Protoevangelium

This year I am reading through the Bible in chronological order. I have never done this before and had given up on the habit of reading through the entire scripture in a year a couple of years ago. I miss it and the discipline it helps provoke in my life so I am back at it and excited for the challenge.

The first reading of the year was Genesis 1-3, which covers the creation of the universe to the special endowment of the image of God onto man and woman and the fall of humanity and the expulsion from the garden. In other words, a pretty heady bit of reading for the first 15 minutes of scripture. There is so much beauty in these first few chapters: the image of the Spirit of God “hovering over the face of the waters” (1:2); the plenitude of physical creation; the forming of man from the dust of the ground and the breath of life breathed into his nostrils by the Lord (2:7); the splendor of the garden of Eden; Adam’s enamored response at his first beholding Eve (2:23); the haunting final statement of original purity and innocence, “And the man and his wife were naked and were not ashamed” (2:25). I cannot help but read these first two chapters with an incredible longing, a wistfulness, and yearning for the restoration of creation, the day when God finally makes all things new (Revelation 21:5).

But then we move on to chapter three. Eve is accosted by the serpent in the garden and eats of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam, being with her, likewise partakes. The order is corrupted, humanity falls. Eve chooses her desire for knowledge and will to power over her husband and God and Adam chooses his corrupted love for Eve rather than true love for her and fealty to God. It is all a product of Satanic logic. The Lord finds the shamed couple, their innocence in nakedness forever removed, hiding in the garden. They are confronted in the garden, then, and after the pathetic responses God issues curses on each of the three principal characters, the serpent, Eve, and then Adam. Adam’s curse is to till the ground and earn his keep from the sweat of his brow; Eve’s curse is to endure pains in childbirth and to be ruled over by her husband; the serpent’s curse, though, is something altogether different and it comes first: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel” (3:15).

Though the serpent’s curse certainly contains ambiguity, the text never explicitly claims that Satan is in serpent form though this is certainly implied through his ability to speak and the logic employed, there is a certainty to the curse as well. The serpent will be defeated by the offspring of a woman (notice that the offspring of a man is left out of the equation; the enmity is between the serpent and the woman directly). Scholars have called this verse the protoevangelium, or the first announcement of the gospel. In other words, in this verse is the first intimation, the first prophetic utterance, that the serpent and his ways will be overthrown by a son born unto a woman.

I love that we see God’s plan for the eventual redemption of man, the eventual crushing of Satan’s power, at this early juncture in scripture. Immediately after the fall, God has already ordained the restoration. God, then, is not surprised by the fall, and though man fell of his own free will, God the Father had ordained that through this event his Son, the first-begotten and creating member of the Godhead, would secure man’s salvation and be glorified in the manner worthy of his preeminence.

On a practical level, this encourages me because God is not surprised at my own shortcomings. I cannot hide from him in my shame, such an exercise is worthless. But I can come to him, and know that he has decreed grace to cover my sin. That, as the Christmas hymn tells us, “he comes to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found.”