Welcome to the MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 219th episode. In this episode I’m bringing you another edition of Bible study content I’m creating for my church. This content is every bit as professionally produced as my normal episodes on MHB — and my intent is to continue cross-publishing them for your benefit. So without further delay I bring you: Summit Bible Study.
Hello friends and thank you for listening to another Bible Study. Today we are continuing our study in the book of Genesis. This is the third installment of our work in chapter three. Chapter three reports the story of paradise lost — of Adam and Eve defying God and consuming the forbidden fruit, causing all of creation to fall from grace. As we’ve discussed across the previous two studies, the story of paradise lost marks the first major inflection point in all of scripture. This story is unbearably tragic when taken out of its gospel context, and so we emphasized the importance of reading it in light of the New Testament.
This story is so famous that I actually think more people may know of its details than know of the gospel. Its ubiquity is dangerous in this respect because everyone also knows the world we live in is not what it ought to be. Life is hard. Life is not fair. Everyone experiences pain and you don’t have to scratch very deep beneath the surface to see the markings of grief and tragedy on any person’s life. If we believe creation is broken because of the sins of our first parents, yet we don’t believe or don’t realize Jesus Christ has the mighty power to redeem all of this, then our worldview is primed for cynicism against humanity and cynicism against God. So anyone who seeks to understand the fall of humanity must do so through the prism of the entirety of God’s word. That’s why we do these Bible studies. Careful exegesis is not optional if you wish to have a truthful perspective of who you are and who God is.
In the previous study we analyzed the progression of Eve’s sin by watching her be drawn to the forbidden fruit through the temptation of her eyes, reach out and take the fruit with her hand, and then consume the fruit thus certifying hers and Adam’s rebellion against God. Immediately their eyes were open to their own nakedness, shame, and vulnerability — so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. They fled from God as He walked through the garden, hiding from the judgment of His holy presence. We looked at various ways sin overturns your relationships and destroys trust so that it’s very difficult to restore. In this study we’re going to proceed with God’s discourse with Adam and Eve, and we’ll probably make it to the first part of His sentencing them to their new fallen reality. Let’s begin by reading verses 11-13:
Gen 3:11-13
11 And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
12 The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.”
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
We’ve spoken before about how an exposed sinner will often only confess to those things which cannot be denied. People who are badly corrupted will even deny that which is self-evident. Adam knew his fear and his shame was written all over his body language, so he didn’t pretend it wasn’t happening. He confessed to being ashamed and afraid, but he blamed these feelings on being naked. God knew he wasn’t being honest with himself, so He pressed the issue by asking follow-up questions, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” God knew Adam wouldn’t readily admit to everything he had done wrong, so He used questions to chase down the root of the matter.
When you’re working with people it’s important to keep in mind that the apparent issue is not always the actual issue. If what a person is telling you simply doesn’t add up, the next best thing you can do is ask questions designed to reveal what’s actually going on. Adam and Eve were naked before their eyes were opened and before they realized it. It made no sense that Adam would all of a sudden be ashamed of his own nakedness — unless he had sinned by consuming the forbidden fruit.
When God asked Adam whether he had eaten the forbidden fruit, Adam realized he could no longer justify his shame by blaming his nakedness. So he confessed to eating the fruit, but even here he refused to take full ownership. He deflected responsibility onto his wife, who then deflected responsibility onto the serpent. As Christians we sometimes talk about repentance and God’s grace as if they come cheap. If it’s easy for you to repent of a sin, I think you might question whether you’ve truly repented. True repentance requires that you face the reality of what you’ve done and you take responsibility for your part in it. This is difficult to do especially when it comes to heinous or embarrassing sins. Adam couldn’t bear the weight of knowing he surrendered paradise and condemned the future of humanity, so he blamed his wife for his own actions.
You might wonder why God asked Adam these questions if God already knew the answer. It’s true God knows about your sins. He knows about all of them. He knows about them in the highest degree of detail possible. So what’s the point of confession? God doesn’t gain any information by it. I think the purpose of confession is to humble us. It humbled Adam to admit he had sinned against God. Remember this always: God is primarily concerned about your spiritual well-being, sometimes even at the expense of your other forms of well-being. Your sins do not take anything away from God or cause corruption to God in any way. He doesn’t need your confession as a form of restitution unto Himself. Your confession promotes your own spiritual well-being by putting you in contact with the reality of your own transgression and then showing you God’s grace is sufficient to redeem you from it. This progression, when followed properly, ends with you glorifying God and deepening your trust in Him. That’s why God wants you to confess your sins to Him.
