Original Sin

The Temptation

And how does her language (v. 3) deflect from the truth? Does she also make God a harder master than He is, and thus has sin already entered her soul? Notice that "gods" (v. 5) is translated "God" in the Revised Version. It was in seeking to be as God that Satan fell (1 Tim. 3:6), and he tries to drag man down by the same means. Compare the history of the Anti-Christ, Thess. 2:4.

The Fall

What was the first of these efforts they made (v. 7, last clause)? And (to quote the same author again) "is not this act the germ of all subsequent human activities? Conscious of self and feeling the pressure of need, and no longer having a God to supply that need, man begins to invent and contrive" (Eccl. 7:29). Nor are these inventions of a material kind merely, but chiefly a spiritual kind, since their effort to cover themselves illustrates the futile attempts of the race to save itself from the eternal effects of sin by works of morality, penance and the like. What is the only covering that avails for the sinner (Ro. 3:22; 2 Cor. 5:21)?

The Trial

The Sentence on the Serpent

See by the marginal references that the seed of the serpent is placed by metonomy for that of Satan, and is identified as the wicked and unbelieving people of all the ages (Matt. 3:7; 13:38; 23:33; John 8:44; Acts 13:10; 1 John 3:8). In the same way the seed of the woman might be supposed to stand for the righteous and believing people in all the ages, and so it does in a certain sense, but very especially it stands for our Lord Jesus Christ, the Head and Representative of that people, the One through whom they believe and by whom they become righteous. He Himself is the seed of the woman, and they in Him (Is. 7:14; Matt. 1:18-25; Luke 1:31-35; Gal. 4:4, 5). Observe how much this means to us. It is really a promise of a Redeemer and redemption, and being the first promise, it is that out of which all subsequent promises flow.

The Bible refers to it again and again in one way and another, and we need to become well acquainted with it. Indeed the rest of the Bible is just a history of the fulfilment of this promise. The Bible is not a history of the world or even of man, but a history of the redemption of man from the sin into which he fell in the garden of Eden. This explains why the whole story of creation is summed up in one chapter of the Bible, and why so little is said about the history of the nations of the earth except Israel. But in what sense is this a promise of redemption? On the supposition that Christ is the Seed of the woman, what will He do to Satan (v. 15)? When the serpent's head is bruised is not its power destroyed? (For the parallel see Heb. 2:14, 15; Rev. 20:1-3, 7-10.) But what will Satan do to Christ? How may Satan be said to have bruised Christ's heel? (For answer see Isaiah 50 and 53, Psalms 22 and 69, and the chapters of the Gospels which speak of Christ's sufferings and crucifixion.)

The Sentence on Adam and Eve

Naturalists corroborate the Bible testimony to the curse by explaining that thorns and thistles are an abortion in the vegetable world, the result of arrested development and imperfect growth. They disappear by cultivation and are transformed into branches, thus showing what their character may have been before the curse, and what it may be when through Christ the curse will have been removed (Rev. 22:1-5). How deeply significant the crown of thorns, the sign of the curse which Jesus bore for us!

The Penalty

What is the name of the mysterious beings placed on guard at the east of the garden? (v. 24) They seem to be the special guardians of God's majesty, the vindicators of God's broken law, a thought emphasized by their symbolical position over the mercy-seat in the tabernacle at a later period. "The flaming sword" has been translated by "shekinah," the name of the visible glory of God which rested on the mercy seat. May it be that we have here a representation of the mode of worship now established at Eden to show God's anger at sin, and to teach the mediation of a promised Saviour as the way of access to God? As later, so now God seems to say: "I will commune with thee from between the cherubim" (Ex. 25:10-22).

Questions 1. How would you prove that Satan and not the serpent was the real tempter in Eden? 2. In what way does the temptation of the second Adam (Christ) harmonize with this of the first Adam? 3. What does the making of the aprons of fig leaves illustrate? 4. How does natural history throw light on the curse pronounced on the serpent? 5. Who especially is meant by "the Seed of the woman"? 6. What is the Bible? 7. What do naturalists say as to the nature of thorns and thistles? 8. With what two or three suggestions of the Trinity have we met thus far in our lessons? 9. Of what do the cherubim seem to be the vindicators, and what suggestions does this fact bring to mind? 10. How many questions in the text of our lesson have you been able satisfactorily to answer?

Genesis Chapter 2