Chapter 3: Glory Forfeited and the First Promise of the Gospel

Scripture Passages

Genesis 3:1-15, 20-24

Adam as Covenant Head

The kingdom of God has come whenever God exercises his sovereign power to bestow his holy realm on his holy people through his obedient king. The covenant of works was made with Adam as God’s vassal-king, that is, as a vice-regent ruling under God the Great King. This is simply the biblical theological way of saying that Adam was a covenant head. God did not enter into this covenant with Adam as a private individual, but as a public person whose obedience or disobedience to the covenant have corporate effects on all Adam’s descendants. Therefore, when Adam violated the covenant of works, it wasn’t just his own personal sin. It was the transgression of the covenant by God’s vassal-king, and therefore all humanity represented by Adam falls under God’s just condemnation and must be expelled from the garden, from God’s holy realm.

The Temptation and Fall

Let’s look now at the temptation in Genesis 3:1-5. The very first thing that Satan does is to question the stipulations of the covenant of works. Right at the outset Satan challenges God’s authority as the Lord of the covenant. He challenges God’s absolute right to make such a seemingly arbitrary prohibition. The covenant was not a mutual agreement that God and Adam struck, as if both God and man were equals at the bargaining table. God is the Creator King. He is the absolute Lord or suzerain of the covenant. The vassal or servant has no choice but to submit to the suzerain’s authoritative decrees. The devil, however, has a very different understanding of the covenant. He wants Eve to start thinking for herself, to exercise her own autonomous judgment to evaluate the terms of the covenant. And so the devil raises doubts about God’s motives in prohibiting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God knows that in the day that they eat of the tree, they will become like him, knowing good and evil. Satan offers an alternative theory to explain the prohibition. He says, in effect, “God is petty and jealous and does not want you to share in this God-like knowledge. He’s trying to scare you from attaining to divine enlightenment by threatening you with death if you eat of the tree.” Notice how Satan casts doubt on God’s goodness. He does so in order to make himself appear to be the one who is more concerned about man’s best interests.

Kline points out that Adam failed before he actually ate of the tree. He failed to step forward and challenge Satan. Adam abdicated his God-given task of being the priestly guardian of God’s sanctuary (Gen 2:15). He should not have permitted his wife to engage in a theological debate with the serpent. He abdicated his headship over his wife. For when Eve tempted him to eat, he should have declared judgment upon her, for she was now apostate and in league with the devil. But instead he listened to the voice of his wife.

The result is that they felt for the very first time a sense of shame in regard to their naked condition. Their own consciences testified against them. Their physical nakedness, which before was perfectly innocent, now symbolized that they had lost the covering of righteousness in which they were created. They hid from God and tried to cover their shame with fig leaves. They desire to run away from the light and fellowship of God, thus showing that they have indeed broken the covenant.

The Wages of Sin is Death

God had threatened Adam with death if he disobeyed. This the negative sanction of the covenant. God solemnly warned Adam, “In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die” (Gen 2:17). This raises the obvious question: we know that Adam did eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and yet he did not literally die on that very day. Indeed, he lived to be 930 years old (Gen 5:5)! We can make sense of the language of the sanction if we recognize two things.

First, the phrase “you will surely die” is an infinitive construct in Hebrew that could be translated “dying you will die.” This construction emphasizes the certainty of the sanction. Perhaps it also suggests that the death process will certainly begin on that day but it may take some time before it leads to actual physical death. The point is that the ultimate outcome is certain. Adam became mortal and on the path to death the moment he sinned.

But second, and most important, the death that was threatened was more than physical or biological death. It was separation from God. Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, the holy sanctuary and presence of God. In the book of Leviticus whenever someone is unclean from touching a dead body or coming into contact with blood or anything that would defile, they must not come near the sanctuary and are in fact forced to stay outside the camp until evening. This is symbolic for separation from God and is part of this enlarged understanding of death. The fundamental meaning of life is living in union and communion with God in his holy presence. The fundamental meaning of death is separation and exclusion from God’s holy sanctuary.

