My wife and I once visited the movie and television studios at Universal City. There I saw the house that was the opening shot for the "Leave it to Beaver" television show, only to learn that what you are really seeing on all of those TVLand reruns is a prop, a shell. There is nothing beyond the façade of the house.
That is what many of us settle for — a façade of the home we really want, maybe in a new relationship, maybe a new job in a new city, maybe a new husband, maybe a new religion. Surely, there must be something to help us find the home we really want. Some of us never quite pin down the longing. Some of us have given up on a place called home.
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But God has not given up on us. Genesis 3:15 is a prophecy about home. But it is more than a prophecy. It is a judgment on the facades, on the fakes, and on the evil one who leads us to settle for less that what God has given. Then again, Genesis 3:15 is about a promise, or to use the biblical word, a covenant.
It is a judgment that was given to the devil. The message was that the great battle of the cosmos, which he had initiated, would end in his defeat. His rebellion against God, which turned freedom into bondage for the creatures who bore God's image, would be broken. The reign of evil now begun on earth, the reign which cast the world into frigid darkness for a season, will come to an end. Mysteriously, evil, which seems out of control, is actually, as Luther said, on a leash tethered to the very will of God. And in the greatest irony in the universe, from the seed of the woman who was tempted into sin first, would come a promised judge who would crush the head of the serpent. Though Satan would strike the heel of this victor to come, the venom was not equal to the power of the lifeblood in this covenant Savior. Satan will be crushed and the Redeemer will be victorious.
However, the same words spoken in judgment become, for the woman and the man, words of hope, words of life. The prophecy is a covenant. It is, in fact, the second covenant. The first covenant was that if they kept the word of God perfectly, they would live. It was a covenant of works — keep my commandments and you shall live; violate them and you will suffer the terms of this covenant: death. The sin of Eve and Adam had now broken the covenant and they became subject to the penal terms of that first covenant, which was death. So in the words spoken by God at this tribunal, a second covenant was established. God, through the seed of the woman, would bring forth one who would crush the evil one and become her redeemer.
It was hard to see it all in these few words of Genesis 3:15, but the remainder of the Bible would rest on what had just happened. It will take the calling of a man Abraham to further unveil the power of what was happening at this moment. It will take Moses and David and the prophets, like Isaiah, to finally see the magnificent life that is proleptic in this Promised One. The law of God, which was broken, would have to be kept. Moreover, the punishment would have to be met by God Himself to release Adam and Eve from the bondage they had encountered. We will come to see that in giving a second covenant, a covenant of grace, God would, through this Promised One, do what they could not do for themselves. He would keep the terms of the first covenant for them. He would be tempted and yet not sin. He would suffer for them, and become Himself the substitution for them and their progeny and take the punishment of sin. That is what we are reading about in Galatians. Galatians provides the commentary on this verse. This passage is about Eden, which was lost and which you long for, being restored.
