“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15)
This first glimmering of the good news of God in Jesus Christ – following hard on the heels of the disastrous rebellion by the first humans – is like a tiny bubbling brook. Sure enough, this message from God takes the form of a pronounced curse, but the curse is directed at the serpent, not at Adam and Eve.
True, Adam and Eve were to be banished from the holy presence of God, but even in this hour of disaster for the human race, the Lord was not going to be thwarted. A way was to be found for our restoration! Even our Jewish friends who find it difficult to recognise Jesus as the Messiah see in these words a future victory over the serpent, in that the crushing of its head would take place in the days of the Messiah.
The victory begins with the ending of the alliance between the woman and the serpent – (“your offspring and hers”). And the woman’s descendants would ultimately be headed by a solitary Individual. It would be He who would inflict defeat upon the Devil: “HE will crush your head” (see Galatians 3:16). And even though the satanic powers were to strike (or ‘bruise’) the heel of the coming Deliverer, it would only be by divine permission through the event of the Cross (“For it was the Lord’s will to bruise him” – Isaiah 53:10).
It is the Cross that secures the defeat of the power of evil. Are you engaged in driving this defeat home? For Romans 16:20 assures us, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under YOUR feet”!
--ooOoo--
