Lessons From the Old Testament: The Two-Fold Means of Salvation

In Genesis 3:15 God promises to defeat the Tempter, Satan, through an offspring of the woman, Eve, as a means of restoring the lost Garden of Eden, God’s Kingdom.  We are not told what the conflict between the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman will look like, but it will be continual until the offspring of the woman bruises (or crushes) the head of the serpent.  With the final finishing off of the serpent there will no longer be an enemy of God and mankind to lead us astray.  This does not address our own ability to lead ourselves astray, but you have the whole rest of the Bible to explain that aspect of it.

What is fascinating is how what follows God’s pronouncements to the serpent, the woman and the man, is a demonstration of the nature of how one finds his or her way back into relationship with God.  We are told that some time after God speaks this way Adam names his wife Eve because she is the mother of all living.  Now it is not that he didn’t understand that Eve was going to have children before the “Fall,” but there seems to be a new sense of urgency and understanding here.  Why didn’t he name her before this event?  The most likely explanation, assuming the naming did follow the disobedience, is that Adam is responding to God’s message of hope in 3:15 with faith.

His faith encompasses the contours of the promise.  The offspring of his wife is going to overcome the offspring of the serpent.  There is going to be perpetual conflict, but it will be resolved with the death of the offspring of the serpent.  This makes all births a potential arena for this conflict.  Who will be the ones who will represent the spirit of rebellion and self-direction that the serpent displayed?  Who will be the ones who stand in harmony with God and against the principles of the serpent?  Whoever they may be Adam has come to believe that this is going to be the agency God uses to restore His kingdom.  And so Adam names his wife in accord with this promise.

The question, however, is this:  Is faith in the promise of God enough to restore us to right relationship with God?  And the answer is, “NO!”  Faith is the key to the restoration of this relationship.  We can’t work hard enough to restore it.  Adam doesn’t go out and begin looking for people to help or in any other way seek to demonstrate that he is now aligned with God.  He trusts God’s words and God’s character, the very thing he failed to do when he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (see previous post, Lessons From the Old Testament: What Satan Wants For Us).  But it isn’t enough to start doing good and expect that everything is now hunky dory with God.  It is not even enough to demonstrate faith in God’s goodness and promise.  How do we know?

What happens next instructs us that restored relationship with God has another crucial component.  Sacrifice!  In response, it seems, to Adam’s act of faith (naming Eve), God clothes the couple with animal skin.  That, of course, means He had to take the life of the animal or animals in order to get their pelts.  Innocent creatures had to die so that Adam and Eve’s nakedness might be covered.  One life had to be substituted for another.  And though it does not even hint of this, the preparation for the idea of the offspring of the woman being a sacrifice has begun.  The bruising of his heel takes on a new dimension throughout the rest of the Old Testament as we see the insufficiency of animal sacrifice to take away sin beg for something more.  When we reach Isaiah 53 we are given more explicit hope.

So, right here in Genesis we have explained for us the two-fold means of salvation.  We must have FAITH in the promise of God, and this salvation must be paid for by SACRIFICE.  No other religion on the face of the earth has these two requirements.  Every other religion requires works of good deeds as a sort of “payment” to God for our salvation.  And even where forgiveness is offered for failure to perform all that is required, it is never offered on the basis of a substitutionary sacrifice that pays the penalty in our place for our own disobedience.  Thus, only Christianity makes possible a salvation that does not depend  on our performance and is thus for everyone, and also shows the absolute severity of the consequences of sin by requiring a just penalty.  That God ends up paying the price Himself is the height of true love meeting the demand of true holiness.