The man is introduced to us as Adam and the woman as Eve. They are the crown of the eternal God’s glorious creation, the federal representatives of a race of beings created in the image and likeness, the beauty and magnificence of the infinitely glorious God, so that that they can come to know, love and be loved by God and one another (Psalm 8:3-9). They live with Him in a garden paradise, in His immediate presence, enjoying and being enjoyed by God and one another, wherein they, and all who would proceed from them would know only fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).
They are made the rulers of a vast universe and glorious world that God in His infinite wisdom and power spoke into existence for them to freely enjoy with all of its natural beauty, wonder and wealth as well as its fascinating, diverse creatures roaming freely throughout the land, all living in peace and harmony, fulfilling the purpose for which they and we were created, namely the glory of God (Genesis 1:1-27) (Isaiah 43:7) .
They were given the incredible privilege and responsibility of, through marriage, filling the earth with other image bearers of God, each uniquely displaying aspects of God’s glory with the same procreative abilities (Genesis 2:21-25) (Genesis 1:28).
God had given them one command to test their faith in His love and willing obedience to His rule over them as their good and wise creator, and they were warned of the consequences of disobedience, dying you will die, the forfeiture of the glorious life with God for which they were created (Genesis 2:15-17). However, the temptation presented to them to disobey, by one who had already done so, the serpent/devil, was too attractive to resist and they acted accordingly (Genesis 3:1-6).
Thus, in Genesis 3:9-24, we have them appearing together before God, naked and ashamed, fearful and guilty of “cosmic treason” having joined the devil in his rebellion against God’s purpose for and rule over their lives (Isaiah 14:12-15). As such, they justly deserve the same judgement the devil, whose word they believed over God’s, and the other angels who were part of that initial rebellion deserved, namely death, being cut off – permanently separated from the glorious life with God for which they were created, existing forever under the wrath of God (Matthew 25:41) (Jude 1:6) (Nahum 1:2).
However, God would graciously spare them from this death, at this time. This does not however mean that they would be spared from judgement totally. Their disobedience, their sin was highhanded. In its commission they blasphemed the holiness of God, denigrated the majesty of God, slandered the glory of God and denied the goodness of God (which is what we do every time we sin).
Although being temporarily spared from eternal judgement, they will experience what is referred to by theologians as spiritual death, being cut off from the glorious life with God for which they were created, exiled from the gracious and immediate presence of the LORD into a land – a world that would be cursed by God because of their sin, wherein all of nature will oppose them, and where they now would have to earn a living (Genesis 3:17-19). This curse would include their now mortal bodies being subject to weakness and fatigue, hunger and pain, illness and injury, and ultimately physical death.
Every aspect of the glorious image of God in which they were created became marred and corrupted, what is historically referred to as total depravity. That depravity would emanate from the very core of our being, what the Bible refers to as the heart, which is described in Jeremiah 17:9 as “deceitful and desperately wicked”, and wherein in Genesis 6:5 we are told that the thoughts and imaginations that proceed from men and women’s hearts are “only evil continually”. Jesus reveals to us in Luke 7:21-23, that it is our sin corrupted hearts that motivate all of our sinful deeds.
And thus, instead of filling the earth with offspring whose nature and character would image the righteous nature and character of God, they would now image the prideful, rebellious nature and character of the devil, whose word Adam believed over God’s (Ecclesiastes 7:29) (John 8:44). Our minds would be hostile to God, with depraved and disordered desires that would be displayed in our worship of the creation rather than the creator, sinfully lusting after things and relationships and positions of power outside of God’s order and design with everyone doing what was right in their own eyes (Romans 1:25) (Judges 21:25).
And the devil would continue his lying influence over our souls and over the nations, enslaving us in the deceitfulness of sin, keeping as under the fear of death and Hell as our ultimate destiny (Hebrews 3:12-13) (Hebrews 2:15) (Revelation 12:9).
The desperate, dire and helpless condition of the human race now existing under God’s temporal wrath is best summarized in Romans 3:9-18 and Ephesians 2:1-4 (Romans 1:18).
However, and thankfully, God planned from the beginning that sin, death and judgement would never to be the crowning and final expressions of His glory, only the backdrop to His ultimate revelation and expression of it in His eternal plan of redemption, which begins to be revealed here in Genesis 3.
The word redeem, in general, means to buy back or to restore something of value, usually something used as collateral, lost to taxes or to pay off another debt. In times past it was a term used to represent paying a ransom to purchase the freedom of a political prisoner, slave, prisoner of war, or indentured servant.
Redemption in the Bible thus refers to God’s eternal plan of graciously and mercifully ransoming men and women from our slavery to sin and from sin’s eternal consequences in Hell and restoring man and creation to the glory in which He intended in the beginning. And, like the plan of creation, the plan of redemption is motivated by love, and its benefits are all of grace.
In the Garden of Eden, God initiates this glorious plan in Genesis 3:20, by instead of killing Adam and Eve on the spot, He will slay an animal or animals in their place and use their skins to cloth them in their shame and nakedness. This begins a pattern of substitutionary atonement for sin that will be increasingly revealed throughout Old Testament redemptive history (Hebrews 9:22)
The plan will have its fulfillment in the seed of the woman promised in Genesis 3:15, who would be progressively revealed throughout the Old Testament, who would crush the devil’s head (destroy his works) and bruise His heal (suffer) in the process (1 John 3:8). This seed is fully revealed to us in the New testament as God the Son, Jesus Christ, whom God the Father, in the ultimate expression of His love, sends into this sin corrupted, sin condemned world as a man to give His life as a ransom for many ( John 3:16 ) (Mark 10:45) (Romans 5:8).
Jesus comes as a man, supernaturally conceived by the Holy Spirit that through His sinless life, substitutionary death on the cross where He bore the wrath of God we deserved (Isaiah 53:4-6) and His subsequent supernatural resurrection from the dead (Acts 4:33), He accomplishes everything necessary to rescue from the Hell we deserve, and qualify for the Heaven we could never deserve, a redeemed people, ransomed by His shed blood, who by faith in this ultimate expression of His love, come to trust Him as our all sufficient savior, and submit to Him as our sovereign LORD (Matthew 1:20-23) (1 Peter 1:18-20) (Romans 10:9-13) (Galatians 2:20).
This is what we celebrate at this time each year in Good Friday and Easter, as well as every Sunday when we participate in the “Lord’s Supper” (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). And it is what we will joyously celebrate throughout eternity when this plan of redemption is fully consummated in a “new heavens and new earth”, where we will know only fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore as the redeemed children of God (Revelation 21:1-5) (Ephesians 1:7) (1 John 3:1-3).
Grace and Peace ×