‘But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons’ (Ga 4.4-5). He was the incarnation of everything God required to fully provide everything he had promised in Eden after the fall.

It can be easy to become atomistic in the way we handle the Bible. By this I mean that we can unwittingly break its message down into its component parts in a way that fails to appreciate its organic unity. Even though, as the Westminster Confession of Faith indicates, it does indeed have many ‘parts’, there is ‘consent’ [agreement] between them all (WCF 1.5). Since this is so, we need always to bear in mind where this consent and convergence of all the parts is found. It does so ultimately in Christ.

We see this most clearly in light of God’s promise concerning ‘the seed of the woman’ and redemption (Ge 3.15). The English philosopher, A.N. Whitehead made the comment, ‘It is as though the entire Bible is a footnote to this verse’.

We see its force almost immediately in the Genesis record in terms of how it clearly gripped Adam and Eve. The naming of their three sons, Cain, Abel and Seth, seem to point to hopes raised through the new life God had granted; only to be dashed through the futility of life that seemed to be inescapable. Nevertheless, faith and hope in God’s promise of the conquering seed continued through the line of Seth, via Noah into the believing remnant that God was preserving for himself in the patriarchal era.

The theme of the promised ‘seed’ is never far from the surface in those early chapters of Genesis – both in the corruption of original sin and in the hope of the deliverance God had promised. But it comes into sharp focus in God’s dealings with Abraham. When he called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans, God said to him,

I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.” (Ge 12.2-3)

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