If your spiritual well-being depends on your confessing sins to God, then how do you get a clear picture of your sin so that you might know what to say? The answer is the law of God. The law of God reveals sin. This is why packaged in God’s follow-up questions for Adam was a reminder of His commandment that the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden. Presenting the commandment revealed Adam’s sin. The law of God reveals our sins. Paul speaks at length about this in his letter to the Romans. Remember at the beginning of Genesis 3 we also read the entirety of Romans 5 so that we could establish proper context for the story of paradise lost. We return to Romans 5 for explication of this idea that God’s commandments reveal our sins — listen to Romans 5:17-21:
[Rom 5:17-21 NASB95] 17 For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. 18 So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. 19 For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. 20 The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This is why we say confession of sin leads to a deepened faith in God through Jesus Christ. Many people read this passage and stumble on the idea that increased sins means increased grace — and Paul addresses their confusion in the very next chapter of Romans when he says, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” The point of all of this is simple to understand but difficult to maintain because none of us are perfectly holy. Our sinful flesh urges us to turn this doctrine into cheap grace so that we may have carte blanche to continue in our sins.
The simple point is this: God’s grace is so unimpeachable that He can use something like your own transgressions — which are meant to destroy trust — in order to actually deepen your trust in Him. He does this through your confession and His forgiveness. That’s what Paul was always saying about God’s grace. There was never any need for you to run and hide from God because of your sins. God uses your repentance from sin to improve the quality of your relationship with Him. If you hold that doctrine close to your heart then you’ll never feel driven to cover yourself in fig leaves as you attempt to conceal the truth from God.
It’s really no surprise we default to hiding and justifying our own sins. Satan is called the Accuser and he is quite skilled at his work. I think the most difficult part of repentance is facing the reality of what you’ve done. After Adam blamed Eve for his sin, God turned and asked Eve, “What is this you have done?” The question was designed to urge Eve to square up to the truth of her sin. It wasn’t merely that she ate some forbidden fruit. It’s that she defied a great and gracious God. She broke a righteous and just law. She violated a sacred and most solemn covenant. She sold all of humanity into brokenness by forfeiting God’s favor and exposing us to His wrath and curse. As if that wasn’t enough, she then enticed Adam to do it all a second time. By giving Adam the fruit she became an instrument of Satan. She became guilty of his sin and an accessory to his ruin — just like both of them are an inter-generational accessory to our own ruin. Why would anyone want to admit to that?
And so they didn’t. Both of them attenuated their own culpability in how they framed their confessions to God. Obviously they couldn’t plead not guilty to the charges, the fact that they ate the fruit was beyond debate at this point. So they opted for the next best thing which was to blame everyone but themselves. An unrepentant sinner will always do one of two things: he will first try to deny the sin entirely. If that’s not possible then he will try to excuse the sin itself.
Adam, in a dazzling masterstroke of stupidity, somehow managed to blame both God and his own wife in a single sentence. It would have been more honorable for Adam to accept responsibility for his own sin. By blaming Eve he functionally admitted that he failed to teach Eve and instead was taught by her. He also admitted to his own lack of leadership and that he was governed by his wife. Perhaps worst of all, he admitted subservience to his wife was more important to him than subservience to God. Obviously these pleas accomplished nothing other than to make Adam look emasculated and pathetic.
There’s an important lesson to be learned here. Once in a while you’ll encounter circumstances which justify the breaking of God’s law. Jesus healing people on the Sabbath is a good example of this. Jesus choosing to heal people at the expense of obeying the Sabbath was an example of Him breaking the letter of the law in order to uphold the spirit of the law. Sometimes you’ll have to do or not do certain things in order to uphold the spirit of God’s laws and these things may violate the letter of His law. You should not allow yourself to be permitted to break God’s law by anything which wouldn’t also be exculpatory when facing God’s judgment. Never allow yourself to act in such a way that would displease God. Letting a child die instead of deploying life-saving measures because you want to “honor” the Sabbath points to your own arrogance in keeping the letter of the law — and it reveals that you care more about your image than you do about pleasing God.
