The History of Redemption Project - Part 3

Illustration by Christopher Koelle

Continuing on with memorizing God's redemptive story, this week I am working on these passages from The History of Redemption:

"Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.  Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!  Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked." (p.19)


"For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope.  Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (p. 20)


"Then the LORD God said to the serpent "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." (p. 21)

(Scripture verses: Romans 1:22-25; Genesis 3:7; Romans 8:20; Genesis 6:5; Genesis 3:15 - all ESV)

As mankind's federal head, Adam's rebellion against God brought death upon us all.  We all are born sinners and idolaters, hostile toward toward the Righteousness of God and followers of evil.  In our morning devotions, we read this from the February 2011 Tabletalk magazine:

"The Devil and his minions have a degree of authority over unregenerate people in the present age because, under the sovereignty of God, we chose to make the Accuser our king when we thought we were choosing self-rule over submission to the Lord.  Rejecting our good Creator in Adam, we turned ourselves over to the Serpent, as we grasped for the ability to be a law unto ourselves (Gen. 3; 2 Cor. 4:3-4).  God could have intervened and stopped our turn from His lordship to the lordship of the Devil, but as He is wont to do in judging us, He let us have exactly what we wanted (Rom. 1:18-32).  But the self-rule that we desired was not really what the great deceiver offered us in Eden.  He actually tricked us into enslavement to him and pain, sickness, and the evil desires of the flesh - our fallen natures - when we turned our backs on the loving Creator (John 8:31-47; Gal. 4:8)."

Because of Adam's sin, God cursed the spiritual serpent, Satan, when he declared that the woman's offspring would bruise his head.  This first gospel message was ultimately fulfilled in the triumph of Christ over the forces of sin and death by being the atonement for our sins on the cross.