A perfect reconciliation was brought about within God’s being by synthesizing His holiness and His love, by which each claim was satisfied. God’s holiness and righteousness compelled Him to pronounce the curse upon the serpent, the man, the woman, and even upon the earth. God had said, “For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” God’s word is true and is from everlasting to everlasting; God’s righteousness compelled Him to carry out His judgment upon sin.

“But God’s love put an exquisite, fragrant, fadeless rose in the midst of the thorns.” Right in the very heart of the pronouncement of that awful curse recorded in Genesis 3:14-19 is that gracious, wondrous promise of salvation through a Saviour.

Genesis 3:15

“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.”

God’s holiness and love are melted together in this precious promise. Out of this golden crucible emerges the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ which stretches itself across the impassable chasm sin has made between God and man. “The reconciliation was affected through the self-provided, suffering reconciliation of God in Christ. ‘Mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other.’ (Psalm 85:10) Thus, the antinomy in the divine Being itself was dissolved.”

Before Adam and Eve left the garden of Eden, the promise was made of a way of salvation for the whole human race, which had been plunged into moral and spiritual ruin through sin. It was not man’s way but God’s — salvation through a Saviour. 

God’s Second Man — The Last Adam

Three things are clear: man cannot save himself, God has undertaken to save him, and Jesus Christ is the means. 

These questions follow:

What method would God use in salvaging the wreckage wrought on humanity? 

Would He try to repair the ruin in the old creation, or would He replace it with a totally new creation? 

Would He reestablish the old order of humanity, or would He inaugurate a radically new order?

The race had been ruined through a man; therefore, it must be redeemed through a man. The first man had failed to fulfill God’s original intention in creation, so a second Man must come forth who would succeed in fulfilling it. The old order of which the first Adam was the head had gone down in ruin, so a new order of redeemed men under the headship of the last Adam must be started. The sentence of death had fallen upon all mankind through the first Adam’s disobedience; it must be lifted through the obedience of another Adam, whose work would be so perfect that He could be rightly called “the last Adam,” for none other would ever be needed. The redemption wrought through the last Adam is set in sharp contrast to the ruin accomplished through the first Adam in Romans 5:12-21. 

Gracious God, thank You for Your precious promise of a Saviour! Thank You for not leaving us in such a wretched condition caused by the first man, Adam.