Adam and Eve thus experienced the ultimate joys and sorrows of parenting. But the ultimate joy (the believing child) was joyful enough to lead them to entrust their future children’s fortunes to God and fulfill his abiding command to be fruitful (Gen. 1.28). Though they had experienced the ultimate sorrow  (the unbelieving child), Adam and Eve moved forward in faith, confidant that even their tears over Cain and his sin would, in some way presently incomprehensible, be one day wiped from their eyes (Rev. 21.4).

By virtue of his sin Adam “was banished from that royal palace of which he had been the lord.” Yet God did not leave Adam homeless; “he obtained elsewhere” — somewhere east of Eden — “a place in which he might dwell.”

Adam quickly learned how complicated life in his downgraded digs would be. Everywhere he turned he was confronted with the consequences of his sin: “innumerable miseries;” “temporal exile;” ultimately “death itself.” Everywhere he turned he was equally confronted with evidence of God’s “paternal love” for him, even in the face of his rebellion, and sustained by reminders of the promise delivered to him and his wife of the “seed” who would one day triumph over the Serpent and thus regain for true believers that “life from which he had fallen.”

Calvin discovers a case study in the complexities of life lived between the fall and the consummation — life lived, that is, with constant reminders of both sin’s consequences and God’s “paternal love” — in the meal plan that comes with Adam’s new accommodation. Adam was “bereft of his former delicacies,” but “he was still supplied with some kind of food.” Adam could fill his belly, but nothing tasted quite so good as Eden’s fruits had, and he had to eat his food with bandaged fingers (having wrestled with thorns and thistles to secure his meal).

A far more poignant reminder — or two reminders, as it happens — of the complexities of life lived between the fall and the consummation presents itself to Adam and Eve in the opening verses of Genesis chapter 4, in the form of twin baby boys. Calvin concludes that Cain and Abel were twins from the fact that Genesis mentions only one act of conjugal relations between Adam and Eve and one subsequent conception (Gen. 4.1), but two births (Gen. 4.1-2). According to Calvin’s reasoning, humanity’s first naturally born children were actually identical twins, though Calvin wouldn’t have had the biological wherewithal to grasp the point. Twins, in Calvin’s judgment, were far more common in the early years of humankind’s history, “when the world had to be replenished with inhabitants.”

“Adam recognized, in the very commencement of having offspring, the truly paternal moderation of God’s anger.” He recognized, in other words, how good God intended to be his human creatures, even when he had every reason to withdraw his goodness from them entirely. Few human pleasures, to be sure, compare with the birth of healthy babies, or speak so loudly of God’s liberality towards us. Newborn babies trigger emotions of love, joy, and responsibility within us that we wouldn’t have known we were capable of, and those emotions, most importantly, give us a partial glimpse at least into the “paternal” nature of God’s sentiments towards his own image-bearing offspring.

But as every proper parent knows, the birth of children can also trigger emotions of fear and anxiety. The world is full of sinners (not least of all us), and we cannot help, as we hold our newborn children in our arms, but wonder what crimes will be committed against them (or, worse, what crimes they will commit) in however many years God gives them.

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