God did not forget his threat of death, for when speaking the curse to Adam he says, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19). The process of death began the moment Adam sinned. He became mortal in the sense of being now destined to die. The beginnings of this death process were symbolized by his expulsion from the garden sanctuary. Thus God’s threat was in fact true, “When you eat of it, you will surely die.”

It is important to understand that death is the penal consequence of sin. Paul teaches this very clearly (Rom 5:12). “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). Death in its full meaning includes the penal sanction of death, the death process leading to physical death, and physical death itself. This is important because unless we understand death, we won’t understand the meaning of the eternal life that Christ secures for his people. Death is expulsion from the garden, from God’s presence and glory. Eternal life is restoration to the garden—and more, for we eat of the tree of life and live forever in God’s presence, in the renewed cosmos filled with the glory of God. We aren’t simply restored to the garden, on probation again with the possibility of another fall. We are transferred from the state of death into the state of glory, the eschatological state that was offered to Adam if he had passed the test.

The Seed Promise (Genesis 3:15)

In order to receive the kingdom after the Fall, we need a second Adam to keep the covenant and pass the test for us. If we are expelled by a disobedient vassal-king, we can only regain entrance by an obedient vassal-king. As Kline reads Genesis 3:15, he sees it as God’s promise to raise up a second Adam who will do what the first Adam failed to do, so that, through His obedience, the kingdom of God might be bestowed upon sinful men and women.

What is Satan trying to do when he comes to tempt Eve in the garden? What is the devil’s mission? It would appear that his attack is not directed at man alone. The devil is using man in an attempt to humiliate God. He sees that God has already established a glorious kingdom at creation, a cosmic temple for himself. He sees that God has made Adam to be the vassal-king of that kingdom. The devil is hoping to forestall the consummation of God’s kingdom in power and glory. If he can get the vassal-king to violate the covenant of works, the devil knows that God will then execute judgment upon Adam. He’s not only seeking to get God’s kingdom program prematurely terminated; he knows God himself, being a holy God, will be the one who terminates it. The objective was to activate the curse threatened in the covenant of works and thus to utilize the very power of God to accomplish Satan’s strategy. The cosmic temple would become desolate. God’s vassal-king would be expelled. God’s plan would be thwarted. God’s glory would be tarnished.

At least that was Satan’s intent. But what he did not know is that God had already conceived a plan of salvation in the intra-trinitarian counsels. At first we are not expecting any sign of mercy. For in vv 8-13 the Lord God comes in the Spirit of the day of the Lord. He comes in fearful majesty as the dread judge of all, whose eyes pierce through the fig leaves to expose their sinful hearts. He begins to interrogate Adam and Eve. But instead of immediately condemning Adam and Eve, God first pronounces a curse upon the serpent who instigated the rebellion. And the amazing part is that in the course of pronouncing a terrible curse of divine wrath upon the serpent, God unexpectedly reveals that a plan of salvation had been prepared, and that Satan’s attempt to thwart God’s purpose will fail. Listen to these amazing words of God spoken in judgment upon the serpent:

“Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 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” (Gen 3:14-15).

Words of judgment on the serpent. But words of grace for Adam and Eve. In the very moment of man’s failure and God’s judgment, God reveals the first promise of the gospel! God promises to initiate enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. At first the word “enmity” may not seem like a good thing, but on further reflection, being at enmity with the devil is a good thing. It is the prime effect of regeneration. When we were in our unregenerate state as fallen sinners in Adam, we loved our bondage to sin and Satan. We were enslaved to our sinful desires. But by God’s grace, our hearts have been changed and as a result there is now enmity between us and our former slave-master. Our covenant with death has been annulled, and we are now in a covenant of grace with God, in which we are given hearts of flesh in place of our hearts of stone. In this first aspect of the promise, the seed of the woman is a collective concept. It refers to the total number of God’s elect. The seed of the serpent, by contrast, denotes those whose names are not written in the book of life, those who are like their father the devil.

