Dr. Meredith Kline, Prologue, Lecture 22
© 2012, Dr. Meredith Kline and Ted Hildebrandt
Genesis 3:15 the battle between the Messiah and Satan
There
was a perverted echo of Genesis 3:15. Genesis 3:15 is speaking about the
redemptive post-fall development. Methodism puts all of this back as part of
the original creation. They see evil as something eternal. But the idea of the
two outstanding representatives of the forces of good and evil is on target.
That’s what we have here. It’s a duel of champions, it’s the David/Goliath type
of thing; a trail by ordeal that will take place, where the fate of the armies
is settled by this individual combat where God will do the decisive thing to
vindicate his person over and against the enemy. When that climatic battle
takes place, that individual seed of the woman, will deliver the fatal blow to
you. Yes, you will deliver a blow to him, but it will be to the heel, his blow
to you will be to the head.
Since verse 15 is an exposition of verse 14, verse 14 stated
plainly that the ultimate complete subjugation, perpetual doom of the serpent.
Verse 15 in describing the details of the battle must end the same way with the
complete defeat of Satan. So what the church has normally recognized here is a
contrast between head and heel--heel a wound is not the ultimate, head a fatal
and ultimate wound. This is on the right track, and what it also does is to
bring out the two aspects of the messianic career. When the messianic seed of
the woman appears, it will be to suffer so that afterwards he might enter into
his glory. He must experience the bruising of the heel, that he might crush the
serpent’s head. The very image involves both things. If you just picture the
human person stamping with the heel upon the head of the serpent, it is in that
very process that he suffers the bruising of his heel and crushes the serpent.
So these two dimensions of Messiah’s ministry—the suffering and the
glory--are present right from the beginning. How it works out that the
suffering is consistent with the glory, we gradually discover. By the time we
come to Isaiah and the Suffering Servant of the Lord, it turns out that it is
by virtue of the very fact of his suffering that he wins the victory. Christ
wins the victory by his suffering on the cross. By his suffering on the cross
he defeats Satan as the accuser of the brethren. Satan can no longer accuse the
brethren because on the cross in the suffering, Christ has paid the atoning price
for them. So it is precisely through sufferings that he attains the victory. It
is because of his humbling himself onto death that God is highly exalted him (Philippians
2) and given him a name which is above every name. So all of that great mystery
of Christ’s humiliation and exile is briefly cryptically, but nevertheless it’s
there, is it not? Right from this mother promise, this proto-evangelium
as it’s called--Genesis 3:15.
So you get this image of the seed of the woman, and both corporate
and also individual. The individual who tramples Satan under foot, and that
figure that Satan- trampling idea is in Roman 6:20 applied to us. When Paul
promises the Christian church that God will soon be trampling Satan under our
feet and so somehow this is part of that what Christ does and we share in this
victory over Satan is thus attributed to the people whom Christ, as second Adam,
represents. But there is the basic picture of that history.
So it is primarily a word of curse against Satan that ultimately he
is going to be defeated. And of course, the victory of Christ takes place decisively
at his first coming but completely and finally at his second coming is where
the ultimate, final judgment of Satan takes place.
Now as I said, there are still people, even ones you expect to have
more common sense than this, and I forget but I have someone in mind, I won’t
mention names, don’t take this in the classic way. You hear lot of critical
scholarship saying this is just one of those stories about the origin of
things, one of the etiological accounts that tell you the beginnings of this
kind of custom or that. So people hate snakes and so here is a little story of
why people, or how it began that people hate snakes. That is a lot of nonsense.
This is not about how people came to hate snakes. This has to do with God and Satan
and ultimate things. That’s the way the Bible interprets Revelation 12.
