The Conflict Foretold: Genesis 3:15

In Genesis 3:15 remarkable words are spoken at the dawn of time. This is the first Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter text all rolled into one.

By all appearances in that moment Satan had won. The power of hell appeared to have mutinied successfully against heaven, while taking the human race with him. He'd seduced Adam and Eve, and effectively gotten them banished from Eden.

But in Genesis 3:15 God gives a promise spelling the Devil's demise, which simultaneously sustained believers' hopes for millennia--all the way through the moment when it was fulfilled in the birth, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. The promise is called in theology: "The Proto-Evangelium": the first gospel. It is the first heralding of a Saving Redeemer to come.

But this is also the first announcement that the Savior would suffer. Satan would attack the woman's offspring so fiercely that he would succeed in "bruising" or crushing His heel, speaking of a crippling, near mortal wound against Eve's seed. A child born to woman would experience a severe wound that would appear to spell ultimate defeat.

But in the end the Child would bruise or crush Satan's head! Here is a promise that a Child would be born that would experience apparent defeat only to turn around and gain ultimate triumph. That does sound familiar, now doesn't it?

Thousands of years later a Child was born to a woman; one who would redeem His people from Satan's grasp and hell's dominion. This Child would appear to be defeated on a cross, but then would triumph through the empty tomb. Satan would crush His heel; He would crush Satan's head. He came to destroy the devil and death, and that's exactly what He did (Hebrews 2:14, 15).

Friends, this text shows us that the sufferings of Christ came as no surprise to our Lord. Long before they happened He knew they would happen. He knew what would befall Him, and He didn't flinch.

History is not a story of a God surprised by human choices or sins. Jesus did not--as some have suggested--come to earth expecting a warm welcome only to be rejected. Rather, history is the unfolding of an eternal plan of God in which He Himself would come, knowing He would endure infinite unspeakable sorrow, that He might redeem us from eternal unspeakable sorrow. He knew His heel would be crushed, but He stepped into time and space to endure it all nonetheless.

Calvary was not an afterthought; it was the plan. It was not a mistake; it was exactly what God had in mind. And because it was, we have a Savior.