The perpetual reality of the God of creation being a gracious God who is kindly disposed to His creation is not only evident through human history, but it is found to surface as early as Genesis, chapter 3. And, why there? Because it was there, in Genesis 3, that the desperate need for the grace of God was first manifested. It came hard on the heels of our first parents’ moral failure and rejection of their Creator’s authority. Spiritual death in the form of separation from God occurred upon their disobeying God in the partaking of the forbidden tree. And, physical death was to come, even if many years later. But, come it would as it has to every succeeding generation. Now the need is obvious. Very obvious. No need for the dead and dying is greater than the need for life. Man’s sin was the “bringer” of death, but who could be the bringer of life?
Here is where that grace of God shows up in the immediate provision for Adam and Eve through the sacrifice of an innocent animal, and, then, later in the form of a promise. The promise involved the provision of a life-bringing agent who would actually succeed in reversing the curse of death. Ironically, the promised One who would bring life is from the very loins of the first Adam, whose disobedience took life, replacing it with death. The last Adam, who will turn out to be Jesus the Christ, will conquer death and replace it with life. God states in Genesis 3:15 what becomes the first expression of the Gospel, or the Good News, the “protevangeliom”, that the seed or offspring of the woman, Eve, will produce the One to accomplish that reversing of death with an all new resurrection life. He will be the One who, although injured by Satan, the adversary, will yet succeed in delivering a fatal blow to that adversary. He will be struck at the heel by Satan, but Christ will subsequently crush the head of Satan.
The permanence and fatality are unmistakable. This gracious God of creation opted to redeem humanity, to salvage it rather than discard it. His doing so reflects His grace towards those with no claim upon it. And even though God’s Redeemer, in the person of His own Son, would not arrive in Bethlehem for four thousand years after the promise, God would still be graciously dealing with man in the interim. The epitome of His grace would be toward those through whom the Messiah/Redeemer would come, namely Noah, his son Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and onward, two thousand years to David the King, and another thousand would see the arrival of Jesus the Messiah, Son of David, Son of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
John reminds us, in the first chapter of his gospel, that, while the Law came by Moses, grace and truth was to come through God’s promised Redeemer, His very own Son in the person of Jesus the Messiah.
CC 09-11
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