What is the protoevangelium?

In these few verses in Genesis 3 we have Him first as the Seed and, remarkably enough, as the Seed of the woman, and not of the man. We read on through Genesis and we don't get many definite predictions until we come to chapter 49. True we find Him in "the seed" of Abram. The apostle Paul in the epistle to the Galatians is at pains to point out that he does not say "seeds" as of many but "Seed" as of one, and that One is Christ. This, of course, springs out of the fact that He was the seed of the woman, for the woman — Mary — was descended from Abram. This first great prediction of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ did not fall from mortal lips. Afterwards God did speak to men by prophets, but this most fundamental of all the great predictions came from the lips of the Lord God Himself, and was uttered not to man primarily, though we are permitted to hear it, but to the great adversary, Satan, under the form of the serpent. He said, "I will put enmity … between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." This word concerning the Seed of the woman is the great fundamental prediction of the coming of Christ.

The very first announcement concerning the Saviour is to the point here. To the serpent in Eden the Lord God said: "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" (Gen. 3:15) . Three things are here predicted of our Lord: His incarnation; His sufferings, and His victory. But mark the total omission of all reference to the man in this prophecy. The woman, the enemy, and the Deliverer are the only parties mentioned therein. As Revelation unfolded itself, so did the mind of God concerning the coming One. Thus of all Adam's sons Seth was to be His progenitor; later, of Noah's sons, Shem; of Terah's sons, Abram; of Jacob's, Judah; and of Jesse's, David. In due course, the very village was named in which He should be born; and the time of His coming (Mic. 5:2; Dan. 9:25). Then in Isa. 7:14 we read: "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel." How this passage is applied by the Spirit of God in Matt. 1:23 is known to every Bible reader.

Believers have constantly called it a "promise;" but it is not uninstructive to see that scripture never does. There was a revelation of an infinite blessing for man unquestionably, but hardly what is called a promise. It was addressed to the serpent. If a promise to any, it was to the woman's Seed, the last Adam, not to the first, who was just sentenced with Eve. Abraham, not Adam, is the depository of promise: so speaks scripture, as far as I know, invariably. We see why that ought to be. Was it a time for a promise? Was it a state for a promise? Was it a person for a promise? — one that had ruined the glory of God, as far as it rested upon him. No, but in judging the serpent there comes out the revealed purpose of God, not a promise to Adam in sin, but the revelation of One who would crush the serpent's head the first sinner and too successful tempter to sin. The Second man, not the first, is the object of promise. This indeed is the invariable truth of scripture, and runs through it to the last.

Observe, in the beginning of the word of God, the sources of all things. As we saw God Himself the Creator and the moral Governor, so further we find the enemy of God and of man in exact accordance with the latest word that God speaks. Again, let us note the confronting of the serpent, not with man, who always falls under Satan's power, but with Christ, who always conquers. Such is the way in which God puts His truth, and this in the earliest part of His word. No later revelation in the smallest degree corrects the very first. Scripture is divine from first to last. But along with this we find no haste to reveal: all is in season. Not a word is heard about eternal life yet — that must wait for His appearing who was such with the Father; not a word yet about the exhaustless riches of grace which were afterwards to abound. A person is held out — the Seed of the woman; for the manner most expressly bespeaks the tender mercy of God. If the woman was the one first of all to yield, she is the destined mother of Him that would defeat the devil and deliver man. But what came in immediately, and what is traced throughout the Bible, it may be noted, is the present consequence in the government of God.* Consequently we find that as man had hearkened to the voice of the siren, and had eaten of the tree of which he was commanded not to eat, the ground was cursed for him. It is the present result. So again the woman has her portion, of which we need not say more than to point out what a clue it is to her lot in the history of the race. Both unite in this, that, as they were made of dust, to the dust they must return.

It is in the judgment denounced upon the serpent that we find the promise of the woman's Seed; a promise indeed, as men have ever and rightly held it, though couched in such a form. To Adam as the head of fallen humanity it could not be directly given, for reasons which we have already seen; for in fact the first Adam and the old creation were not to be restored, but replaced by another. The woman also, with the man, was to share only in the fruits of Another's victory, whom grace alone has brought down to the lowly place of the woman's Seed. The announcement is therefore designedly given in the shape of judgment upon the serpent — judgment which is to be the victory of good over evil, the issue of a conflict now in full reality begun. In righteous retribution, through the woman's Seed the destroyer of man should be destroyed; but this is connected with enmity divinely "put" between the tempter and the tempted, in all which God's intervention in goodness for the recovery of the fallen is plainly to be seen. The victory of the woman's Seed is a victory of divine goodness in behalf of man.

God knows that you are sinners; He knows that it is the subtle iniquity of Satan, which would make man his prey. But there is to that an answer, of which Satan knew not, any more than poor, guilty, fallen man: the revelation of the Seed of the woman (v. 15). The question is really between the serpent and the second Man - not the first. It is neither a promise to Adam and Eve from God, nor a hope of improvement in their children; but God pronounces judgment on the enemy, and in the midst of it the revelation is made of the Saviour, child of the woman who had ensnared the man to be ruined of the devil. The woman's Seed shall bruise the serpent's head, but He is bruised Himself first. What grace, yet righteousness! What humiliation, yet victory! If Adam exalted himself as a robbery to be as God, He who was God emptied Himself to be a man, and became obedient unto death, as the other was disobedient unto it. To lost Adam, the first man, there was, and could be, no promise. All the promises of God are yea and amen in the second Man; but they become the portion of every believer. Faith finds and enjoys the promise, not sin and unbelief. To Eve and Adam God only speaks of the actual consequences of sin (v. 16-19). It is in judging the serpent (v. 15) that He reveals the coming Seed of the woman, and the way of His victory. Thenceforward the only hope of lost man is in this revealed Saviour; and before he is driven out he hears of what Jesus was to suffer in destroying the power of the devil; yet not a single sign of repentance appears in Adam after his sin. He had shewn terror of God, cowardly selfishness as to his wife, as much dishonesty in his own case as dishonour done to God. But God occupies Himself only with His counsels of grace in the woman's Seed, whose person and work and glory are developed in all the Scriptures.