Adam was not justified even when he used the excuse of pleasing his wife. There would be no other human being on the planet more worthy of Adam’s sacrificial love than Eve — but even this sacrificial love cannot come at the expense of pleasing God. Blaming Eve wasn’t the worst of Adam’s mistakes. Underneath this abdication of responsibility was Adam’s tacit indictment of God Himself. “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” Adam insinuated God Himself was an accessory to his sin. If God hadn’t given him Eve, then surely Adam would not have eaten the fruit. That was his logic.
Sinners still make these kinds of accusations against God today. They say things like, “If God didn’t want me to do this, then why would He make me this way?” They fail to see how the gifts of providence are meant to supply them with what they need to serve God cheerfully in enjoyment. Eve was given to Adam so that Adam could worship God from a more complete contentedness. If you’re wealthy, God has given you wealth so that you may leverage it to honor His name. If God has given you special relationships, these are meant to bolster your worship of God. If God has given you honor or authority, you should use this office to glorify Him. The gifts of God are not designed to be temptations to sin. If we are tempted to sin in connection with God’s gifts, it’s simply because we are abusing His gifts and searching for a way to justify our evil.
Eve answered better than Adam but not much better. She herself blamed the serpent, and this claim carried with it an underhanded accusation against God as well. Who created the serpent but God? Who but God allowed the serpent into paradise to deceive our first parents? In the secular world we talk about sin as if it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but I think in all walks of life most people remain hesitant to claim ownership of a sin. If no one wants to take responsibility for a sin, perhaps we should ask ourselves if the Spirit of God is trying to convict us of our guilt concerning it. If a sin is truly normalized, why do we still need excuses for its commission? Perhaps because no matter how thoroughly humanity inculcates a sin, the sin itself remains offensive to God. We might think it’s nothing serious, but our seared consciences mean nothing to how God views a sin.
Scripture says the deceitfulness of sin hardens our hearts. So the more we sin the more insensitive we become to it. This insensitivity scales to our awareness of God’s presence. If I sin in word, thought, and deed everyday, I shouldn’t expect to have a life-giving relationship with God. Satan is a deceiver. All of his arguments end in fallacy and all of his temptations result in you being cheated of what’s real. As Adam and Eve discovered, being deceived by Satan doesn’t absolve you of responsibility for your own sins. Even though Satan is the tempter, we are still the sinners. Scripture says our own lusts carry us away and entice us to sin.
It shouldn’t make us feel any better about our sin to know we were deceived into its commission. In fact it should make us feel worse. We should feel convicted for falling into the subtle traps of a known liar and a sworn enemy of God. Adam and Eve provide us an example that explaining away our guilt or attempting to justify our sins never ends well in the sight of God. The best option is always to square with the reality of what you’ve done and confess all of it to God Most High. Let’s continue with verses 14 and 15:
Gen 3:14-15
14 The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life;
15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
Adam and Eve were found guilty by their own admission. It’s not that their confession was necessary for the infallible Judge to convict them, but their confession was supposed to help encourage a posture of humility. Since no exculpatory evidence was offered, God immediately moved into the sentencing phase concerning all three parties involved. He began where the sin itself began — by addressing the serpent directly. Notice how God doesn’t ask the serpent any kind of clarifying questions. He skips straight to the sentencing. This is because Satan’s wickedness was already openly declared against God. The serpent’s rebellion was already decided and his evil was notorious.
God made no effort to humble Satan or convince him to repent. Satan’s condemnation was already sealed and he had been excluded from all hope of pardon. There was no need for God to bind up a wound that would never be cured. Scholars debate whether Satan and the fallen angels had space for repentance prior to the Fall, and whether seducing humanity into rebellion was the last straw with God. I tend to think Satan was already condemned when he deceived our first parents into rebellion. I think his misery was already complete and his desire to pull us into it was motivated by unrestrained evil.
God sentenced the serpent to a position lower than all cattle, lower than every beast of the field, for his role in the Fall of Man. His curse on the serpent testifies of God’s displeasure of sin and His vengeance for the injury done to Adam and Eve. To be an instrument of evil condemns you to share in the punishment of the agent of evil himself. This is why the condemned suffer bodily in Hell. Even though the spirit animates and controls the body, the body remains culpable as an accessory to sin. This same principle extends further into the Old Testament in God’s law to stone an ox who kills a man. The ox can’t sin, but the killing of a man brings evil into the land and so the ox must be put down in consequence. God hates sin and He is displeased with those who entice others to sin. Jeroboam, who was the first king of the northern kingdom of Israel, was guilty of making Israel sin — and so this reputation would stick to his name forever. Tempting others to sin is perfectly characteristic of Satan himself as this is one of his key attributes.
