This is part 1 of a three-part series, taken from a paper I wrote for a seminary class on Old Testament Theology. It might be more academic than most articles on Darkened Glass Reflections, but I believe you will find a blessing.

Some have claimed that if one could have only one book of the Bible available, it should be Genesis. This is an overstatement, but it does point out the book’s importance for laying the foundation for the redemption story. Acts 4:12ⁱ says, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Jesus Christ and His name are essential. To receive salvation, we must place our faith in Him, not merely on a set of principles or values related to His teaching. Although Jesus’ name does not appear in Genesis, His character and the necessity and nature of His redemptive work are prefigured throughout the Old Testament, especially in its first book. Most of the key elements of the Gospel first appear in Genesis; they are prefigured in further detail throughout the rest of the Old Testament and are most fully revealed with Christ’s life in the Gospels.

This series of articles will survey Genesis to show some of the main passages that provide types and signs pointing to the redemptive work of Jesus. Although most of the discussion will focus on Genesis, I will occasionally cite verses in the New Testament that show how Jesus fulfilled Old Testament types.

We must recognize the unity of the Bible. Many people, both devout Christians and unbelievers, point to apparent differences between the Old and New Testament. However, the central theme of divine promise ties the Scriptures together. Walter C. Kaiser wrote, “While the NT eventually referred to this focal point of the OT teaching as the promise, the OT knew it under a constellation of such words as promise, oath, blessing, rest, and seed. It was also known under such formulas as the tripartite saying: ‘I will be your God, you shall be My people, and I will dwell in the midst of you.’”ⁱⁱ This theme, often with similar wording, appears throughout both testaments.

The need for salvation appears early in Genesis and is reaffirmed throughout. God warned Adam that he must not eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Almost all Christians know the story: The serpent tempted Adam and Eve, they ate, and God reprimanded them, casting them out of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3). Sin quickly spread. First, their oldest son Cain killed his brother Abel. Eventually, “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” (Gen. 6:5). St. Paul wrote, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), a lesson that begins in Genesis.

However, God had a solution: The promise mentioned by Kaiser. It first appears in Gen. 3:15, immediately after Adam and Eve fell into sin. After describing the curse that would follow their disobedience, 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.” There are several reasons to believe that this foretells the coming of Christ. First, the New Testament writers repeatedly borrow the wording of Gen. 3:15 to describe the work of Christ and the spiritual battle between His kingdom and the dominion of Satan. Revelation 20:2 tells us that the serpent is Satan. Jesus, who came to destroy the works of the devil, gave His disciples authority to “tread on serpents and scorpions” (Luke 10:17-19). Furthermore, Paul wrote that God would soon crush Satan under believers’ feet (Rom. 16:20). While Satan may have bruised Christ’s feet with the nails of the cross, He crushed the serpent’s head and conquered death through His crucifixion and resurrection and continues to crush Satan as His Church serves Him on earth.

In his Bible handbook, Henry H. Halley observed that the seed is promised specifically to Eve. He believed this prefigures the virgin birth of Jesus, the only person in history to be born of a woman without a human father.ⁱⁱⁱ

Genesis 4 further hints that the “seed” is Christ. In Gen. 4:1, when Eve gave birth to Cain, she said, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” Most translations agree with this wording from the English Standard Version, but the most literal Hebrew translation reads, “I have gotten a man, even the Lord” (emphasis added). A few modern English translations preserve this meaning: in the International Standard Version, Eve said, “I have given birth to a male child—the Lord.” The Names of God translation does not follow this approach, but it still connects Cain’s birth to the promise of Gen. 3:15: “I have gotten the man that Yahweh promised.” The Hebrew suggests that Eve saw Cain as the fulfillment of the promise. Perhaps she realized that “the seed” would be God in human flesh.

However, Cain was not the heroic seed. In fact, through jealousy and murder, he continued the moral and spiritual decline that his parents started. However, God worked to choose a family whose lineage would culminate in the arrival of the seed. Norman Geisler states that Genesis helps to “lay the foundation for the coming of Christ in that God here effects the election … of the Jewish people through whom He will bring into the world its two most treasured gifts, the Living Word (Christ) and the Written Word (Scripture).”^iv

In part 2 of this series, we will see how the “seed” came into the biblical story and continued throughout Genesis.

iAll Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV) unless otherwise indicated.

iiWalter C. Kaiser, Jr., Toward an Old Testament Theology, 1^st paperback edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1991), p. 12.

iiiHenry H. Halley, Halley’s Bible Handbook, 22^nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1959), p. 354.

ivNorman L. Geisler, A Popular Survey of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1977), p. 21.

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