Revelation 12 and Genesis 3: Satan, Woman and the seed of
the woman
Just quickly flip over to Revelation 12. The same three principles that
you had in Genesis 3: Satan, the woman, and the seed of the woman; appear here
in Revelation 12. In the case of the seed of the woman, you have both the
individual and corporate aspects of it as well. You are familiar with the
passage. Right from the outset there is the enmity going on, and there is the
woman, one of the three principles. She is pregnant and about to bring forth the
man-child. There is the second principle. Satan, the old dragon, is crouching
before her, ready to devour the man-child. There is enmity between the two
being expressed. Satan’s ready to devour the man-child when he is born. The
child is born, and of course, as the chapter goes on it is perfectly clear that
this is the messianic child because we have messianic prophecies from the
psalms, and so on, describing the actual conflict of the man-child, son of man,
the seed of the woman, all of those are appropriate titles for this man-child,
son born to the woman.
His conflict with Satan is not directly described, that there is hostility,
that there was going to be a conflict is clear enough. But the outcome is
described that the man-child is caught up to the heavenly throne. He is the one
who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter, that’s a messianic
prophecy. Her child was snatched up to God and to his throne and the woman and
the dragon. So the woman then fled into the desert, and so on.
So there, the story is told twice. The imagery of the man-child’s
victory over Satan is first told in terms of this imagery of the incarnation, the
son of man, man-child, the seed of woman. Then the story is told in terms of
upper registrar heavenly reality, where Satan exists with all of his angels, in
that realm beyond our observing up there. Christ is there, too. Especially then
in his ascended glory.
Now we get a picture of the battle of Christ against Satan—here is
a disputed point—in terms I would say, of Christ, not in his incarnational
manifestation, but in his capacity as the angel of the Lord. Now, all through
the Old Testament, before he was incarnated, he appears as the malak Yahweh,
the angel of the Lord. That is the messianic appearance of the Lord before his resurrection.
The book of Revelations includes all kinds of imagery, including Old Testament
images of things. So here it uses especially this Old Testament imagery of
Christ, as the angel of the Lord. The specific proper name of this angel
expressing his nature is: “who is like God?” This is a divine being, this one. Incidentally
the satanic beast, there is so much counterfeiting in the book of Revelation—the
things of God are counterfeited. So the beast has the counterfeit name of “who
is like the Beast?” But the Messiah’s name is “who is like God?”--Michael.
Michael is Messiah. When Jesus was on earth he said, “if I wanted I could call
upon 12 legions of angels and they would come and fight and deliver me from the
cross, but the scriptures must be fulfilled.” So he doesn’t call upon the 12
legions of angels to deliver him from his sufferings. But now that he has
suffered, and he is ascended into heaven, now we see Christ with his 12 legions
of angels fighting against Satan and his angels. Of course, he wins the
victory. So the story of victory is told twice. The result in both cases is
that Satan loses and he is cast out of heaven. The book of Revelation tells us
further he is bound for 1000 years on earth, until at last he is loosed for a
little season, and then he is destroyed forever. But it began with his disaster;
he is over thrown, and cast out of heaven as a result of Christ’s victory and
his exaltation. Satan is cast out of heaven.
So all the elements you see you Genesis 3:15 are there. The same
parties: the woman, Satan, and the seed of the woman. Then the twelfth chapter
concludes with Satan here on earth and he can’t get directly at that man-child,
that Christ placed at the right hand of the Father. But he can get at you and
me here on earth. He can get at the woman, and he can get at the church.
So the story goes on now at the end of that twelfth chapter, “and
then the dragon was enraged at the woman, and went off to make war against the rest
of her offspring.” Genesis 3 had the seed of the woman, the offspring of the
woman, both the individual one, the Messiah, and the corporate company like
Romans 16:20 where Paul applies it to all of us. Revelation 12 has the same
dual view of it. There was the individual man-child caught up to heaven, but now
down on earth is the rest: the woman, the seed, the church--the saints of God.
They are here sort of vulnerable. Satan can get at us, which he proceeds to do.
So the rest of the book of Revelation tells how he is getting at us through his
agents, the beast and the false prophet and so forth.
