In Gen 3:15 God pronounces a curse/blessing on woman. He pronounces a curse in the form of enmity (deep-seated ill-will) between the seed of the Devil and the seed of the woman. He pronounces a blessing in that the Seed of woman will crush the head of the serpent. The prophecy is interesting from several aspects. In Lk 1:35 Mary was promised that the Holy Ghost would come over her and she would conceive a Son. There was no man-seed involved in that conception. The holy One born of Mary was a Son of God, just as Adam had been (Lk 3:38, Gen 2:7). Adam and Christ are half-brothers who have the same Father. Adam was born of the earth (Gen 2:7), while Christ was born from heaven (Lk 1:35, I Cor 15:47).
In Christ we have One who was born of the seed of woman and the power of God. In Christ we have the fulfillment of the blessing God promised in Gen 3:15. Though woman had been the means of introducing sin and death into the world, she is also the means of introducing righteousness and life in her seed, the Messiah. Through her seed did the Messiah come to be born apart from the curse of death associated with the seed of Adam (Gen 3:19). Since lineage and inheritance is traced through the man (Gen 5:2, I Tim 2:11-12), Jesus was not heir to the curse of Adam, as He was an immediate descendant of God. Because He was not subject to the curse of death, unless He personally sinned, death would be an injustice to Him. Because He was not subject to death by virtue of the curse, He could, if He lived perfectly, be a propitiation (atonement) for sin. He did live perfectly (I Pet 2:22), and yet He died. Because He accepted death as a penalty for the sins of men (I Pet 2:24), God accepted Christ’s death as an adequate sacrifice for sin (Rom 3:25-26, Heb 2:9, I Pet 2:24). In His vicarious (taking our place) sacrifice Christ died and entered Hades. However, God would not suffer Christ’s flesh to see corruption nor for His soul to remain in Hades (Acts 2:31) and raised Him from the dead (Acts 2:32-33). By the act of raising Christ from the dead, Christ overcame the evil one and crushed the source of his power, the power of death (Heb 2:14).
In the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, we see the fulfillment of the ancient promise made to Eve. In her seed Christ was born. He was afflicted and bruised even unto death by the serpent, and His soul went into the house of the serpent (Acts 2:27, Mt 12:29). In the act of bruising the Seed of woman, the serpent unwittingly fatally bit himself. By taking an innocent man into his stronghold and attempting to unlawfully retain Him in his house of death, the serpent’s act of war enabled Christ to lawfully spoil the serpent of his goods (Mk 3:27) and crush the head or seat of the serpent’s power, that is, death. After 4000 years God had not forgotten His promise and in a way that no one would have suspected He carried out His promise in exact detail.. Truly our God is a wonderous God, and His ways past finding out.
