Fisher frames this section as “The Promise made to Adam,” and he places that promise on the same day humanity fell, when Adam had become “the child of wrath” and had nothing before him but judgment.
Then Fisher gives the weight of the passage: the promised seed of the woman is Christ, and “this promise of Christ, the woman’s seed…was the gospel,” serving as “the only comfort” of Adam and the godly fathers until Abraham. Fisher’s point is simple: God’s first revealed comfort to fallen humanity was Christ promised in the gospel.
The words come in a scene of judgment, and the serpent is addressed as the enemy who will be crushed, yet Adam and Eve hear, in the place where condemnation is deserved, that God will provide a seed from the woman who will suffer and conquer for them. God promises a Redeemer who will enter the nature that fell, suffer under the bruising of the serpent, and crush the serpent’s head through that suffering.
Boston’s note keeps the burden of salvation where Scripture places it, because he says man’s restoration to God’s favor and salvation were to be effected by another, since our first parents were given a new covenant in which a Savior was promised as their hope.1
This is where our legal frame fights the gospel, because the legal frame can tolerate Christ as necessary while still resisting Christ as everything. We say we believe in grace alone while functioning as though God gives Christ to the ashamed enough, awakened enough, transformed enough, or exhausted enough.
Adam had no such qualification to bring, because he stood before God exposed, guilty, afraid, hiding, and empty-handed.
God’s first word of hope to fallen humanity was promise.
The gospel saves sinners by giving Christ, who fulfills the law, bears the curse, conquers the enemy, and covers the shame of those who cannot cover themselves.
However, Adam and Eve’s attempted covering still speaks, because the fig leaves show humanity’s effort to manage shame without receiving covering from God. Some fig leaves are distraction, denial, blame-shifting, anger, busyness, and entertainment, while other fig leaves are moral reform, public seriousness, visible sorrow, accountability language, and reputation management.
The issue is who provides the covering, because every covering stitched from resolve, sorrow, seriousness, doctrinal accuracy, emotional intensity, or improvement will be too thin for the presence of God. Fisher connects the skins God provided with sacrifice and says Adam and Eve’s “sin and shame were covered with Christ’s righteousness,” though that typology should be stated with care because Genesis itself does not unfold the point with the same fullness.2
This makes Genesis 3:15 a word for the Christian who has sinned again and now feels that Christ must be approached after a period of quarantine.
The first gospel promise confronts the instinct that says God’s first word after your worst failure must be a demand for improvement, because God’s first word of hope after Adam’s fall was promise. The Son of God comes near, takes flesh, assumes our nature, enters the field where we were conquered, submits himself to suffering, and redeems sinners through triumph in the place of bruising.
Boston says the promise revealed that the Savior would become man as the seed of the woman, that he needed to suffer with his heel, namely his humanity, bruised to death, and that by his death he would make a full conquest over the devil and destroy his works.3
The bruised heel and the crushed head belong together, because the cross is the place where the serpent’s strike becomes his ruin. That matters for Christians who suffer, because many believers expect the victory of Christ to remove every bruise in this life, while Genesis 3:15 teaches us to see victory through suffering.
Some of you are limping under guilt that has stayed longer than expected, affliction that has refused to become a clean testimony, temptation that still humiliates you, grief that still enters the room, or weakness that makes you feel like a poor witness to the Christian life. The promise does not shame bruised Christians for failing to look triumphant, because the Redeemer conquers with a bruised heel. This promise is received by faith, though faith must be understood according to the nature of the promise instead of treated as a new work in the place of Adam’s lost obedience.
Boston says the promise revealed saving interest in Christ and his salvation by faith alone, namely by believing the promise with particular application to oneself and receiving Christ, since these things are revealed “by way of a simple promise”.4
Faith is the receiving of the Christ who is given in the promise.
When the anxious Christian asks whether his faith is strong enough, he is asking an understandable question in a dangerous direction, because the strength of faith saves no one as though faith were the Redeemer.
The better question concerns Christ’s sufficiency, the truth of the promise, the victory of the seed of the woman, the freeness of Christ in the gospel, and the right of the empty hand to receive what God gives. This places repentance where it belongs, because repentance is grace’s fruit rather than grace’s price.
The same Christ who justifies also sanctifies, the same Christ who covers shame also cures our love of hiding, and the same Christ who is received by faith gives the Spirit who turns sinners from sin.
When your conscience tells you to sew something more impressive before you come to God, Genesis 3 tells you that your leaves will fail in his presence. When your guilt tells you God waits for improvement before he speaks mercy, Genesis 3 tells you that God’s first word of hope to fallen humanity was promise. When your shame tells you to hide until you become less exposed, Genesis 3 tells you that Christ was promised for exposed sinners who could not clothe themselves.
God’s first word to fallen humanity was promise, and that promise means Christ would come, Christ would suffer, Christ would conquer, and Christ would be enough for sinners who have run out of leaves.
Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, with notes by Thomas Boston (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1850; first published 1645), 24.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
What a stunning word! The gospel really is full of good news, and it began right there in the crater of humanity’s failure. Keep calm and Marrow on, brother 🤙