But there is an inspired interpretation, if you please, in
Revelation 12 of Genesis 3:15. As I say, you should have no hesitation in
accepting that classic ecclesiastical tradition as the proper exegesis. This is
a programmatic prophecy right at the beginning of redemptive history, giving in
broad outline the whole story of the rest of human history, of redemptive
history.
But at this point, its purpose was a word of judgment upon Satan. But
now Adam and Eve have sinned, mankind has sinned in them and even though
history is going to go on after the fall, it’s going to have a different
character, obviously. We already have learned that they have no longer a place
within the holy realm. They are thrown out of the holy. So now the whole world
is in the unholy realm. It is a complete context for human existence from this
point until the consummation. Things aren’t going to be all wonderful the way
they were back in the Garden of Eden where God gave his angel’s charge over
them so that they should not dash their foot against the stone. Now there’s
not only going to be stones out there in the world, but there’s not going to be
the providential care over the foot. Now they are going to be breaking their
toes on the stones, and all kinds of other things that would not have affected
them adversely will now victimize them throughout their history.
So there’s going to be a curse. The ultimate curse of final damnation
is pronounced on Satan. Now here there is a curse that is pronounced on mankind
and Adam and Eve. It does not yet take the form of hell, that will be the ultimate
curse on them. But meanwhile there is a common curse, a limited curse. It’s not
a blessing, it’s a curse, but it is not all out hell. It has all kinds of
adverse effects, but it is not the ultimate curse. It’s a common curse and it’s
correlative to the common blessing, or grace. It’s a common woe, common weal, these
opposites, whatever terminology you want to use, if you don’t like the idea of
common grace use some other term that is bringing out the fact that here is
something that is going to be the common experience of believers and all of the
seed of woman and all of the seed of the serpent coexisting in this world goes
through this common curse. The seed of the serpent will also experience the
ultimate curse along with the devil himself of hell. But even the seed of the
woman, within this history, is going to experience with non-believers the
common curse. Verses 16-19 proceed to spell out the general shape of human existence
in terms of this common curse.
Now we’ll look at it from that point of view first, and then come
back and look at it from the point of view of how at the same time what is implicit
here is the theme of common blessing. Not the blessings of heaven,
nevertheless the blessings in the sense that there is a limitation put on the
curse. That’s how these two things are correlative. The blessings of common grace
are putting the reins on the curse so it doesn’t run away wild. It’s a
limitation on them. So these two ideas balance each other out.
Features of the common curse: Gen. 3:16-19
Well,
what are the features of the common curse in verses 16 through 19 in Genesis 3.
There is the general thought that death, physical death. Now we were talking before
that the death they were threatened with at the beginning was hell itself. Now
there is a place for physical death and that is going to be the ultimate form
of the common curse. That is the final shape that the common curse takes in
human experience, it is this thought of physical death.
It actually comes as the end of it but I might have begun it the
other way around. But I began with the ultimate expression of the common curse,
which is death whether for the man or the woman. In addition to this common
experience of death which both woman and men experience, the text brings out
the form that the common curse will take in the peculiar experience of the
woman and the peculiar experience of the man. But in the case of both of them
the ultimate outcome of this whole new process is going to be “by the sweat of
your brow you will eat food until you return to the ground. Since from it you
were taken, for dust you are and to dust you will return.” So that’s the final
expression of the common curse.
Now it’s necessary to get straight what’s going on here. It says, “For
dust you are and to dust you will return.” Is it saying that it is inevitable
because you were made from the dust, because you have this physical component
in your constituency, is it inevitable that you had to die? You were made from
the dust so naturally you had to die. No, the wages of sin is death. It wasn’t
inevitable because in the way in which God made us we had to die. What it is
saying is that because of your sin you are now subject to God’s curse and
wrath. That curse and wrath of God can take the form or physical death, because
as a matter of fact you were made from dust. Therefore you can return to the
dust. So it is not only an explanation of why they must die, but it is an
explanation of how it is they can experience God’s judgment in the form of
physical death. Death itself is due to their sin. So that’s the ultimate form
of this.
