for us because He loves us.

Other people, I know, are not convinced. Indeed, if a person understands Jesus to be human only, and not God incarnate, the story makes no sense.

Another stumbling block is God’s “abhorrence for sin” and the need to satiate a “righteous” God. These Christian concepts are foreign territory for many people. Why, if God is so loving, does He demand sacrifices for sin?

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Should Christians Be Like Elijah and Call Down Fire on People Who Reject Them?

God has been working out His plans and unfolding His purposes – the redemption of mankind and of His creation – throughout history

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I am reading through Kings and Chronicles right now in my annual trek through the Bible, and the Prophet, Elijah, has been the “star” these last few days. Elijah means “Yahweh is my God” in Hebrew. He is known for his great faith and is one of the most prominent and revered prophets in the Old Testament.

Elijah is known for his fierce faith in the face of difficult circumstances when Ahab, the King of Israel, and his domineering, foreign wife, Jezebel killed off most of the faithful Hebrew prophets and instituted the worship of Baal and Asherah for the nation of Israel.

Elijah stood defiantly against Ahab and Jezebel who sought to kill him for his defiance Elijah is, perhaps, most known for his public challenge to the prophets of Baal and Asherah that culminated in a powerful demonstration of Yahweh’s superiority to those foreign gods.

This story and another story in a similar vein to it are the backdrop for this article. If Elijah is an exemplary man of faith, to what extent should we follow his example today in the expression of our faith in the face of governmental and cultural opposition?

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What Are We Missing in the Story of the Garden of Eden?

Why did God place the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden and forbid Adam to eat it?

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Once again, I am reading the epic of Eden by Sandra Richter. She takes the orthodox, traditional position that Eden was perfect, man fell, bringing God’s creation down with him, and God is redeeming man with creation so that man will live forever in perfection, again, after redemption is complete. I am indebted to her and other scholars, and I greatly appreciated her book.

I wrote recently, on the question, Was the Garden of Eden Really Perfect? With due respect to Sandra Richter, I am leaning in the direction of no, the Garden of Eden wasn’t perfect. I explain my thinking in the article linked in this paragraph, and today I want to explore something that may be missing from the traditional narrative (at least as I understand it).

Today, I am posing some questions that occur to me as I continue to read through Sandra Richter’s fine book. Why did God place the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden? Did God know men would eat from it? What is the point of the fall and the long road back to redemption?

I don’t claim to have all the answers, or at least not all the right answers. We may not know, and may never know, the answers in their nuanced details. I think that is ok, though we should strive to know as best as we can.

Maybe some things are not meant for us to know; or at least we are not meant to know that we know. We have a strong tendency to become proud and self-righteous and to start relying on our own understanding, rather than remaining humble before God and our fellow man.

Yet, I think God wants us to seek to understand. “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” (Proverbs 25:2) Thus, my article today is an attempt at better understanding God’s redemption story and searching out these things.

Surely, God had purpose in placing that tree in the garden, right? God is sovereign and all-knowing, right? Thus, I think the questions I pose today are good for us to consider.

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Was the Garden of Eden Really Perfect?

Six times in the creation narrative God reviews His creation in different stages, and He calls it “good”.

kevingdrendel3 Comments

Sandra Richter in her book, The Epic of Eden, toes the orthodox, evangelical line, that the Garden of Eden was created perfect by God. This echoes the orthodox, western position that Eden was perfect, and Adam (and Eve) ruined the perfection of Eden in rebellion against God.

This is the traditional view: that God’s world was perfect until man ruined it by sinning.

Not that Adam didn’t have some help in this rebellion. I am using Adam in the generic sense, meaning those initial humans who made that one fateful choice that God prohibited, committing the first sin that led to death and banishment from the Edenic paradise God gave man.

This is what I learned as a new Christian. Sandra Richter is a theologian, and I am not. At least, I am not a theologian by trade, academic degree, or career.  I respect Richter, which is why I am reading her book, but I am not sure this view is exactly right.

At least, there is another view that I think has some merit. I have come to see some nuance in Genesis that I had not seen before, and it gives me pause when I hear the traditional line. I don’t think I have ever written on it, so here goes.

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