I love it when I see – or am shown – something in God’s Word that I have read a thousand times without noticing! It is one of the great joys of Bible study.
It happened again today, as I continued to read through Don Carson’s devotional notes on M’Cheyne’s Bible reading plan that I mentioned a couple of days ago. Today, one of the passages was Genesis 3, on which Carson commented:
“God’s curses on the human pair is striking. The first (Gen. 3:16), which promises pain in childbearing and disordered marriages, is the disruption of the first designated task human beings were assigned before the Fall: male and female, in the blessing of God, being fruitful and increasing in number (1:27-28). The second (Gen. 3:17-19), which promises painful toil, a disordered ecology, and certain death, is the disruption of the second designated task human beings were assigned before the Fall: God’s image-bearers ruling over the created order and living in harmony with it (1:28-30).”
So obvious and yet so overlooked!
As Carson goes on to say,
“With perfect justice God might have destroyed this rebel breed instantly. He can no more ignore such rebellion than he can deny his own deity. Yet in mercy he clothes them, suspends part of the sentence (death itself) — and foretells a time when the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent who led the first couple astray. One reads Revelation 12 with relief, and grasps that Genesis 3 defines the problem that only Christ can meet.”