A worldwide church is a clear indicator that the Seed of the woman has crushed the serpent’s head, which should encourage us to pray and persevere in a world that is hostile to Christ and his gospel. Second, Paul told the church in Rome that “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20). This statement takes Christ’s victory over Satan from the end of Genesis 3:15 and combines it with the separation of the woman’s seed and the serpent’s seed in the middle. Christ gained victory over sin, death, and Satan for his people, and his people share in his victory over Satan. Through sin, Satan was our “father,” and when we sinned we did his will instead of God’s (John 8:44). Friendship with the world, the flesh, and the devil is enmity with God (James 4:4).

The Covenant of Grace

Our friendships say a lot about who we are. For example, the righteous should choose their friends carefully, knowing that the ways of the wicked lead them astray (Prov. 12:26). Friendships can make or break people, shaping who we are and making us better or worse for the experience. We tend to become like our friends, and our friends become like us. The covenant of grace is about making enemies with sin and Satan, and restoring friendship with God and his people, making us ultimately like Christ, who laid down his life for his friends (John 15:13).

Most of the Bible is about the covenant of grace, and the covenant of grace is about Christ (the Son). Westminster Larger Catechism 31 says, “The covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed.”1 We need a better representative than Adam; we need new hearts, and we need to be like God. Put differently, we need Jesus to be our Savior, the Spirit to dwell in our hearts, and God to be our Father. Genesis 3:15 through Revelation 22 is a single story about how God does this great work. Genesis 3:15 gives us the basic ideas of the covenant of grace, serving as a gateway into the rest of the Bible, making it a key to seeing the breathtaking unity of Scripture. This may be both the most basic and most blessed verse on covenant theology in the Bible. To understand Genesis 3:15, we need to get oriented to who’s who.

The text says,

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 three contrasts in this text: the woman and the serpent, the Seed and the serpent, and the Seed and the seed.2 “Offspring” in the ESV and “seed” in my translation mean the same thing here. First, beginning where the problem started, Eve fell into sin by making friendship with the serpent and eating the forbidden fruit. God would put an end to this alliance by putting “enmity” between the serpent and her, breaking her friendship with sin and Satan. “Enmity,” like the word “enemy,” means the opposite of friendship. By sinning, Eve acted in enmity toward God, treating Satan as her friend, but God would break this relationship.

Second, skipping to the end for a moment, the serpent would crush the Seed’s heel, while the Seed would crush the serpent’s head. Translating the idea here can be tricky, but “bruise” is a bit weak. “Crush” ups the stakes a bit more appropriately. The Seed is singular, and he singularly suffers and undoes the curse of sin that the serpent brought on humanity. Since the serpent would crush the Seed’s heel but have his head crushed, the serpent gets the harsher outcome of the encounter. Third, in the middle of the verse the seed is also plural, pitting Satan’s (or the serpent’s) people against the woman’s people. This sets the pattern for the division of nations in Genesis, pitting the seed of the woman against the seed of the serpent. Just as the church is associated with Christ, so the world is associated with Satan. This is where the notorious ten chapters of genealogy in 1 Chronicles becomes relevant. Chronicles, and other places in the Bible, mark off the serpent’s seed from the woman’s seed, which marks the division between the world and the church. Though sacraments come later in the story, they will point to the Son saving the seed, following the outline established in this verse. So how does Genesis 3:15 put the covenant of grace in a nutshell? When God saves sinners, he ends our alliance with sin and Satan, like he did with Eve.

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