Chapter 1: Of the Doctrine of Salvation in the First Age of the World
We have now explained those benefits that are essential to the covenant of grace. Let us turn to a more particular examination of the two economies, meaning the different arrangements under which that covenant was administered. Following the outline established in chapter 3 of the preceding book, we will first explain the nature of the Old Testament and then that of the New. Within the Old, we will carefully consider four principal points: first, the doctrine concerning the common salvation as it was set forth there; second, the benefits and privileges of that testament; third, its defects, or what Paul calls "the weakness and unprofitableness thereof" (Heb 7:18), on account of which that covenant was not "faultless" (Heb 8:7); and fourth, its abrogation. The doctrine itself may be considered as expressed through words, illustrated through types, and confirmed through sacraments.
2. Divine compassion brought the first message of grace to fallen humanity immediately after the fall, condensing the entire gospel into just a few words, though those words were almost cryptic in their form. That first promise appears in Gen 3:14-15: "And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field: upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Luther complained long ago that none of the ancient fathers and bishops, learned and devout as they were, had explained this passage with the depth it deserves. Their successors are therefore obligated to approach it with even greater care and diligence, which several highly learned interpreters have indeed managed to do with considerable success. Following in their footsteps, we will demonstrate that the principal articles of gospel doctrine are summarized in this single text.
3. We take it as given that the devil is the one condemned by this sentence, and that God addresses him under the title of the serpent because he had used that creature as his instrument to deceive humanity. It would be shallow and trivial to restrict this magnificent divine speech as though it found its complete fulfillment in the animal alone. For one thing, it seems unworthy of the Supreme Being to address a mindless brute with such solemn and weighty language. For another, many of the things said here to the serpent, if taken literally, simply describe what is natural to that creature anyway, such as moving on its belly and eating dust. We have no scriptural basis for claiming, as the Jews fancifully supposed, that the serpent once walked upright on feet, or that it previously ate something entirely different from what it eats now. Nor should we imagine that serpents today feed on nothing but dust, since Aristotle classifies them among the pamphagoi, meaning the omnivorous creatures that consume all manner of things, and he testifies that they eat both flesh and plants, and that among all animals they have a taste for the finest delicacies. Dust is called the serpent's food because, since it crawls along the ground, it inevitably takes dust into its mouth along with whatever else it eats. This is much the same as when David laments in his grief that "he ate ashes like bread" (Ps 102:9), meaning that while he lay face down in the ashes, he ate the bread that had been thrown to him on the ground. Furthermore, what is said here about the serpent moving on its belly and eating dust applies equally to many kinds of worms, as the highly learned Bochart has demonstrated. But how could something that is perfectly natural to other animals, animals that Satan never exploited in this way, constitute a curse on the serpent? As for the serpent being detestable to humanity, that is due to its dangerous venom, which it shares with other beasts that, after the fall, became objects of terror and dread to mankind. Some serpents, in fact, have been praised for their apparent affection toward humans (see Vossius, De origine idololatriae, book 6, chapter 58). Some are even considered edible and counted as a royal delicacy. In short, it matters very little to humanity whether any given animal moves on feet or on its belly, or whether it feeds on plants, flesh, or dust. What is certain, however, is that God's condemnation of the serpent was intended to bring comfort to our first parents in their miserable condition. What purpose, then, is served by interpreting these words in a way that offers little or no comfort at all to humanity, who at that moment was bitterly mourning its own ruin?
4. The most important consideration, however, is that Scripture explicitly calls the devil "the serpent" (ophis) and "the old serpent" (ton ophin ton archaion), and describes his defeat as being bruised under our feet. Even if we grant that both of these descriptions were originally and literally applied to the animal that Satan used as his instrument, it is clear from the nature of the matter that both could and should be understood as referring primarily to the chief seducer himself. As Chrysostom argues persuasively: "If the instrument suffered such a degree of divine wrath, what punishment can we reasonably imagine the devil incurred?"