This death, of course, casts its shadow over everything leading up
to it. So that as fallen mankind, individually, we live out our existence under
the shadow of the inevitably of death, which then you think about it and it seems
to make everything else meaningless. This is the kind of thought that might
emerge in Ecclesiastes apart from the redemptive eschatological hope that we
have, that otherwise everything would seem to be vanity of vanity because the
death makes the whole thing vanity. In vain you can’t take it with you so what’s
the use of bothering. Now of course, we don’t live apart from the redemptive. So
what Christ has done in hope of resurrection puts back meaning into our lives
even though we face the inevitability of death, unless the Lord Christ comes
first. But for now we are, in general, apart from death, that is the despair of
mankind.
Man and Woman individually: the curse
Then
looking at the woman and the man individually it describes how God’s
displeasure with them, how the curse will affect them. In terms of their
distinctive cultural societal functions, the woman with her childbearing, the
man with his labor in the field. The woman will be bearing children, that is
the common grace aspect of it. In spite of the fall, there will still be
children. But with miscarriage, with barrenness, with the labor of childbearing,
with abortions, with all of the unhappy miseries that can attend the process.
As for the man, in his distinctive role of exercising dominion over
the world and so on, his farming will bring forth fruit, and there will be
bread on the table, there will be wine to make glad the heart of man. There
will be achievements of various kinds, but along with the successful crops,
there will be a lot of thorns and thistles plaguing his efforts. There will be
drought and terrible famines and so on. That is the common curse.
But as I say, both things are there. The curse is balanced by the
blessing—other times there will be feasting and plenty according to God’s sovereign
pleasure. God’s grace is always sovereign. The measure in which he is going to
bestow that grace, which will offset the common curse is a matter of his sovereign
pleasure. As a matter of fact, the common blessings may be poured out less
abundantly on the seed of the serpent than they are on the seed of the woman.
It’s according to his sovereign pleasure. You can’t dispute it, we don’t
deserve, no one has a right in our fallenness, to any of the blessings, and
that is not something for us to dispute with God. But to here then, what we are
emphasizing is that things are going to be different. God’s smile is not there
as it was there in the Garden of Eden, in the beginning.
His hands are not just raised in benediction over his people. There
is wrath on God’s countenance now. There is a change in space and time between
God’s original attitude of favor and his attitude of displeasure, which he now
announces, in this word of common curse. Even now it is just intimated, Eve is
elect in Christ and Adam too. Nevertheless here, they are looked at, not as individuals
elect in Christ, but they are looked at here in terms of Adam’s having
represented all of mankind. And so, here is a word that God expresses to the
generality of mankind, without a distinction between election and reprobation. Here’s
what will be the experience of generality of mankind and God has to speak that
here.
Expulsion from the garden
Likewise
the next step in the process is the expulsion from the garden. They are elect
in Christ. As a matter of fact we will see them go out of the garden wearing of
robes, which are emblematic of the righteousness of Christ. But nevertheless
they have to leave the garden at this particular point. God has to register in
history at this point in space and time this discontinuity that has taken
place. There is a change from the original, the normal, to the abnormal. Things
are not normal now. There has been that change. It has taken place in this
particular point. The evil has not always been there. This curse has not always
been there. This is a result of man’s own culpability and responsibility for
his fallenness. So they have to be expelled from the garden. They have
forfeited their right of guarding the garden and the cherubim are now placed
there to take over that task in their place.
It’s like the Israelites who were supposed to go in and conquer the
land. They were afraid—didn’t want to do it. As soon as God tells them they
can’t do it anymore, now they want to rush back into the land, which they had
forfeited, and God won’t let them in. Now they want to rush back and, of course,
they are defeated. This is the propensity of mankind now that he’s forfeited
the garden of Eden it will be his desire to go rushing back in there and grab
the tree of life for himself, even though he doesn’t belong there now. God
knows that’s what’s in his heart. So God keeps him out and God sets it up the flaming
sword. The only way back to the tree of life is through the sword, through the
flaming sword.
