And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.
Genesis 3:15.
The history of the world is the history of two human races; everything else is a postscript. This reality is yet again a constitutive shaping element that governs human affairs and influences all lives.
Our text tells us strikingly that there are two seeds, two human lines, two lineages. One is named by God as the seed of the serpent. It does not take much thought to identify to who or to what is being referred. Since, by their works you shall know them, we can be sure that the seed of the serpent are those members of humanity that walk in the ways of the serpent in Eden―and therefore in the ways of the one who animated and inspired the serpent―the Devil himself.
The existence of a human race that has the Devil as its father is confirmed by our Lord when He was confronting the unbelieving Jews. A key issue in the interchange was progeny and lineage―and Jesus said to them: “You are of your father the Devil and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar, and the father of lies.” (John 8:44) These people were definitively categorised by our Lord as being the seed of the serpent. And what was their chief characteristic? They did not believe the Christ (verse 45), which is to say they did not believe in God and therefore they had adopted the world-view and beliefs of the Devil.
Lineage is proven by whom you follow, by whose footsteps in which you walk.
The other human race is identified as being the seed of the woman―“her seed” (Genesis 3: 15). This human race walks after the footsteps of Adam and Eve, not in their sin and unbelief, but who walk after God with the clothing with which He provides (Genesis 3: 21)―as Adam and Eve walked for the rest of their lives. They walked in Belief, not Unbelief. They were of the city of God, not the city of fallen man. There is no other alternative. There is no middle way. There is no amalgm between the two. There are only two human races. You are either of the seed of the serpent or of the woman.
So, two human races. The first believes God, turns to Him, seeks to obey Him and honour Him. The second denies God and seeks to ignore and therefore eradicate Him from their lives. Furthermore, God stipulates how these two seeds or races would relate to each other. He said to the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman . . .” The two seeds, while both human, are to be like oil and water―there will always be enmity between them. It is put there by God. It is inevitable and inerradicable. It will lead to mortal conflict―such that the seed of the serpent will be destroyed―fatally wounded by a blow to the head―while the seed of the woman would be struck, but not fatally―that is, bruised on the heel. (Genesis 3:15).
But, and here is an absolutely vital point, the aggression that expresses the enmity comes from the seed of the serpent to the seed of the woman. It is the Mind of Unbelief which over and over again cannot tolerate the Believing Mind and which seeks to destroy it―particularly by force. The evidence for this came very early into human history. Of Adam's two sons, it was Cain that rose up and killed Abel. Cain was an Unbeliever, an idolater who thought of God as a god, an idol, to be bought off and manipulated with his sacrifices. He found Abel's true faith so offensive that his anger raged against his brother and he murdered him. In Cain's unbelieving world view he thought that Abel had been beaten him in the contest of manipulating god, and that to kill him would remove a rival, a competitor, leaving his manipulations standing upon the field of conflict. His god would then have no other choice but to approve him.
The archetype of the way of the enmity between the two seeds is shown by how the seed of the serpent treated the Son of God. They hated Him and killed Him. Consider carefully our Lord's characterisation of this: “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (John 15: 18,19) Notice the reverbrations right back to Cain. Because I chose you, therefore the world hates you. They see you as competitors in the struggle to manipulate their god.
He explains further why they hated Him: “if I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin . . . . If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated me and My Father as well.” (John 15: 22,24) Cain hated Abel because his brother's actions and life showed up his own failings and sin, his idolatry and unbelief in the true God. The Jewish leaders hated Jesus because His actions and words exposed their sin for what it was and left them without excuse. Hating the message, they sought to kill the messenger.
The seed of the woman maintains the enmity in a qualitatively different, non-aggressive manner. Firstly, the Believer stands as God's servant, walking in His commandments and ways. Therefore, he rejects the advice, counsel, and lifestyles of the Unbeliever. He will not do as they do. But, secondly, and at the same time, he lives and manifests an open invitation to all to leave their unbelief and come to God that they too may be blessed and saved. This enrages the Unbeliever for in their world-view success and acceptance is a matter of manipulation of the gods and of the gods approving or endorsing those who have manipulated them successfully. In this warped world of deceit, the invitation from Christians to come to God is heard by Unbelievers as an invitation to give up and concede failure and defeat in the competition to manipulate the gods. Therefore they hate both the invitation and the one who extends it.
All Unbelieving or Athenian cultures have a view of history. Most often their views will turn around strife or conflict of some sort. History is the account of struggle between reason and superstition (read, rationalism versus religion), materialism versus idealism, capital versus labour, empires versus nations, democracy versus monarchy, white versus non-white, etc. In the end, however, all these poles of conflict will be seen as nothing more than footnotes and distractions.
The abiding and perpetual conflict of history is the struggle between Jerusalem and Athens, between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, between Belief and Unbelief. This struggle is perpetual, unceasing, inevitable, and unavoidable. Friendship with the world is enmity towards God, declares James. (James 4:4) This is the great antithesis, for which there is no synthesis, no resolving dialectic. The enmity abides because God insists upon it; therefore, men cannot extinguish it.
But at leaset two biblical qualifications need to be added to this perspective of continual conflict. Firstly, the perpetual enmity of which we speak does not imply two equal opposing forces engaged in an unending war of mutually assured destructive attrition. While the enmity does not cease, victory is assured and certain for the seed of the woman, for the forces of Belief, for Jerusalem. The seed of the woman will crush the head of the seed of the serpent. This we know for certain, not just because of the utterance of Almighty God in the Garden, but also because of the decisive victory of the Son of God over sin on the Cross and His rising again from the dead. The unwinding of sin and the complete re-creation of the world without sin is now irrevocable and inevitable. The One who holds all authority in heaven and upon earth is making it so.
Secondly, the ranks of Jerusalem are being constantly swelled as people come over from Unbelief to Belief. These are people who were once in the ranks of the enemy, but who defect from Athens and are welcomed with rejoicing at the gates of the Great City. They have come to consider that any hardship with the people of God is vastly preferable to the luxuries and splendours and honours of Egypt.
But the question is begged—how does such a defection, such a change occur, amidst conditions of such abiding enmity? How does one come to love what he once hated and despised? There are two aspects to this: a divine component and a human component. Somewhere along the line the former Athenian heard an invitation from God to come out from the City of Unbelief. The Spirit of God sealed this invitation to the heart and mind in such a way that the individual knew that it was indeed God speaking to him, and he believed.
The human component is represented in this: the Divine invitation to repent and believe was mediated through Jerusalem and her citizens. It came through people. Thus we learn that there are people whose instinctual and natural enmity towards God's people is being subdued and quelled by God to the point where not only do they interact with God's people socially and without hostility, but they also are prepared to listen to and regard what they say. Most often it is these people whose steps are already leading them out of the dessicated dust bowl of Athens towards the rivers of life flowing in Jerusalem.
This salvation dynamic has been laid down from the very beginning. When God made a covenant with Abraham that separated him from his idol worshipping family, He declared that He would bless Abraham—but not only him and his family. We read: “And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.” (Genesis 12:3) When people from Athens lay aside their enmity towards God's people and seek to do good to them, to bless them, within that matrix the blessing of God flows to them and salvation comes.
So, in seeking to do good to all men, the Church opens wide the doors of the Great City. Many will respond, seeking to bless in return. In this way they are ready and open to hear the gracious invitation of the Son of God, issued by His people: “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. He who comes to me, I will never cast out.”
While there are two human races and ne'er the twain shall meet, day by day, week by week, month by month thousands upon thousands are making their way out of the City of Death and are coming as refugees to Jerusalem. There is great joy, in both heaven and upon earth at their coming. Thanks be to God.
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