5. Nor can anyone object that the phrase "all the days of your life," spoken to the serpent, cannot apply to Satan on the grounds that he is clearly an immortal and never-ending spirit. Satan does, in fact, have a particular death reserved for him: the judgment of the last day, when he, along with death itself, will be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. The devil lives insofar as he works powerfully in the children of disobedience, thereby proving himself to be the ruler of this world (kosmokrator). He will die when he can no longer use any of his instruments in or against the kingdom of God. In this way, the Lord Jesus "stills the enemy and the avenger" and "destroys him that had the power of death." The days of the devil's life, then, are those that precede the final judgment, and this yields a genuinely useful doctrine, as we will see shortly.
6. But God chose to speak these words, the source of all comfort to fallen humanity, as a pronouncement against the devil, delivered in the presence and hearing of mankind. 1. To humble that wicked and arrogant spirit, who was forced to hear his own condemnation spoken before the very weak and fragile creatures he had so easily brought under his power, and over whom he expected to rule forever. 2. To revive and comfort our first parents with the sweetest consolation, since not only should that just vengeance which God promised to take on their enemy have been deeply welcome to them, but in the devil's condemnation they also heard their own absolution. 3. To demonstrate that this sentence carried the force of a final and unalterable will. For just as God, by a decisive and irrevocable verdict, condemns the devil without further inquiry, having caught him in the very act he could neither deny nor shift onto another, so too the blessings and privileges granted to the elect through this condemnation of the devil are granted by the final and unchangeable will of God, resting on no uncertain condition.
7. Now let us examine more carefully what this sentence actually contains. The elements are as follows: I. The blessings, or benefits promised to humanity. II. The author of those good things. III. Their meritorious cause. IV. The manner of acquisition. V. The heirs. VI. The means of acquisition.
8. The evils God pronounces against the serpent are, in fact, so many benefits and blessings for humanity, and there are four of them. The first is the curse of the serpent: "Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field." All animals are subject to destruction, as Peter writes: "Natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed." It is because of human sin that animals, as part of what belongs to humanity, are made more miserable; they cannot be separated from this world, which is not willingly subject to vanity, and among them are those called "evil beasts." But the curse pronounced against the serpent goes further, rendering him lower, more degraded, and more wretched than every other creature. This curse carries three distinct implications.
(1.) An unconquerable foolishness and malice, so that he can be neither wise nor good, making him worse than "a horse or mule, which have no understanding."
(2.) The deepest possible degree of degradation, by which the one who arrogantly attempted to make himself equal to God, and who seemed to have seized dominion over humanity (the noblest of God's creatures), is now pressed down below even the beasts of burden.
(3.) A state of unending misery. Animals die and perish, and they never face judgment. But the serpent, cursed above all beasts, cannot escape it: "Everlasting fire is prepared for the devil and his angels." It could only have been a comfort to humanity to hear that sentence pronounced, by which the very enemy who had brought ruin upon them is himself condemned to be accursed.
9. The second benefit is the destruction of his power, expressed in three distinct phrases. The first is Upon thy belly shalt thou go, meaning that the serpent would be forced to crawl along the ground, no longer permitted to fly at man, coil around him, and crush him in a venomous embrace. Pareus makes a perceptive observation: "He himself is also forced to creep on his breast, because having once been hurled headlong from heaven, he is now condemned to crawl forever on the ground amid earthly filth, unable to lift his head toward heaven again. So in "the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil" (Rev 12:9), the judgment passed on the old serpent, the devil, by which he is now firmly bound, is described as his being cast down to the earth, where he pursues the woman with hostility but cannot destroy her."