That’s why Jesus as the representative of his people, has to undergo
the flaming sword. In order to come to the tree of life himself and to get the
fruit of the tree of life for us, he has to pass through the flaming sword. The
seed of the woman has to suffer the crushing of, bruising of his heel in order
that there might be salvation for his people. He has to experience the judgment
of God exercised through his agents the cherubim. Jesus has to experience that sort
of death in order to make his way back into the presence of God, the tree of
life, which he does for us.
The Covenant of Redemption
That
then brings us to the next section, which is the Covenant of Redemption. We
will be looking at some of these same passages just to quickly pick up on the
more positive sides of them. We have just looked at them from the point of view
of what they say as they end the history of the Covenant of Creation and bring
God’s judgment upon the fallenness. That is there.
But on page 86 and following, I have an introductory section, under
the heading “The Redemptive Covenant and the Old World.” I have a section
where I have the material that we have probably covered in our overview of the
covenant. So what I am trying to bring out here is how there was that distance of
the covenant in eternity between the Father and the Son, in the Covenant of Works
between the Father and the Son, as the second Adam. It’s in terms of that
eternal covenant then that Christ comes into the world in the incarnation and
fulfills the commitments he made up there and the basis of him having fulfilled
them, he is now authorized to administer the Covenant of Grace. So, we had that
discussion earlier on these pages, I just tried to give some of the biblical
evidence for construing the earthly mission of Christ in terms of fulfilling
that eternal pact with the Father. I think we need not go through that in
detail. Read it.
Inauguration of the Redemptive Covenant: 3 special
features
Then
on page 89 I have the heading “The Inauguration now of the Redemptive Covenant.”
I begin with three features of this new stage, which were not part of Covenant
of Creation. What I do here is make further use of Genesis 3:15 text to emphasis
the positive messianic aspects of it, rather than as the curse on Satan to bring
out the points of redemption and Messiah and so on. I specify then the three
features, features of: Messiah, grace, and election as being new features. They
are characteristics of the Covenant of Redemption.
In the covenant of Adam in the beginning there was no thought of Messiah
or Christ. If Adam had passed his probation there wouldn’t be a need for a
second Adam. So you wouldn’t have a messianic theme. In terms of the Covenant
of Creation in itself there was no provision for a Messiah. Yes, God, we know
had this in view and introduces it very quickly after the fall, but
nevertheless simply in terms of the provisions that he specifies right from the
beginning, the contents of the Covenant of Creation, there is no Messiah theme
there. There would be, as I say, no need for incarnation of Christ if the first
Adam had done what he was supposed to have done. So the Messiah theme is a new
one that got announced right away in Genesis 3:15. Now he is going to go on to
that heavenly goal, and a Messiah is very much needed. So that’s a new theme.
What’s also needed now is the feature of grace--so Christ, grace. Here’s
that old subject once again of works and grace, as we said. Apart from the fall
it would have been a simple matter of works. Not one gram of grace would have
been needed in order then had Adam passed his probation to be confirmed in
righteousness, to receive the word of approbation, and to move on ultimately to
glorification. The heavenly glory he would have earned it by works, “do this
and you will live.” That would have been the deal. No grace there. Grace is
the distinctive feature of redemption. Grace is where God is going to bestow
those blessings even though they have been demerited, even though they have
been forfeited—that’s what grace means. It is where God blesses you even though
you have forfeited those blessings. So that is a new feature, but that is the
glory of the gospel. That is a feature now. Christ comes as the one who has the
offer of grace. Yes, Christ is able to do that because he has fulfilled the
eternal covenant of works. It is not without the obedience of the one that the
many are made righteous; it is only in terms of that obedience, it is only as Christ
fulfills those works that there could be grace. But now there is indeed grace
for us.