When God created the universe He blessed even the creeping things of the ground. So these would be creatures we find undesirable today like snakes and spiders. Before the curse, the serpent was said to be more subtle than any beast of the field. Notice how the serpent’s curse is proportional to its blessing. First it was blessed to be more crafty than any beast of the field, then it was sentenced to be more cursed than every beast of the field. This proportionality speaks to the danger of abusing God’s gifts. If God has gifted you with unusual intelligence, and then you use this resource to invent new ways to sin, your punishment will be in keeping with this abuse. Unsanctified gifts which are abused become great curses in your life.
We see this same kind of principle surface in cognitive behavioral therapy. If a person doesn’t want to get better then no therapist will be able to help them. A person who doesn’t want to get better, who is also intelligent, is especially difficult because they have greater power to rationalize why therapy won’t help them. We spoke before about what’s known as the Luciferian Intellect, and one of the key indicators of a Luciferian Intellect is someone who entices others to sin. The smarter you are, the more creative you can be in tempting others to sin — and consequently the more accursed you are than all others under the sun.
Part of God’s curse on the serpent was to subjugate him to the enmity of man. Even today most people dislike snakes. There’s no reason to believe snakes didn’t slither across the ground before this curse, so the expression, “On your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life.” likely points to a condition of misery more than a mode of transport. The Psalmist recounts such a condition of misery, persecution, and oppression when he writes, “For our soul has sunk down into the dust; Our body cleaves to the earth.” The serpent is also cursed to eat dust all the days of his life, which I think is a direct indictment concerning his deceiving Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. He conned Eve into eating that which she should not eat, and so part of his punishment was to be condemned to eat that which he would not want to eat.
But this punishment is not simply literal. The expression, “They lick the dust like a serpent.” is used in scripture to denote a despicable lack of courage. It describes a demoralized and pitiful spirit. Those who defy God not only end up this way, but scripture says they seek after the dust of the ground with panting. To live in unrepentant sin is to actually be covetous of a spirit which lacks courage, is demoralized, and is the subject of others’ pity. It is to choose delusion and madness over wisdom and truth. And like Satan sealed his own fate by waging war against God, the unrepentant sinner signs the contract of his own doom.
The creatures of the world were made for man, and so to turn man against them and them against man represented a curse and a departure from the way things ought to be. The serpent had become an object of man’s hatred. Part of a snake’s nature has been to hurt man ever since the original hurt in the garden. Scripture says the snake bruises the man’s heel. This expression shows us the snake remains inferior to man despite its inter-generational hostility to us. Even if you like snakes you have to respect them and be careful how you handle them.
Just as it is the fate of the serpent to bruise the man’s heel, it is the fate of man to bruise the snake’s head. This means man is able to mortally wound the serpent, while the serpent is only able to injure the man. This distinction in injuries is one of the first Biblical foreshadows of Christ’s eternal victory. It’s God’s sovereign pronouncement that the serpent would not prove victorious over man. This pronouncement is echoed in the Psalms where we read, “You will tread upon the lion and cobra, The young lion and the serpent you will trample down.” And again when Christ encourages His disciples that they shall take up serpents without injury. This encouragement was proven by Paul when a poisonous viper fastened itself to his hand on the island of Malta. What should have been a death sentence became evidence of God’s favor on Paul as an Apostle of Jesus Christ.
What started as a friendly discourse between Eve and the serpent rapidly became irreconcilable enmity. A war between humanity and Satan which could never end in peace until one is destroyed. This is what happens to relationships which are conceived in sin. Unless there is true repentance, the sinful basis upon which the relationship formed becomes corrosive across time. It’s like building a house on shifting sands — eventually the house will fall and sometimes a strong relationship will become a mortal feud.
God’s sentence against the serpent may be considered as a sentence directed at Satan himself. The serpent was the entity whom Satan controlled to deliver these temptations, but God knew Satan was the principal agent behind all of it. As we unpack God’s curse on Satan, let’s observe how punishments against the evil one reveal God’s love for humanity and His compassion for our first parents. What we’re seeing in these rulings from God is His justice. He is a just God. Here’s something really important to remember about justice: undue compassion towards the guilty is the same thing as cruelty towards the victim.