10. The other expression, Dust shalt thou eat, undoubtedly points to a state of the deepest degradation. In Scripture, the phrase "to lick the dust" describes conquered enemies lying prostrate at the feet of their conqueror: "His enemies shall lick the dust"; "They shall lick the dust like a serpent"; "They shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet." But there is far greater weight in these words when the serpent is commanded to eat dust, and when Scripture adds, And dust shall be the serpent's meat. Unless I am mistaken, this carries three distinct meanings. 1. First, it signifies that the devil's power is confined to earthly-minded people, those who are bound to the earth and seek their good and happiness in material things. These alone he can devour, and he has no rightful claim over anyone else. This works greatly to the benefit of the church, because when the wicked are consumed by the devil, stumbling blocks are cleared from the path of righteousness, the church is freed from their harassment, and Satan's kingdom in this world is diminished. 2. As for the elect, it signifies that the devil's power is limited to their bodies, which, on account of sin, are called dust and destined to return to dust. That body the devil will consume, bringing it down to death and holding it under death's power until the resurrection; but he has no power over the souls of the elect. And even that destruction of the mortal body works to the believer's benefit, because in the process the old sinful nature, which had long made its home in their members, is also destroyed. 3. It points to the wicked pleasure the devil takes in dragging the reprobate into sin and consequently into eternal ruin, and in tormenting the godly as much as he possibly can. It was the delight, the very meat, of the Lord Jesus to do the will of the One who sent Him and to turn people toward God. Satan is the precise opposite: his delight is to drive the wicked deeper into evil and to torment God's beloved children. And this, being the greatest wickedness, is at the same time the highest degree of misery.
11. To prevent anyone from dismissing this interpretation as novel or unprecedented, let me add the comments of Fagius and Pareus. Fagius writes as follows: "If we now, as we certainly should, apply these things to that spiritual serpent, namely Satan, whom the Hebrews call nachash kadmoni, the old serpent, who worked through the serpent, a brute animal, as through an instrument, they indicate that this ancient and cunning enemy of ours, who once moved about as if in triumph, is now thrown down and humiliated. To eat dust signifies consuming earthly-minded men who are enslaved to their passions. Satan is a spirit, and his food must therefore be spiritual in nature; sins are what satisfy his hunger. For just as the serpent crawls on the ground, lives on the ground, and broods on the ground, so Satan's whole disposition is to lure men toward the earth, to drag them into earthly things, and to pull them away from what is heavenly." So far Fagius, from whom Pareus does not differ greatly. His words are these: "He is also condemned to eat earth, that is, to feed on the earthly filth of vice and wickedness, as unclean swine feed on excrement. This is what that impure spirit does when he not only wallows in and delights himself with the corruption of the world, as swine wallow in mud, but also drags the reprobate into that same corruption and destroys them along with himself. This is Satan's sweetest food. For whatever gives a person delight, that he counts as his nourishment and his pleasure, according to the saying, Envy is the best food; and again, Envy feeds on the living, etc. Augustine offers a striking observation when he says, The sinner is earth; the sinner is therefore given over to the devil as food. Let us not be earth, if we do not wish to be devoured by the serpent." So far Pareus. Ambrose (lib. 1. de pænitentia, c. 13.), quoted by Rivet (Exerc. 35. in Gen.), interprets dust as the flesh of man and argues that God permits the devil to feed on this flesh, meaning to torment and afflict the bodies of believers, while granting him no power over the soul.
12. The third expression used to describe the devil's destruction is the bruising of his head. The serpent's head is the seat of its poison, cunning, strength, and life. The serpent's head therefore represents the devil's crafty subtlety, his venomous power, and the full extent of that tyrannical dominion he acquired over humanity through sin. The bruising of his head means the complete abolition of all his power, as the apostle explains: "And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly." The symbol of this bruising was the extraordinary power granted to Christ's disciples, as recorded in Luke 10:19: "Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you." And in Mark 16:18: "they shall take up serpents," meaning without being harmed, as the account of Paul in Acts 28:5 confirms. Tertullian, as quoted by Grotius on Luke 10:19, testifies that this power to strip serpents of their venom and crush their heads without injury had not entirely disappeared among Christians in his own time. The devil did attempt to imitate this miracle in the temple of Isis in Egypt, as Bochart noted from Ælian (Hierozoicon, book 1, chapter 4, at the close); yet our Lord makes the meaning unmistakably clear when, alongside serpents and scorpions, He adds the phrase "all the power of the enemy," signifying that the destruction of Satan's kingdom was what this power represented. In this way, the devil was compelled, through his own tricks and illusions, to foreshadow his own ruin.