Then, thirdly, this whole thing works itself out as the eternal
covenant had in view that Christ is the representative not of everybody. Adam
was representative of everybody whatever Adam did would be imputed to all. What
Christ does in terms of his passive and active obedience is imputed onto those who
are in view in a mutual commitment of the Father to the Son. The Son undertakes
to live and to die for the elect. The Father who commits himself to give to
elect to Christ. But now you do get that thought of the election in Genesis
3:15 that already had that “the seed of the woman,” and “the seed of the
serpent.” There is that division within the humankind between the people of God
and the others, between the Jacob’s and the Esau’s. So here are the three distinctive
features of this new redemptive order.
The inauguration of the covenant
“The
inauguration,” now that was the general heading here. The inauguration of this
covenant is announced in Genesis 3:15 as we have already seen. “Enmity I will
put between you and the woman.” That is the announcement of the new covenant of
grace. God is going to do a work of restoration, restoring Eve back to
fellowship with her in a covenant of peace and light, of course, through her
messianic seed. So the new covenant was inaugurated by way of declaration, if
you will, in Genesis 3:15. Then in Genesis 3:16-19, that was the word of this
common curse, which however applied the common grace of God, the common
blessing of God. Now doesn’t the fact that God introduces an order that
provides for history to go on, isn’t that already a big intimation that he has
a something in mind. If he didn’t have salvation in mind, then as soon as man
fell, the heavens would have passed away and man would have been cast into outer
darkness pronto. That would be the end of it all. But it isn’t. God doesn’t
deal with them in terms of the threat of that original covenant. He introduces
something whereby history is going to go on, not as happily in a way as it
would have been, but in some tolerable form of existence. In light of Genesis
3:15 with some great prospects of restoration in view. So the very fact then, that
he, the Lord, announces this common, not final curse, the very fact that he
provides for a historical development to move on is another indication then of
his purposes of grace.
The Seal--Eve
Finally,
we are going right through these verses Gen. 3:15, 16 through 19, then 20, 21 are
where we have a seal. Not just a declaration of God’s purposes, but a symbolic
transaction whereby God seals the promises, which he has just made. Here again,
I would refer you for the exegetical details to pages 93 to 95. But essentially
you remember what’s going on. Adam has heard the gospel in Genesis 3:15 and he
has heard that mother Eve is going to be standing there, the center of
development that is going to be the offspring of the woman who are likened to
her.
So he has heard a promise that relates her to the origins of this
redemptive history and he’s believed it. Adam has heard this word with faith,
and so he proceeds now in the light of what God has said, to name his wife. So
it says he named her “Life.” She is associated with this prophecy of restoration
of life and Adam says, “Amen, Lord, I believe it and in light of that I have
named this woman ‘Life,’ because she would become the mother of all the living.”
So Adam has given his expression of faith here and God therefore can move from
the words of the common curse to a symbolic expression of his special saving
grace.
It all takes the form then of this covering that God provides for
their nakedness. So there’s all the rich symbolism of nakedness that Adam had
pointed to the alleged excuse of his fleeing from the presence of God. God, of
course, pushes him to the wall and says, well the real reason, of course, was
because you disobeyed me. But nevertheless now since Adam has alleged to sense that
shameful nakedness was the cause of the problem, God will take it at that point
and now proceed to express his intention to correct things, by saying I’ll provide
a covering for that nakedness.
Double divorce: two covenants and covering garments
So
that whole episode can be seen in terms of a double divorce. Two covenants have
existed. There’s been the vertical covenant, between God and mankind, and that
marriage relationship has been broken. It has been a great divorce. Man and the
woman, mankind giving their marriage allegiance, they’re making their covenant
with Satan. So there’s been a divorce between man and God. Then at the
horizontal level, was the covenant of marriage between the man and the woman, they
have divorced one another in the whole process of the fall. They have refuted
marriage as an authority structure as we’ve seen. In the course of the interrogation
they had reputed one another… “That woman whom you gave me,” he refers to her,
not as my wife. There has been a divorce at that level. Now what the Lord
proceeds to do, insofar as nakedness is expressive of this, by the way, in
ancient legal practice where there was divorce the reprehensible guilty party
in the affair would be thrust forth naked as a symbolic legal sign of the
disruption of the marriage.