In our own cultural context, left-wing DAs and judges continue to release violent criminals with 40 or more arrests and eventually these criminals murder someone who is innocent. Those are examples of inappropriate compassion supplanting justice and causing cruelty to future victims. In those instances the judges and DAs who release the criminals should be held responsible for the deaths of their victims. There is nothing noble or godly in neutering the rule of law under the pretense of Christian forgiveness. If there is no repentance, then mercy isn’t an act of love, it’s an act of cowardice. God curses Satan with realities which are undoubtedly bad. They are true punishments. But the darkness of these punishments brought with them light for the future of humanity. That’s why we need justice — we need justice for the victims and for what it does to promote goodness.
Satan is sentenced to be perpetually degraded and accursed of God. He is the enemy of God and man. Lucifer’s original sin of aspiring to ascend above God Most High was rooted in pride. It’s logical to assume pride carried the other angels who joined Satan in his rebellion and consequently his fall from grace. Satan’s pride resulted in the mortifications God built into His curse. The serpent crawling on his belly and licking the dust was a curse of humiliation on Satan. If you’re ever tempted to embrace pride, just understand that no one does pride better than Satan did it, and even Satan was humbled by God. There is no human who is skilled enough, proficient enough, or valuable enough to justify pride in the face of God. God will humble everyone, humans or angels, who exalt themselves in His presence.
Part of Satan’s doom is to be detested and abhorred by all mankind forever. This includes those who succumb to his temptations. I know many people who have allowed sin to destroy their lives, and these people very frequently hate their own sin. They’ve surrendered to it, yes, but they hate it for what it has done to them. They hate that it has cost them their families and their standing in the community. No one really loves Satan once they get to know him — and this is because of how Satan has postured himself against God who is Himself the embodiment of love. The best protection against being touched by Satan is to keep yourself close to God. Maintaining a humble, obedient faith in Jesus Christ protects you from even the strongest of spiritual evils.
Right there in the garden God condemns Satan to be embroiled in a futile spiritual war with heaven. God told him he would be crushed and defeated by the Great Redeemer. No matter how clever his politics of evil, all of Satan’s strategies would be baffled. Whatever power he called his own in rebellion against God would be made void. He would be forever marked as the one who sought to usurp divine sovereignty and failed — and being told of this future ahead of time was God’s curse and condemnation on him for his antics in the garden.
These verses mark the official commencement of the war between heaven and the devil. This is the war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. This is also the same war in heaven between the archangel Michael and his legions of angels against the dragon and his fallen angels. This is the same spiritual war whose influence runs right down the middle of your own heart. It’s why you have a love that loves to good and a love that loves to do evil. The internal tension between grace and corruption in the hearts of God’s people is the impact of this war. Many times you’ll face seasons in your life where trials, temptations, and suffering are exceptionally pronounced. These are seasons where you’re facing a salvo of attacks from the evil one. These are instances where you’re under attack in this age-old spiritual conflict. You resist these attacks by depending on God’s grace, remaining obedient to God’s word as it is written, and trusting in Jesus that He will see you through to the other side. That’s how to wrestle with the evil one and force him to flee from you — which he will do.
Satan’s rebellion put him in anti-position to God. There can never be reconciliation between Heaven and Hell anymore than there can be reconciliation between light and darkness. Satan is opposed to God the way he is opposed to a sanctified follower of God. The more you become like Jesus the more you become the opposite of Satan. Your very existence becomes contrary to him. I want to preface the next part of what I’m going to say by drawing a distinction between lost souls and enemies of God. It’s true that all enemies of God are lost souls, but it’s not true that all lost souls are enemies of God.
We are called by God in His Great Commission to reach the lost and make disciples. God has great compassion for the lost. But when a person becomes an enemy of God — they’ve invested their future with Satan and put themselves in the same anti-position he occupies against God. These people are possessed by evil and do the most wicked things. These people are the cause of great struggle in this world. These are the people who, according to scripture, you will come to hate the more you love God. King David expresses this kind of righteous hatred in Psalm 139:19-22 when he says, “O that You would slay the wicked, O God; Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed. For they speak against You wickedly, And Your enemies take Your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies.”
