The Book of Genesis
Part 12
We have considered the consequences of sin in its ruinous results; it would not be proper to leave our subject without examining the consequences through grace of sin in the remedial plan of God.
The affirmed guilt of man: (Genesis 3:16-17): There are three facts, the explanation of which we find only in the Bible.
Sin: The man may blame the woman, and through her God; the woman may blame the serpent, but they both had sinned. In sin they became conscious of instant spiritual death and were filled with the dread of future physical death (19).
Sorrow: Sin penetrates with grief every pleasure man seeks, and sin makes even natural love the origin of travail. The pair must still replenish the earth, but in suffering; the earth must still furnish for them its edible produce, but by sweat and labour (17-18).
Shame: Sin not only resulted in the feeling of suffering, but also in the sense of shame. The moral shame of a corrupt mind and an alienated heart was greater than the shame of a naked body (7-10).
The annulled power of Satan: (14-15): In the final triumph of the Messiah with His restored people, “The nations shall see and be confounded at all their might: they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick dust like a serpent” (Mic. 7:16-17). Licking dust is the token of abject humiliation and complete subjugation. The fact that the snake eats dust is an indication of the complete and final overthrow of Satan; for, while he may bruise the heel of the Seed of the Woman, even Christ (Gal. 3:16), the Seed of the Woman will bruise his head, a fatal wound.
The prophetic vision of Adam: “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living” (20). Was this an act of faith? Is this statement anticipative of the promised Seed Who was to bruise the serpent’s head? Is Eve not the mother of all mortals rather than of all living? Adam in the circumstance of death declares Eve the mother of all living. Is it to this that Paul makes reference? “Adam was first formed, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor, yet woman will be saved by the birth of the child, if they continue in faith, and love and holiness, with modesty” (1 Tim. 2:13-15, R.S.V. margin).”
The gracious provision of the Lord: “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.” One thing is certain, the animals which provided by their skins the covering for Adam and Eve, were not slain for food; meat was not given for human consumption until after the Deluge (Gen. 9:3-4); they could, therefore, have been slain in sacrifice. The clothing provided might well be understood as a figure of that imputed righteousness which must clothe guilty man to give him, on the basis of sacrifice, an acceptance before God (Rom. 3:21-22).
The cautious expulsion from Eden (22-24): To save man from even the greater tragedy of eating of the tree of life and remaining in the hopeless existence of perpetual death, God expelled him from the garden, and placed a guarding sword there.
God placed within Eden the cherubim. These strange creatures were an indication that man eventually would be brought back out of death into life, from distance to nearness, through expulsion to communion with God again. Ezekiel, who describes the cherubim, calls them living creatures (Ezek. 1:25), and we are told that the name, cherub, means a multitude of living creatures. Within the empty garden from which man had been driven in death stood these symbols of a multitude of living creatures, fit proofs of the return of man redeemed, regenerated, and glorified. Compare Rev. 22:1-6.