So providing a covering for nakedness fits in with the procedures with
the setting forth of the reality of divorce. So that’s one way then, in which
the covering that God provides can be understood--as a covering for nakedness.
Now quite apart from divorce taking place in nakedness entering
into the picture, covering with a garment is also then an ancient practice as
attested elsewhere in the Scripture. Think of Ruth and Boaz, for example. The
covering with the garment, or taking hold of the hem of garment, that kind of symbolism
is expressive of coming under the authority, of the martial authority of
someone. So God’s putting a covering over them would, in those terms, be
symbolic of, like Boaz and Ruth, the Lord’s covering them over with the garment
of his authority. He is once again husband and they are wife, as you might
represent the horizontal level. And incidentally, the skin that he takes for
this purpose is a singular. It is appropriate to express that unity. He makes
the separate garments out this one new skin; he covers the two of them. So I
think the symbolism is very rich here. This covering that God provides is
expressive of remarriage, re-covenanting, both vertically between himself and
man, and the man and the woman. See the man has assumed his proper responsibility
by naming the woman, which is an expression of his authority over her, which honors
God’s original authority structure. Man being ready to do things properly, now God
symbolizes the restoration of their marriage. But of course, most significantly
what he’s doing is prophesying how there is enmity of Satan, and there is
fellowship again with himself.
Now in the text we speak about the death of the animal to provide
this covering. It only speaks about the remedial results. God provides a
remedy. This isn’t the real atonement; it is only a symbolic expression that
God is going to provide a covering and atonement. Nevertheless, you and I, or
any other reader of the passage can’t read this passage without seeing that some
animal had to die to provide the skin. So our minds are directed to that right
away, and therefore certainly here is the beginning in Scripture of that theme
of the shedding of blood to make a covering atonement. Here is a further exposition
of the theme that the Messianic seed of the woman must suffer in order to win
the victory over Satan, to provide the garment of righteousness. Or if you
will, one of the important components of the image of God, see man must be
restored to the image God, the second component, the image of God is moral righteousness
and so on. So now that’s what’s going on in this wonderful symbolism in Genesis
3:21. So that’s the Covenant of Redemption inaugurated by declaration and by
the intimations up here and by God’s own symbolic ritual.
Summary of the Covenant of Redemption
It
would be useful right at this point, to give you a quick overview, another
chart, of the Covenant of Creation summing up everything we have done. Now
maybe we can have a chart of the Covenant of Redemption anticipating where it’s
going from this point on, then we can go back and work our way through it.
Find our little chart… We might have put something like this on
when we gave our overview—I have forgotten whether we have done it or not. Well,
let’s see. That eternal covenant is back of it all—the covenant of the Father
and Son in eternity. So back of it all we have that arrangement. In
fulfillment of it we have the incarnation where the Son fulfills his commitment
to take upon himself the form of man to experience the death of the cross and
so on. So Christ, as the second Adam, now has his Covenant of Works to fulfill
in obedience to it. He enters into the world. So we have the incarnation. Of
course, he comes as the second Adam, and so his task is to do what the first Adam
failed to do. He must undergo probation. A probation that will involve
suffering is going to come in the form of the covenant servant. The eternal son
now takes upon himself the form of the servant, the second Adam. He undergoes
that probation; he fights the battle of the Armageddon. Satan again approaches
where he doesn’t belong and so forth. The son wins the decisive victory repudiating
Satan and so on. As a result of, Revelation 12, Satan is cast out of heaven and
so on.
Transcribed by Alinne DeOliveira
Rough edited by Ted Hildebrandt