Although you may feel hatred in the presence of God’s enemies, you are not permitted to take vengeance into your own hands. You are not permitted to condemn them against the possibility of repentance. You are obliged to forgive them with godly compassion should they turn from their sins and seek after Jesus. But you will feel hatred, just as King David felt hatred, and this isn’t something which needs to be expunged from your heart. You should feel this kind of revulsion in the presence of unrepentant sin. Especially so the more heinous and offensive the sin is against God. A good example in scripture is the child-sacrifices God so fiercely condemns in Leviticus. If you watched sinners burn a child alive in sacrifice to their idols, you would be righteous to hate them for it and to hate the act of it. You would be deluded and corrupted if you sought compassion on such people while they continued in unrepentant sin.
Because of the spiritual war which commenced in these verses, the saints’ righteous hatred against the enemies of God is met with rage and persecution from them. The wicked pursue the people of God with malice and merciless oppression. Jesus said we should not be afraid if the world hates us because it hated Him first. So long as there is a follower of Christ on this side of heaven and a follower of Satan on this side of Hell — there will continue to be a spiritual war. It’s not going away. We shouldn’t be asking the question of how we can end it. Only Jesus can end it and He will end it. Instead we should be asking how we might navigate these battlefields in such a way that promotes spiritual well-being and brings glory to God.
Even while dealing out curses and sentences here in the garden, God is careful to extend an open door of hope to Adam and Eve. He makes a gracious promise concerning Christ as the deliverer of fallen man from the power of Satan. It’s true God was speaking to the serpent at this moment but He was also speaking in the hearing of Adam and Eve. This was the very first revelation of the gospel and without it the shame of our first parents’ punishment would have been too great for them to bear. No sooner had humanity fallen from grace, our loving God compassionately began to uncover His plan for redemption.
Many times people wonder about all those generations who lived and died before the gospel of Christ was formally preached. How could the atonement of Christ cover their sins if they are already dead? There are various answers to this — some including a kind of waiting period called Sheol or Abraham’s Bosom. This would be a place of comfort for their souls until the day of Christ’s Resurrection permitting them to enter heaven in righteousness. I actually think the true answer is more clever than that. I think the earliest presentation of the gospel happened right here the moment humanity fell. Adam and Eve heard it, and all those to succeeded them could have heard it as well. I also think the saving faith any of these Old Testament progenitors had in their hearing of the gospel is what empowered them to serve God despite a cursed creation.
How do we see the gospel in God’s words spoken to the serpent? First we see Christ’s incarnation as the seed of the woman. The genealogy of Christ is well-documented and traces back to Adam himself. So why doesn’t God refer to Him as the seed of the man? The seed of Adam? I think it’s to magnify the revelation of His grace in this moment. Eve is the one who was deceived by the serpent. Eve is the one who took the blame from Adam for the fall of man. God bestowing honor on her in this moment is a magnification of His grace for her. She was the first to sin, but she shall be saved by child-bearing because her Savior will come from her lineage. Emphasizing the seed of the woman also foreshadows how Christ would be born of a virgin. Christ being made of a woman means that our Savior is bone of our bones — just as Eve was made of a man and bone of his bone.
This is a theological point of great comfort once you understand it. We are created in the image of God so that we may be like Him, and Jesus Christ is God incarnate so that He may be like us. That’s why Jesus is the doorway to eternal life for humanity. He is incarnate to our nature without being corrupted by it. Thus He is the second Adam given to redeem all who trust in Him. Hebrews describes Christ’s human-nature in this way:
[Heb 2:11-18 NASB95] 11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, 12 saying, “I WILL PROCLAIM YOUR NAME TO MY BRETHREN, IN THE MIDST OF THE CONGREGATION I WILL SING YOUR PRAISE.” 13 And again, “I WILL PUT MY TRUST IN HIM.” And again, “BEHOLD, I AND THE CHILDREN WHOM GOD HAS GIVEN ME.” 14 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. 16 For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham. 17 Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.
Being born of a woman was how Christ humbled Himself and took the sins of humanity upon Himself. Scripture says man, who is born of a woman, is short-lived and full of turmoil. How then can a man be just with God? Or how can he be clean who is born of woman? This is why Christ’s incarnation is of a virgin woman, so that by His life we may make clean that which could not be made clean.
