The biggest disaster of history

Genesis 3

This chapter records the biggest disaster of history. It explains why the world is a risky, sometimes miserable place in which much that is not God's will happens. It also contains the first recorded glimpse of the Gospel of salvation and gives the reason why the story of salvation (which is the great story of the Bible) is needed.

In this chapter, the dreadful Fall from the original goodness of God’s creation, is presented in three dimensions:

Firstly, we are introduced to the Satanic Dimension

Before the fall of humanity, a fall must have already occurred in the spiritual realm. We can deduce this from the fact that when Satan first shows up in the story he is already in rebellion against God.

A brief glance through Genesis 3:1-5 shows that the serpent is the enemy of God. In the Book of Revelation this serpent is clearly identified as Satan, the fallen opponent of God (Rev. 12:9). Other Scriptures hint at this rebellion within the ranks of the angelic creatures. It seems possible that this rebellion occurred during the process of creation and had some negative influence on the earth as it was being formed in those earliest stages (See Isaiah 14:12-15; Ezekiel 28:12-19; Matthew 25:41; 2 Peter 2:4).  

Satan, the serpent, concentrated his attack on the content (Gen. 3:1-3) and truth (Gen. 3:4-5) of the Word of God and successfully tempted the first humans to disbelieve and disobey God’s Word.

This leads to the Sin Dimension

 

Sin is disobedience to God’s Word, motivated by selfishness (See Genesis 3:3, 6, 11). Sin may also be seen as siding with the enemy of God (Gen. 3:1-6).

The results of sin are separation from God (Gen. 3:7-10), misery (Gen. 3:16-19), death (Gen. 3:19) and the removal of the possibility of eternal life (Gen. 3:22-24).

Thankfully there is also the Salvation Dimension

Even in this bleak story of the Fall, there is already a hint of the promised Suffering Saviour. Genesis 3:15 is the first reference to Jesus in the Bible, hinting at His Human Birth as “the woman’s offspring”, His Resurrection Victory for “he shall bruise the serpent’s head” and His Saving Death, for the serpent “shall bruise his heel”.

And here in Genesis 3 we also see a picture of humanities failure to achieve their own salvation by their works (Genesis 3:7) and God's gracious provision of salvation (Genesis 3:21). The idea of salvation as a covering or garment is developed in the Scriptures (See Isaiah 61:10; 1 Cor. 1:30; 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:9).

God’s provision of "skins" from a dead animal as the covering for sin also hints at the blood sacrifice of the cross that will achieve our salvation (Heb. 9:12).