It is a human thing to feel the pain of sin as pain. It is a Christianly, and therefore fully, human thing to feel the pain of sin as sin. As a transgression against a holy God. As a grievous gallivant for our own glory. And as much as this quality of pain seems to singularly wrench tight the valves of grace, the inverse remains true. It is by the graceful direct ordinance of God himself that any man sees beyond momentary sensual consequences of his own sin into the canyon of the reality of depravity.
Genesis 3 is a hermeneutical playground for many a hermeneutist, historian, and theologian alike. Furthermore, even within Genesis 3, the curses distributed to the man and to the woman are often cited far more than the curse given to the serpent. Before the promissory element of the proto evangelium kicks in, Genesis 3:15a provides valuable theological insight into God’s initiative and responsibility for the wellbeing of his people. God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.” (3:15a)
The first observation Geerhardus Vos makes about this text is that “The divine initiative [is] in the work of deliverance. The emphasis rests on the pronoun: God says ‘I will put enmity’. Here is not primarily an appeal to man but a divine promise. Nor does God merely instigate or promote enmity. He sovereignly puts it.”[1] God inspires Moses to write very explicitly on this point, that in response to the soiling of the image of God by the serpent, his first act of business is not to promise the end of the serpent, but to begin his redemption of the woman. If it were not for the sovereignty of God over the will of the woman, the text of Genesis thus far implies that the woman would have been given over to sin and the serpent completely. This is the strength of the proto evangelium! It marks the first redemptive-historical work against sin out of which the rest of the Old Testament flows and flowers into a strong messianic expectation.
Jesus declares his own perfect fulfillment of this theme in John 8:34-59, where he subverts the Jews’ appeal to an Abrahamic genealogy by revealing a determinative preceding genealogy, namely, a Satanic one. Here again, in a distant epoch of redemptive-history, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent stand before one another. Jesus, as YHWH, recapitulates and affirms the climax and fulfillment of all that God had said in Genesis 1-3. He condemns the serpent and fulfills the enmity (Jn. 8:44; Gn. 3:15). He explicates the lying nature of Satan, and vindicates God’s words about the death of sin (Jn. 8:44; Gn. 2:17). And finally, he subverts the effects of sin by declaring to be the source of death-cancelling-life (Jn. 8:51; Gn. 3:19), converse to Adam's life-cancelling-death.
Many Old Testament scholars and liberal theologians look scoldingly on ancient eisegetical allegoricisms and christologisms imposed on the Old Testament by "evangelicals" (usually defined by its patronizer, for purely objective scholarly motives, no doubt), and so this “evangelium” language is for the most part seen as archaic and inutile for proper exegesis. It is quite obvious, however, how pervasively governing the theme of redemptive-history is, from Genesis 1 to Genesis 3:15a to John 8:34-49 to Revelation 21. There is not simply an eschatological promise of a redeemer who will exhaustively engage the problem of evil (although that is present), but an immanent and immediate act of redemption by God himself, as he steps in and protects Eve the way Adam should have in the first place. And the point of this focus on Genesis 3:15a is that from the very beginning, it is God who creates the enmity. It is God who says, “I will rescue my bride” (Eph. 5:25-26). It is God who stiff-arms the murderous malice of Satan and puts a hatred for evil in the heart of Eve and her seed. Even though Eve disobeyed and should, for all intents and purposes, have been given over to the lust of the flesh and condemned, she was still granted a righteous hatred for sin. Regardless of her flagrant disobedience, God still gave Eve a capacity to discern holiness.
The same is true for myself. Each day I gratify the desires of the flesh. Every moment my heart longs for the death and pleasure of disobedience. Yet because of the enmity which YHWH sovereignly "puts" in me, I have the ministry of sapiental provision. And by the blood of Christ, which was foreshadowed by the blood of the animal that God killed to cover Adam and Eve's nakedness, I can identify the righteousness of godly sorrow as an extension and fulfillment of Genesis 3:15a. I, with Adam and Eve, am not defined by the self-centered embarrassment of the naked and distorted image of God, but am defined by the perfect image of God as displayed in the second Adam (2 Cor. 4:4). Even in the darkest and most depraved moments of my Christian life when Satan seems to have won another soul with his craftiness, my conscience sanctifies me (1 Peter 3:16,21), and my sorrow identifies me with the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 5:2-4).