In the second half of verse 15 the seed concept gets narrowed down to a single individual who will crush the serpent’s head. This is clear in the Hebrew because the singular pronoun “he” is used. “He shall bruise you on the head.” In Galatians 3:16, Paul appeals to the singular form of the Hebrew word “seed.” “He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as referring to many, but rather to one, ‘And to your seed,’ that is Christ.” The Seed will be a champion whose victory over the enemy will count as the victory of those whom he represents.

Later in Scripture we read of an episode in the conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman that illustrates this concept. In 1 Samuel 17, Goliath stepped forward as the champion representing the Philistine army, and David as the champion for the men of Israel. Goliath’s challenge (1 Sam 17:8-9) was that victory in the war would hinge on the outcome of the duel between two champions. In the end, it was David who won the victory for all Israel, and he even cut off the giant’s head with his sword, echoing the Gen 3:15 promise that the coming Seed would crush the serpent’s head (see also Num 24:17 where it prophesied that the star of Jacob would crush the forehead of Moab).

In this way, Genesis 3:15 teaches that the Messiah will be a second Adam. This is implied by the narrative contrast between Adam and the Seed of the woman. Adam was ordained to be a vassal-king whose task was to guard the sanctuary. He was supposed to confront the serpent and execute God’s judgment upon him. But he abdicated his kingly office as a covenant head. As a result of his failure to defeat the serpent, Adam and Eve lost the right to partake of the tree of life and gain eternal life. By contrast, the Seed of the woman will confront the serpent head-on and deal him a mortal blow to his head. As a result, he will open up the way to the tree of life once again for his people. When we read Genesis 3:15 in light of the context of the whole Bible, it tells us that Jesus will be a second Adam who will obey God where the first Adam disobeyed. He will be God’s obedient vassal-king.

Judicial Confrontation

Genesis 3:15 also teaches that the obedience of the Seed of the woman will arise in the context of a judicial confrontation with Satan—in other words, in the context of holy war. Just as the first Adam’s obedience would not have been simply a sinless life but a judicial confrontation with Satan at the tree of testing, so the second Adam’s obedience will also have a very concrete and specific fulfillment.

In the gospel accounts, Jesus’ obedience is seen in his faithfulness to God in spite of Satan’s temptation after his baptism. Notice the contrast with Adam. Adam was declared to be God’s son by being made in God’s image. But when he was tempted by the devil he succumbed and failed. After his unsuccessful test in the garden, the Glory-Spirit appeared in the terrifying storm-theophany to pronounce condemnation.

By contrast, Jesus, the second Adam, was declared at his baptism to be the obedient Son, in whom God was well pleased. The Spirit then appeared in the form of a dove to pronounce God’s favor upon him. Thus sealed with the Spirit he went out to confront the devil in the wilderness, and he did so and won the battle. But this was only a foreshadow of the ultimate confrontation with Satan that would occur later in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus refused to take the easy way out, and he submitted to the shameful and cursed death of the cross. In this way he gained a decisive victory over Satan. He triumphed gloriously by means of his death. He actively obeyed by means of his passive obedience.

This is what Paul is referring to when he speaks of Christ’s “one act of righteousness” (Rom 5:18). Or that he “became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8). The Book of Revelation refers to this using the paradoxical theme of overcoming. Christ overcame the dragon by seemingly being defeated by him. And because he overcame, he is worthy to receive glory and honor as the Lamb exalted on the throne. The idea of overcoming is the idea of holy war. But the great glory and mystery of the gospel is that victory in this holy war is not achieved through power but through weakness. In this holy war, the Holy Warrior wins the victory only by suffering defeat at the hands of his enemies. It is only by refusing to take the easy way out that Jesus passes the probationary test.

Kline points out that as the second covenant head, Jesus underwent a test under another covenant of works, the covenant of works that was made between the Father and the Son before the foundation of the world. Covenantal commitments were made in eternity as the three persons of the Godhead took counsel together concerning the redemption of sinners. In time, these counsels were executed historically when the Son of God became man in order to earn the kingdom of glory that Adam had forfeited. And since he came and performed obedience under this eternal covenant of works in his capacity as a covenant head, he earned God’s kingdom for his people. He is God’s obedient vassal-king who bestows the kingdom of cosmic glory upon us by grace alone, apart from our own works. He is the champion of the woman’s seed who has opened the way back to the tree of life.