1919 209 In Genesis 3 when the Lord God, after Adam's disobedience, came down in His marvellous mercy and grace, and called to him in the garden, He speaks not a word of restoration to Adam, but in the judgment pronounced on the serpent, to the serpent He speaks of the coming Seed of the woman who should bruise his head. And this in the hearing of Adam and his wife. Here it is in vers. 15 that we have the first prophecy of the coming of Christ.

The Lord Jesus Christ is God's rest and His resource. When sin came into the world, when Adam and Eve turned their backs upon God and listened to the enemy's lie, the first prophetic words spoken in the hearing of fallen humanity were addressed to the devil, the old Serpent. To him God said, “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”—the Seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpent's head.

Meanwhile, and from the earliest days, God has given prophecy in this sin-darkened world; and He took care, when human life was shortened to its present span (Ps. 90:10), to embody it in scripture as "the prophetic word." In it lay, when Adam transgressed, the warrant of faith. Man fell and paradise was lost through sin. All hope turned on the woman's Seed, Who would with bitten heel bruise the Serpent's head. Whatever else might be intimated and learnt from God's sayings and doings in those sad circumstances of ruin, a Deliverer was revealed in the future, Himself deeply to suffer, but to crush the enemy who had so soon and completely misled man. This Deliverer somehow must be man, the woman's Seed, itself a fact absolutely unique, and a phrase of mysterious moment and ineffable grace; yet must He also be immeasurably above man, not only to resist and beat off the old Serpent, the devil, but to deal him destruction beyond remedy.

In dealing with Adam and Eve concerning their disobedience and transgression, God traced their sin up to its root and source in the temptation of Satan. Conscious of their nakedness through their fall, and the consequent knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons; and, moreover, when they heard the voice of the Lord God, walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they hid themselves from His presence amongst the trees of the garden. These two effects of sin are reproduced in every sinner; he ever seeks to conceal his true condition, and he is afraid of God. But, remark, that though Adam had covered up his nakedness from his own eyes, he stands consciously bare and exposed before the eye of God: "I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself." It is then that, in reply to God's searching questions, he seeks to throw the blame upon Eve, and even upon God Himself - it was "the woman whom Thou gavest to be with me" who gave me of the tree. Thereupon the woman, in answer to her question, cast the blame upon the serpent; and it was, indeed, the serpent who beguiled Eve to distrust the goodness of her bountiful Creator. This will explain why God first passed judgment upon the tempter. But if God pronounces unsparing judgment upon His enemy and man's, He takes occasion to proclaim the counsels of His grace, which should be effectuated in the advent of the woman's seed, and His victory over Satan and Satan's power. As often pointed out, this is no promise to the first man; how, indeed, could there be a promise to Adam, who was already under judgment? No; "it is neither a promise to Adam and Eve from God, nor a hope of improvement in their children; but God pronounces judgment upon the enemy, and in the midst of it the revelation is made of the Saviour, the seed of the woman who had ensnared the man to be ruined of the devil. The woman's seed shall bruise the serpent's head; but He is bruised Himself first. What grace; yet righteousness! What humiliation; yet victory!" The Seed of the woman is thus Christ (Rome has falsified the word of God by translating - "she shall bruise thy head," and interpreting this of Mary!), and the seed of the serpent will mean all who are his servants, and who bear his moral likeness, as, for example, in John 8:44. Bruising his head is a figure of Christ's complete victory over Satan (see Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 2:14-15), through His death upon the cross - a victory so assured that the apostle could write to the saints at Rome, "And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly." Bruising the heel of Christ will refer to the cross, where He was crucified through weakness, and where, to the outward eye, He suffered defeat, for it was there that He was by wicked hands, under the leadership of Satan, crucified and slain. But risen from the dead He has the keys of hell and death, and He will finally cast Satan into the lake of fire and brimstone. (Rev. 20:10.)

Jehovah before the flood and after the law was looking onward to His Christ, and in an evil day spoke by His prophet of His salvation to come, and of His righteousness to be revealed (Isa. 56:1). Nowhere on earth could it be seen; but faith ever waited for it. There was no ground anywhere in man, not even in a true saint of God, not in Enoch nor in Elijah, to say nothing of others. They too looked forward to it in hope. But it was not yet an accomplished fact. The reliance of every saint was entirely on the One that was coming; for, as you know, He was proclaimed to man directly after he became a sinner. This was what Jehovah Elohim presented to the guilty pair, and in a most impressive way; for it was not in direct address to the fallen but in the judgment of the serpent. Who but God would ever have thought, in a sentence pronounced upon the enemy, of also embodying the revelation of a Saviour? Thus did He in all holiness intimate the revelation of a Saviour to crush the power of evil for the deliverance of its victims, but also in love to endure anguish in the accomplishment of that deliverance. For who but an unbeliever fails to see that this is clearly the meaning of the heel being bruised? But the woman's Seed, though thus suffering, should crush the serpent's head; thence is fatal destruction from which the evil one shall never recover.