The First Gospel Message

“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” —Genesis 3:15

Here is the first Gospel message in history. Of all the golden tongued evangelists of all time, God is the first to tell of a Redeemer. And for the telling, He waits not an hour after sin has, through Satan’s lie, made moral wreck of the creatures of His hand. Moreover, it is told in one breath with the denunciation of judgment upon Satan, showing that judgment precedes salvation. God must judge sin at the cross before He can forgive the believing sinner. I must judge myself as a sinner before I can accept the grace that flows from Christ’s finished work for my salvation.

A Chosen Race

The promised seed was to come through the chosen nation of Israel. God called Abram out of the idolatry of his day and made him the depository of promise. He was the progenitor of the Jewish race. The promise was later confined to the tribe of Judah; later still to the house of David of that tribe; and at length to a virgin member of that tribe residing in Bethlehem. Thus throughout Old Testament history “the woman” was represented by Israel, which nation was to produce, in humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ. Behold how the predicted enmity between Satan and the woman has manifested itself in all the ages! It appears in Satan’s attempt to corrupt the race in Noah’s day by the irruption of fallen angels among women, Noah alone remaining uncontaminated. It was a daring travesty on the virgin birth of the woman’s seed. It appeared in the famine which Abram encountered as he entered the Land of Promise, and by which he was forced out of that land. It appeared in the Egyptian bondage and Pharaoh’s attempt to destroy the race there. It appeared in the wars of the Canaanites and other nations against the Jews; in the wicked plot of Haman; in the evil designs of Antiochus Ephiphanes and in a score of other incidents of Old Testament history. When the New Testament is opened, there it appears again; in the effort of Herod to destroy the males of Bethlehem; in the storm on the sea of Galilee; in the Lord’s anguish in the garden of Gethsemane. Finally, Satan succeeds in having the woman’s seed nailed to the cross, and his triumph seems complete. But no! This was, in the counsels of God, but a temporary injury to that promised seed: “Thou shalt bruise his heel.” The heel is the most invulnerable part of the body. Satan has overreached himself. That death to which he has put the Lord Jesus is the divine remedy for the sin that his lie has brought into the world. There was sealed the doom of Satan: “It shall bruise thy head.” The permanent injury is for him, not for the one against whom he has remained in perpetual enmity. “Now shall the prince of this world be judged,” said Christ as He faced the cross. At the cross, He acquired the power that shall eventually crush all Satan’s designs and accomplishments and destroy him forever in the lake of fire.

When the woes of life o’ertake me,
Hopes deceive, and fears annoy,
Never shall the cross forsake me:
Lo! It glows with peace and joy.

Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure,
By the cross are sanctified;
Peace is there that knows no measure,
Joys that through all time abide.

God raised His Son from the dead and exalted Him in the highest heavens, but the enmity is not yet at an end. If “the seed of the woman” is designated a person, then “the seed of Satan” is no less a person. And who can that person be but the Antichrist, the “man of sin,” the “son of perdition,” the “lawless one,” whose coming is after the working of Satan? Yes, it is he who shall yet appear in the earth, after the church is gone, even he whose coming shall be “with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved.” But it is written, “whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming.”

Yea, the Word of God shall stand and no power can annul it. The triumph of the seed of the woman shall be complete and His truth vindicated throughout the universe.