13. The third benefit God promises here is the putting of enmity between the serpent and the woman and her seed, and these words encompass man's sanctification. When a man becomes an enemy to the devil, he abhors and avoids all contact with him, hates and detests his works, strives to destroy him and his kingdom both in himself and in others, and willingly does whatever he knows will frustrate the devil's purposes. And though the devil wages war against him precisely because he pursues godliness, this opposition does not drive him away from what is good; on the contrary, it spurs him on with greater resolve to resist. As long as a man remains unsanctified, he keeps peace with the devil and quietly submits to his rule. Enmity and hostility toward the devil can only arise from an infused principle of holiness, and this is exactly what God promises when He says, I will put enmity, etc. He is not merely commanding the woman to avoid intimacy or friendship with the devil, or to have no dealings with a sworn enemy. Nor, as Pareus observes on this passage, did God simply reopen a door of repentance for our first parents through this declaration. Rather, He promises that by the irresistible power of His might, He would bring it about: He would put that enmity against the devil into the human heart, an enmity that cannot exist where there is no love of God. Rivet puts it well in Exerc. xxxvi. in Gen.: "When a state of enmity is foretold, in the same breath it is also foretold that men will return to such soundness of mind that, displeased with the grievous yoke of Satan's tyranny, they will seek to shake it off; and having once happily succeeded, they will afterward remain watchful through continual struggle against being entangled in it again." Cloppenburg is even more thorough in Schol. sacrific. p. 75: "There could have been no enmity between the woman and the devil without first removing, through justification, the enmity with God that the devil had brought upon the woman and her posterity through his seduction; and without conquering and subduing, through sanctification, the dominion of sin in the woman. In placing that enmity against the devil, therefore, God establishes a covenant of peace and friendship, by which He promises the woman the grace of both justification and sanctification."
14. The fourth benefit is the resurrection of the body. Our bodies were reduced to dust by the one who holds the power of death, but this benefit addresses that very consequence. It is hinted at, though somewhat obscurely, in the declaration that the serpent shall eat dust all the days of his life. As we showed in section 5, those "days" refer to the period leading up to the final judgment. From this we concluded that the devil's power, and his prowling to devour, is bounded by a fixed limit and will come to a definitive end. When that limit is reached, the bodies of the righteous will be raised from the dust, and every effect and remnant of the devil's power, along with the sin through which he gained that power, will be completely destroyed. He will no longer be able to hold in his grip the dust of our bodies, which are meant to be temples of God and of His Holy Spirit, destined for a state of glorious holiness. This point was not entirely missed by Fagius, who writes: "The days of Satan's life are the whole span of time until the consummation of the world and the coming of Christ. For then he and all his servants shall be thrown headlong into everlasting fire" (Matt 25:41).
15. The one who speaks to the serpent and declares that He will establish this enmity is Jehovah God himself, who takes full credit for being the source of all these benefits. We should not deny that such a great gift must be attributed to the whole, undivided Trinity; yet within the plan of our salvation, the Father, who is first in order, holds the primary place. Since the Son's eternal role as guarantor, according to the terms of the covenant between the Father and the Son, began immediately to take effect upon the assumption of sin, these words are most naturally understood as referring first and directly to the Father. It is the Father who, on the basis of the Son's guarantee, extends His grace to the sinner, and who clearly distinguishes himself from the Mediator, the seed of the woman. As Paul writes, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor 5:19), meaning the Father was at work in the Son, the Mediator.