The sufferings of Christ is Satan bruising the heel of the seed of the woman. Satan tempted Christ in the wilderness, aiming to draw Him into sin. Some readers have surmised it was satanic oppression which drove Christ to sweat blood in the garden of Gethsemane. The text is clear it was Satan who put it into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus. He also likely influenced Peter to deny Christ three times. The chief priests who prosecuted Him, the false accusers who jeered at Him, and even Pilate who condemned Him — all of these may have been under the influence of the devil. Even the crucifixion itself can be understood as lobbied by Satan, even though we know the Father had a sovereign aim in all of it. Satan’s work in “bruising the heel of the seed of the woman” by causing Christ to suffer were his efforts to destroy the Savior and ruin the salvation. But as we just read in Hebrews 2, “through death Jesus might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.”
The fact that the suffering of Christ became integral to the salvation of man should give us hope for our own suffering today. Jesus is afflicted in our afflictions so that we are not alone in them. Today the saints are persecuted, imprisoned, tempted to sin, and even murdered. All of these actions are Satan bruising the heel of the seed of the woman. While our heels will be bruised by malevolence and sin in this life, our heads remain safe in heaven.
Eve was the first of all women and Satan trampled her by deceiving her to sin in the garden of Eden. It is godly vengeance that the seed of the woman should prove victorious to trample the seed of the serpent. The woman would be raised up in the fullness of time to triumph over Satan. When God declares the seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent He’s pointing to a dissolution of all Satan’s politics, powers, kingdom, and interests.
We saw a beginning to this when Christ baffled all of Satan’s temptations in the wilderness. We saw Jesus rescue souls from the grip of the devil. He cast out demons who are representative of the devil from the bodies of the people. And finally by His own death Jesus dealt the fatal blow to Satan’s kingdom. A strike to the head of the serpent which could never be healed. As the kingdom of God advances through the preaching of the gospel, Satan continues to fall into eternal damnation. We’re even given a picture of this in Revelation 20 where we see Satan bound and locked in the abyss. Revelation 20:1-3 reads through the eyes of John the revelator:
[Rev 20:1-3 NASB95] 1 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. 2 And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; 3 and he threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time.
Romans says the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. And finally we know that in the end God will cast Satan and the false prophet into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:10 reads, “And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” The result of all his efforts to deceive humanity and supplant God will be damnation for him and glory for those who are elected saints of Jesus Christ. Let’s finish this study by reading Genesis 3:16:
Gen 3:16
16 To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.”
The sentence given to the woman is a reflection of the character of her sin. Her sin was to gratify her pleasure and her pride, so her punishment would be sorrow and subjection. The specific part of the pain mentioned in this passage involves childbirth. Anyone who has witnessed childbirth knows how painful it is even when circumstances are ideal. When things go sideways during childbirth, the complications are enough to kill the woman rapidly.
I saw this firsthand with my wife just weeks prior to recording this podcast. She gave birth to our second child, a baby girl, and just 20 minutes after delivery she developed a severe postpartum hemorrhage. She lost 20% of her blood in one hour. The hemorrhage was increasing at the moment her medical team implanted a device to save her life. If she was left unattended or in the hands of a less skillful team — she would have been dead in another 60 minutes. Suffice it to say the words of this curse reverberated in my mind most of the night, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children.”
But it’s not just childbirth which would be commenced in pain as a consequence of the Fall. There were now many doors open to threats which could devastate the weaker sex. Rape, assault, robbery, domestic violence, all of these evils are a result of our first parents defying God. Sin is what has made this world a vale of tears. Sin broke the dam and flooded the world with pain and grief. Sin twisted God’s creation and made it something it ought never to have been. I think a woman in the painful throes of labor is an apt analogy to describe the reality of this world without God. People go through so much physical and emotional devastation that all they can think to do is scream in agony. That’s real, and while there are many beautiful and joyful aspects to life we should never forget this reality of pain.
As a consequence of the Fall God said our pain would be multiplied. Even if you live a morally well-calibrated life, you’re still subject to the natural calamities of life in this world. You could do everything right and still get cancer. You could do everything right and your child gets cancer. There is simply an arbitrary element to tragedy within the limitations of human existence. But that’s not even the worst of it. Your own sins can yet multiply these arbitrary tragedies into little pits of Hell. It’s painful and devastating to lose a loved one, but it’s far worse to lose a loved one and then endlessly fight with your surviving loved ones. When grief is not received well it can cause all kinds of backbiting, betrayal, and saying things you don’t mean.
