I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. Genesis 17:7
The Bible’s purpose is to glorify God. Its goal is to save His chosen people. Its design is to reveal Christ as the only means to that end. The Bible is able to give us “wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15 nasb), and “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12 niv). “All Scripture is inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16 nasb), and it has been flawlessly designed to accomplish its purpose and goal.
The scope of the Bible is vast and the diversity of its human authorship is great. In sixty-six books by thirty-six authors, written in three languages over sixteen-hundred years, it traces four-thousand years of history on three continents. Yet, despite its many voices, the Bible speaks in perfect harmony, as with one voice—the voice of God. “For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Peter 1:21, nasb). The unifying element in the Bible’s design is its repeating pattern of three themes: the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and God’s redeeming grace through the atoning sacrifice of His sinless Son.
Of all God’s perfections revealed in Scripture, only His holiness is elevated to the third degree: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3, niv). His eyes are too pure to look upon evil (Habakkuk 1:13), and it is impossible for Him to ignore sin. Even an impure thought is evil in His sight, and His justice demands full punishment for sin.
When Adam broke the covenant of creation (Hosea 6:7), sin and death entered the world (Romans 5:12-14). As the father and spiritual head of the human race, Adam was also its representative before God. So when he disobeyed God (Genesis 3:6), the consequences of his unfaithfulness were borne by his entire seedline (Romans 3:10, 11, 23; 5:17; 6:23). The covenant penalty for Adam’s sin was death (Genesis 2:17), which alienated man from God (Genesis 3:8) and sentenced him to return to the dust from which he was made (Genesis 3:19). All humanity was hopelessly separated from its Creator. With a dead spirit, a dying body, and a sinful nature, the seed of Adam now became the seed of the serpent—who is Satan—that Adam allied with in his rebellion in the Garden.
But in His curse upon the serpent, God showed mercy to a remnant of Adam’s seed. By declaring that He would put enmity between the faithless seed of the serpent and the Seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15), God revealed that He would establish a faithful remnant. The division between the seeds began with Adam’s sons, Cain and Abel, when “by faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain” (Hebrews 11:4, nasb). Adam’s seed was dead in sin, so Abel’s faith had to come from God: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).
Cain and Abel were brothers, but they were of different seeds. Thus, seed is spiritual, not physical, and it is seedline—not bloodline—that defines the people of God. This is key to understanding God’s curse upon the serpent and its role in the history of salvation. For not only did God declare a war between the faithless and faithful seeds of Adam, He decreed that the Seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head, but He would be bruised in doing so. Knowing the serpent is Satan, who was eternally defeated at the Cross (John 12:31), we know that the woman’s Seed is Jesus Christ. Thus, in the curse, God foretold that He would pay the penalty for man’s sin.
The perfection of the Bible’s design is fully realized at the Cross, where all its themes converge and are resolved: God’s holiness and justice are upheld; man’s bondage to sin is broken; and Christ is exalted forever for His perfect obedience and love. From the curse to the Cross, man’s salvation is entirely the work of the Lord. This is seen in the structure of His covenant of redemption, which we will consider in the pages that follow.