16. The meritorious cause of these benefits is the seed of the woman, in the most exalted sense of that phrase. I acknowledge that when the seed of the woman is set against the seed of the serpent, with enmity established between them, both terms should be understood collectively: the seed of the serpent refers to all the wicked, who are called "a brood of vipers" in Matt 3:7, while the seed of the woman refers to elect believers together with Christ their head. Yet there is no doubt that within this seed there is one preeminent figure to whom that title most properly belongs, and by whose power the rest of the seed is able to accomplish what is foretold here. This works much the same way as the seed of Abraham, which Scripture uses with varying degrees of specificity. Sometimes it refers broadly to his descendants through Isaac and Jacob, as in "I will give to your offspring the land where you now reside as a foreigner" (Gen 17:8). Sometimes it refers more narrowly to those among his descendants who walk in the footsteps of their father Abraham's faith, and to whom the promise of inheriting the world through the righteousness of faith is given (Rom 4:12-13). And sometimes it refers most specifically to that one preeminent figure within Abraham's line who was to be the source of every blessing, as in "through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed" (Gen 21:18), which Paul identifies as Christ (Gal 3:16).
In the same way, what is said here applies in its own measure to all believers, but certain effects must be attributed primarily and principally to the one who stands preeminent within this seed, namely Christ. The apostle draws precisely this distinction between "the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified," noting that both belong to the same family (Heb 2:11).
17. There are two main reasons why Christ is called the seed of the woman: one that applies uniquely to Him, and one that He shares with other human beings. The shared reason is that He is of the same blood as us, so that we might recognize Him as our brother and closest kinsman. In the language of Scripture, human beings are described as "born of a woman" (Job 14:1; 15:4; 25:4) and "born of women" (Matt 11:11). But we must also add what is unique to Christ: although He did indeed have a woman as His mother, being "made of a woman" (Gal 4:4), He had no human father, being "without father" (Heb 7:3). See also "a woman shall compass a man" (Jer 31:22). Now, this second reason does not apply to believers, who are also called the seed of the woman, but for a different reason that will be explained shortly. Yet because Christ holds the primary place within this seed, just as He crushes the head of the devil in one sense while believers do so in another, He is called the seed of the woman in a sense distinct from theirs. The same words are used of both, but because Christ is infinitely greater than they are, when those words are applied to Him, they carry a far richer and more glorious meaning.
18. It is certainly true that Christ is the seed of Adam, whose son he is called in Luke 3:38, as well as the seed of Abraham and the son of David, since he was born of a virgin who descended from them. Yet there was good reason why he should be called the seed of the woman here rather than the seed of Adam. In Scripture, Adam is presented as the origin of sin and death. Eve was indeed the first to transgress, but since it was not Eve but Adam who was expressly appointed as the federal head of all mankind, sin and death are said to have entered the world through Adam (Rom 5:12, 14). Therefore, the one who delivers us from sin and death should not be understood as subordinate to Adam, as his son, but rather as the second Adam and the head of a different family, one set in direct opposition to Adam. At the same time, since Christ had to be our kinsman and brother, it was necessary that he be born of a woman, and that Adam, as his son by the Spirit and by faith, should be subordinate to him. Because God says here that he would put enmity between the woman and her seed on one side, and the serpent and his seed on the other, with no mention of Adam at all, it follows that Adam is either excluded from this promise or included within the seed of the woman. The respect we owe to our first parent, who was the author and teacher of true religion to his descendants, prevents us from accepting the first option. Nor do I think we should accept the second, since reason supports the idea that the woman should be included under the man, not the other way around. We are left, then, with a third conclusion: that Adam, insofar as he was the origin of sin and death, stands in opposition to Christ, while Adam as a saved man belongs to the seed of the woman, whose head is Christ, and is therefore subordinate to Christ. Christ is called the seed of the woman because, as the origin of a better line, he stands opposed to Adam as the root of a corrupted race. And there is a quiet but significant hint here that Adam himself owes his salvation to the woman, on account of her seed.