Sin can also trap you inside grief and prevent you from healing. Few things disrupt your ability to process grief quite like sin. Sin leads to blaming God for the tragedy. Sin leads to viewing yourself as an interminable victim with no ability to walk properly forward through the pain. Sin convinces you to form idols and develop substance addictions instead of leaning into Jesus or believing in the power of prayer. Sin can cause your grief to pass deeper into your soul and fester there until you use your own pain to justify multiplying your sins. A grieved person who falls into temptation becomes the kind of person who ends up hurting many other people around him. — thus multiplying the pain further into the lives of others.
The curse multiplying the woman’s pain in childbirth also points to the various issues which might come after delivery. Infant mortality was a significant risk until very recently on the historical timeline. Even if your child lives, he may grow up to become wicked and foolish, and his misbehavior will become an anchor of pain weighing down your life. I find one thing to be true of most people: you need only scratch beneath the surface and you’ll uncover some tragedy the person is grieving. This is just a truism of life and rather than avoid pain, we should endeavor to become equipped such that we can endure it in a way that honors God and benefits our community.
Also notice that God is the one who passes the sentence. It’s not as if the curse on creation is some cosmic mishap which goes beyond His direct control. He’s the one who issued it. And He did it because humbling us for our sins is more important than securing a paradisal existence. We ought to be silent with our complaints against God concerning the unfair nature of this world, because God is a righteous Judge and if He has issued this punishment then we deserve it. God is a loving Father, and His primary concern is the well-being of our spirits such that our hearts are humble and contrite enough to see Him.
Despite the bleak outlook I’ve just spent the last few minutes painting, we can rest assured that God will work all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose for them. Although God is the one who punished creation, God is also the One who comforts us in our sorrows and God is also the One who redeems us from them. Whatever good our pain brings us is brought to us by God. The gospel teaches us that God is so good, His goodness prevails against all the evils of this world even when we square up and face them with sober eyes.
Eve’s pride tempted her to subvert God’s authority over her, and so His punishment was to subject her to man’s authority. This subjection finds its expression in scripture a few different ways. It’s most famous expression is Paul’s instruction to Timothy which reads:
[1Ti 2:11-15 NASB95] 11 A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. 12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. 14 And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. 15 But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.
The Fall of humanity disrupted the perfect complementary relationship between man and woman. Adam and Eve lived in perfect complement of each other prior to the Fall. The curse caused Eve to come under the dominion of her husband in ways she found undesirable. And such has been the plight of men and women ever since. If we didn’t live under the corruption of global sin, a woman’s subjection to her husband would not be perceived as a punishment — rather it would be understood as the correct nature of things. If man had not sinned, he would always have ruled with wisdom and love. If woman had not sinned, she would always have obeyed with humility and meekness. Such divine dynamic is uncommon in marriages today, and those minority who have it must work hard to maintain it. A woman who lords over her husband must understand she’s doing so in direct defiance to God Himself.
Remember how we discussed God’s mercy being visible within the context of His punishments if we only have the faith to see it? Once again this is true of Eve’s punishment. Scripture observes the truth that a mother who gives birth to a child quickly forgets all the pain she endured to do so. Such is the joy she feels when she holds her new baby. God’s punishment requires her to live in subjection, but God’s grace subjects her to her husband who loves her — not just any man who may hurt her. This is why God never placed enmity between the man and the woman, while He did in fact ordain enmity between the woman and the serpent. Subjection to a loving husband is not meant to ruin a woman. It’s meant to bring her to repentance, just as God’s chastisement of the man is meant to bring Him to repentance.
And that’s really the core of what’s important to remember when it comes to all suffering and grief. God’s grace can always be found in the midst of it. God never leaves you alone in it. Sometimes the pain is arbitrary, like childhood cancer, and sometimes the pain is the direct consequence of your own sin — like ruining your life with adultery. But in both cases we should endeavor to search out the grace of God wherever we can find it. When He chastises us, we should remember He does this because He loves us and He’s extending an opportunity for repentance along with it. Jesus Himself acknowledges how painful life in this world can be when He shouts from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” It’s nothing to trivialize. But neither is the goodness and grace of God. He is bigger than your pain, not matter how big your pain feels.
And I think that’s the best place for us to close this study. As always I appreciate you for coming along and for listening. Let me know if you’re benefiting from these studies and be sure to share them with your friends. Until next time.
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