The Eschatology of the Seed Promise

The fact that the Seed to come will crush the serpent’s head means that the Seed to come will grant fallen mankind access once again to the tree of life in the midst of the garden. Although man has been driven out of the garden, the Seed will enable man to return to God’s holy realm.

The garden of Eden was a holy realm. This is evident by the fact that the cherubim were stationed to guard the entrance to the garden. Cherubim in the Bible are the guardians of God’s holy realm. Two cherubim protected the ark of the covenant, which was God’s throne. Later in Revelation, four cherubim are stationed around the throne of God and of the Lamb. Originally, Adam was the kingly guardian of the garden sanctuary. After the Fall of Adam, when the vassal-king was cast out of God’s holy sanctuary, the cherubim were assigned to take over that task. Man was driven out of the garden, and the way back to the tree of life was blocked by the cherubim and the flaming sword which turns in every direction (Gen 3:23-24). But the Seed will make a way of entrance back to the tree of life. God will bestow his holy realm upon his holy people.

However, it is important to emphasize that the Seed will not merely bring about a return to the garden, back to a position of probation from which we can fall again. He will in fact grant us that right to eat of the tree of life, and so attain to that eternal life which Adam would have attained if he had not sinned. What we gain in Christ is not limited to what we lost in Adam. What we gain in Christ is the very kingdom of God in its glory and fullness that was offered to Adam from the beginning.

The Serpent-Crusher’s Obedience

The bestowal of the holy realm upon the holy people cannot occur in any other way than through the obedience of God’s vassal-king. The kingdom of God is never bestowed by God directly. It is always bestowed through a covenant head whose obedience is the legal basis for the bestowal of the kingdom. God always deals with mankind through a covenant head whose obedience is not only for himself but is imputed to those whom he represents.

The Seed promise states that the particular focus of the second Adam’s obedience will be that he will crush the serpent’s head, the very one who had incited man to rebel against God. And the paradoxical means by which he will crush the serpent’s head is that he will obediently submit to being bruised on the heel by the serpent. Through his obedience unto death, the second vassal-king to come will completely overturn the disobedience of the first vassal-king.

In the Seed promise, the Seed’s sacrificial death is only hinted at. It is not clear exactly what the bruising of the heel means. But this veiled reference to Christ’s death is made concrete by God’s symbolic action: “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them” (Gen 3:21). Adam and Eve’s nakedness and the shame that they felt when they hid themselves from God was a sign that they had broken the covenant and were estranged from God. The fig leaves that Adam and Eve made were makeshift garments that did not really cover their nakedness. The very fact that they made fig leaves and hid from God unwittingly revealed their sense of guilt. The useless coverings that we sinners make for ourselves when we attempt to be justified by our own works, must be replaced by the glorious covering that God provides—even the righteousness of his own Son who was sacrificed in our place. You cannot hide the shame of your nakedness by your own futile efforts to be righteous. Only the divinely provided garment of the righteousness of Christ can avail before God. Since animal skins could only be provided by slaying animals, this highlights the need for a sacrifice to atone for sin. Furthermore, it points ahead to the glorious garments of Christ’s righteousness with which God clothes his people to cover our shame and sin.

Kline References

Kingdom Prologue, 118-137 (the temptation and fall; God’s judgment)

Kingdom Prologue, 143-153 (the first promise of the gospel, Gen 3:15, 21)

“Primal Parousia.” Westminster Theological Journal 40 (1977-78): 245-280; reprinted in Images of the Spirit, 97-131, and in The Essential Writings of Meredith G. Kline (on “the Spirit of the Day,” Gen 3:8).

Discussion Questions

What was the serpent hoping to accomplish?
What is involved in being a vassal-king under God? Explain how both Adam and Christ are vassal-kings.
Even though Adam and Eve did not die on the very same day they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, how was Gen 2:17 fulfilled? What does that tell us about the fundamental meaning of death?
What must Christ do to win eternal life as the Second Adam?
In salvation do we simply return to the garden, or is there something more?