19. If I'm reading Paul correctly, he points us toward this very idea in 1 Cor 11:11-12: "Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman: but all things of God." I don't recall seeing a fuller explanation of this passage than the one I'll draw from the theses of a certain very learned scholar. For the man and the woman to "be in the Lord," sharing in the grace and redemption purchased by Christ, they are mutually indebted to one another for something they hold in common, something neither could have possessed or obtained without the other. The woman is of the man, formed from his rib, and she could not have been in the Lord had it not been for the man, without whom she could not even have existed. In the same way, the man is in the Lord dia tes gunaikos (by the woman), because the woman was appointed to be the first enemy of the serpent, and the Messiah is called the seed of the woman. The man obtains that same blessing through the woman, as by faith he lays hold on the Messiah who was to descend from her by virtue of the promise. The woman is "of the man" in a material and natural sense. The man is not "of the woman" in that same way (though one could say it in the ordinary sense of children being born of a woman, as in Matt 1:3, 5-6, and Christ himself, Gal 1:4), but rather "by the woman," because the connection is not material but spiritual and supernatural, a matter of grace and faith. The man, then, is the origin of the woman's being; the woman is the origin of the man's well-being. But to keep either side from taking pride in this or claiming any credit for themselves, Paul adds: "But all things are of God." It was by God's wisdom and sovereign design that the woman should draw her natural origin from the man, and the man his supernatural origin from the woman, making them mutually indebted to one another. Yet the glory of both privileges belongs entirely to God alone, as the supreme cause of all.
20. From this, it's clear that the promised Savior was to be fully human, a son of man. But since He is described as stronger than the devil, who had gained a claim over humanity through sin, it follows that He must also be truly God. The crushing of the serpent's head is attributed to Him, and He accomplishes this in two ways: 1. Through the merit of His atoning work, which required Him to be of such infinite worth that He could pay an adequate ransom for all the elect. 2. Through the power of His Spirit, which progressively dismantles every stronghold of the devil, proving Him to be stronger than the strong man.
21. God reveals the manner in which this Savior was to purchase salvation by saying to the serpent, You will strike his heel. These words contain two things: 1. A declaration of the sufferings that the devil and his agents would inflict on Christ, by which He would be brought low for a time. Even as He crushes the serpent's head beneath His foot and strips him of all his power, the serpent will drive his venomous sting into His heel, forcing Him to stumble and fall. A man standing upright depends on his heels for balance; wound them severely enough, and he goes down. 2. A prophecy of His resurrection. His head would not be crushed, His heart would not be pierced, no vital part would suffer a mortal blow; only His heel would be hurt, and not even both heels, but only one. Though He would indeed be brought down in this way, He would rise again swiftly, reclaiming His strength and demonstrating to the entire world that He is the conqueror.
22. The sufferings foretold here are not merely warlike, as one author describes them, meaning the attacks that the serpent and his offspring launched against Christ out of hatred for holiness and righteousness. They are also judicial, inflicted by the most righteous sentence of God upon the Son as Surety, in order to demonstrate His righteousness, which could not simply pardon sin without proper satisfaction being made. God acts here as a judge, pronouncing sentence against the devil and declaring his destruction at the appointed time. But that same sentence also condemns the Surety of mankind to endure the torments that the devil, as a conqueror, could otherwise have inflicted on sinful humanity. The devil had, of course, gained his dominion over man through evil means. Yet once man had abandoned God, his rightful Lord, and enslaved himself to the devil, the justice of God required in every respect that man remain subject to the devil as God's jailer and executioner, for his torment, punishment, and condemnation. This is the sense in which the devil is said to "have the power of death" (Heb 2:14), and that power operates precisely by virtue of the law and the sentence of God: "the sting of death is sin" (1 Cor 15:56), meaning that sin introduced death along with all its instruments and made them sharp enough to wound man fatally. And "the power of sin is the law," meaning that sin's power to put man to death derives from the divine law, which threatened the sinner with death. It follows from this that the devil's power over sinful humanity is, in a certain sense, lawful: the devil holds the power of death over man, and because that law is perfectly righteous, life cannot simply be granted to the sinner in violation of it. Satisfaction must therefore come from another source, and the devil must exercise that power of death, which he acquired through sin, either on the sinner himself or on his Surety. Yet the arrangement works in such a way that when the devil puts the Surety to death, he lays violent hands on himself and forfeits all his dominion over the elect, because the death of the Surety renders full satisfaction to that divine justice by which the devil had originally obtained power over the sinner. These words therefore show how the devil can be stripped, in a manner fully consistent with divine justice, of all the power over the elect that justice had granted him over sinners: namely, because the devil was required to exercise that power against the Surety of men by bruising His heel, or putting Him to death. The sufferings that Christ was here foretold to endure are therefore, in the fullest sense, judicial and satisfactory. Compare this with what was said in Book II, Chapter 6, sections 23 and 24.
