Read the Selected Scriptures from Gen. 1-3

The following posts contain primarily devotional thoughts from my journey through Genesis in 2025.  This will take us into March, Lord willing.

·       1:26: The words are similar, synonyms.  That is the nature of Hebrew.  Yet, each word has a picture or event behind it.  In this verse, And God said, Let us make man in Our image (i.e. to be our shadow), according to Our likeness (i.e. patterned after Us).  Think about this when you read, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him (Col. 3:10), and But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18). 

·       2:17: “die” is a root word.  Thus there is no “root” behind it to give us a picture of death or dying.  All we can say it, the breath of life is taken from us (2:7).  This is spiritual and physical.  John 1 begins with many important things, one of which is that in Christ (The Word) was life, and the life was the light of men.

·       3:12: What Adam said was true.  Who was he blaming?  GOD!! “You gave her to me!”  3:13: Eve also told the truth.  I mean, what are you going to do? Lie to God?

·       3:20: Her name was “Eve” (i.e. life, living) because of who she was to humanity (3:16).  In 2:23 she was called “Woman” (ishshah) because she was taken from Adam (ish).  Paul had this right, of course, in 1 Timothy 2:13-15.  Adam was formed first.  Thus the man is responsible.  Sin entered the world through Adam, not Eve (Rom. 5:12).  Further, Eve is saved in child-bearing; her salvation depended on the arrival of a Man, the “Seed of the woman,” as Paul says, “if she believes.”  Salvation is always by faith so Eve must believe.  More precisely, salvation is always by faith in Christ, in the Seed; so she must bear children. 

o   This is why the faith of Abraham in Gen. 15:1-6 has salvation implications, but not the faith he expressed when he left Ur to come to Canaan.

o   This is why Mary, the mother of Jesus, cannot be what the Catholic Church says she is.  There is no “immaculate conception” (the birth of Mary that made her sinless).  Mary needed a Savior!

o   Put this whole section together and we have a theological view called “Traducianism,” the view that the sinful nature is passed through the husband/ father.  There was no need for a “sinless womb” as Catholics say. 

·       3:15: This is, of course, the grace of God.  Adam and Eve did not ask for this.  God simply saw their pitiable situation.  So it is mercy, and love, and compassion, and holiness, and everything else we know of our God.  3:22-24 is also grace, in removing them from the tree of life … UNTIL the Seed could do His work and apply it in heaven.  THEN Rev. 22:21: the tree of life is there!