I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel (Genesis 3:15).
Genesis 3:15 is a key verse of the whole Bible. The rest of the Bible is, in fact, an outworking of this one verse. The verse is set against the dark background of Satan, sin and the Fall. The verse has been well describes as the first gospel promise – the proto euangellion – for the verse is a promise of redemption. And this redemption would be wrought by a Redeemer. In due course a Redeemer – a descendant of Eve – would come, God promised. And this Redeemer would reverse the bad and sad consequences of the Fall. He would crush Satan’s head. He would redeem for the judgment which Satan brought upon the world by enticing our first ancestors to sin against God. He would bring redemption. Yet the redemption wrought would not be without a cost and great pain to Himself. ‘He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.’ Nevertheless, through the Redeemer’s pain, salvation would be procured. Satan’s work would be undone. The alienated sinner would be reconciled to God, and eventually all creation would be restored to its former glory. In a nutshell, Paradise Lost would be Paradise Regained.
With the benefit of our New Testament hindsight, we can see that this first gospel promise was wonderfully fulfilled – and will yet be fulfilled completely – in the Lord Jesus Christ. God keeps His promises. Little by little, in Old Testament times, He revealed more and more about the coming Redeemer. The promises were unfulfilled, and then! The Redeemer came. He was sent by God – sent to execute the plan of salvation that God had both foreordained and foretold. ‘But when the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons’ (Galatians 4:4,5). The Old and New Testaments therefore are two parts of a single story.
It is this thread of promise and fulfilment which ties together the Old and New Testaments – which ties together the whole Bible. And it is the Lord Jesus Christ who is the key to unlock the whole Bible. The Old Testament foretold and prophesied His coming. The New Testament tells how He came in fulfilment of God’s promises. And the New Testament unfolds the saving consequences of His coming for the believer. Genesis 3:15 then – the first gospel promises – is a key verse of the Bible. It finds its fulfilment in the Christ who come in the fullness of time. ‘For all the promises of God find their Yes in Him. That is why we utter the Amen through Him, to the glory of God’ (2 Corinthians 1:20).
So what was the purpose of Christ’s coming? He came as the great Serpent crusher. Or as 1 John 3:8 puts it: ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.’ Yet in the process of crushing the Serpent’s head, we note that the promised Redeemer Himself would not be unscathed. ‘He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel.’ This takes us to the cross of Calvary, where redemption was actually wrought through the Redeemer’s suffering – suffering in the place of the sinner; suffering in the place of those He came to redeem. ‘It was the will of the Lord to bruise Him, He has put Him to grief; when He makes Himself an offering for sin’ (Isaiah 53:10). ‘But He was wounded for our transgressions He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole and with His stripes we are healed’ (Isaiah 53:5).
The question is sometimes asked, ‘Were our first ancestors saved?’ The answer is: ‘Yes they were.’ How? By the Christ to come – just as we are saved by the Christ who has come. They were saved because they heard and believed the promise of God.
Although the work of redemption was not actually wrought by Christ till after His incarnation, yet the virtue, efficacy and benefits thereof were communicated unto the elect, in all ages successively from the beginning of the world, in and by those promises, types and sacrifices, wherever He was revealed, and signified to be the seed of the woman which should bruise the serpent’s head; and the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world; being yesterday and today the same, and for ever (Westminster Confession of Faith).
So the first gospel promise. It was made in Eden. It was fulfilled in Christ. Specifically, it was fulfilled in the cross of Christ, for it is by the cross of Christ that sinners are restored to fellowship with God. The promise though actually has a double fulfilment. Satan received a mortal blow at Calvary. And Satan will be fully, finally and forever crushed when Jesus comes again. At the end of the age, Revelation 20:10 foretells how ‘the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. The time is soon coming. The Bible tells us so. ‘The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you’ (Revelation 16:20).