23. The heirs of those benefits and blessings are:
1. The woman herself, haishah, marked with the demonstrative particle He, referring specifically to the woman the serpent had first targeted and defeated. She is named here not to exclude her husband, but because she, having been drawn in by Satan's flattery, seemed to have formed a closer bond with him. Her enmity toward the devil, therefore, would stand as a remarkable display of divine power and goodness. There is also something deeply fitting in the contempt this placed on the proudest of all spirits: he would be defeated not by the man, but by the woman, that very woman he had so easily deceived. Finally, this makes it unmistakably clear that our entire salvation rests on divine grace alone. If Adam had been explicitly set against the serpent here, one might have argued that he was stronger and wiser by nature, and the last to fall, and that he had simply rallied whatever virtue and wisdom remained in him to take up the fight again with better results. But since the beginning of this enmity is credited to Eve, who was both weaker by nature and the first to be overcome, it is clearer than daylight that God's grace alone is doing everything here.
24. 2. The seed of the woman. This phrase refers not to all of humanity, but specifically to elect believers. This becomes clear from the contrast drawn between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Wicked people, who "are of their father the devil" (John 8:44; 1 John 3:8) and are "the children of the wicked one" (Matt 13:38), are plainly identified as the seed of the serpent. The seed of the woman, then, is the godly line descending from Eve: the children of the promise, who "are counted for the seed" (Rom 9:8). And perhaps this is precisely why the godly are called the seed of the woman rather than the seed of the man: just as the woman owed everything to a gracious promise when she was appointed to stand against the serpent and ultimately prevail, so too the seed in view here is not simply all the children she would naturally bear through marriage and ordinary generation. It refers only to those children she would become a mother to through that same gracious promise, and those are the ones Scripture counts as her seed. For although Eve, as Adam's wife, is the natural mother of all humanity, including those called the seed of the serpent, that same Eve, set in opposition to the serpent by virtue of this divine promise, is the mother only of the blessed seed. That seed was to come from her not through the natural order, but through the promise of grace. It is therefore called the seed of the woman, specifically of that woman who is, and precisely insofar as she is, placed in direct opposition to the serpent.
25. The means by which the appointed heirs actually come to share in the promised benefits is faith in the Surety, which is suggested through two intertwined figures of speech. 1. All the heirs are called by the common name "seed," and this points to the mystical union and communion between the seed that is sanctified and the one who sanctifies, such that whatever the latter has done or suffered, the former is counted as having done or suffered in him. The bond of that union is faith, through which we receive Christ, cling to him, and become one spirit with him (1 Cor 6:17). 2. The crushing of the serpent's head is attributed to the seed, and while Christ alone accomplishes this through the merit of his obedience and the infinite power of his Spirit, the elect also, in Christ and by the power of Christ, conquer the serpent through faith. Christ is the commander in this battle, the seed of the woman in the fullest sense, who overthrows and triumphs over the enemy. But next to Christ, and under him, believers also fight and overcome by his power: "And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb" (Rev 12:11), meaning that the blood of the Lamb was shed precisely for them. The victory that the rest of the seed wins over the serpent flows necessarily from the shedding of the blood of the Lamb, who is himself the seed of Eve. Furthermore, that victory is won only through faith: "Whatever is born of God overcomes the world" (and consequently the devil, who is called the prince and god of this world; Eph 6:12; 2 Cor 4:4), "and this is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith."
