Foundational themes in Genesis – Study 28

(Key verses: Gen 3:16-18)

The visible things which God created in the natural world, including “our days on the earth”, are temporary “shadows” as we walk as strangers (flesh) before God (spirit) in “the valley of the shadow of death” being “bound in affliction and iron” – all ordained by God (Rom 1:20, Psa 107:10, Isa 9:2, Amo 5:8).

Psa 23:4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

1Ch 29:15 For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.

As the “Sun of righteousness” arises through the light of His Word at the appointed time, we are being healed from this death condition as these shadows also become smaller and less significant:

Mal 4:2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

This healing is done through His process of judgment when our sinful condition is progressively revealed and eventually totally destroyed. If we can see that all God’s ways in this creation are connected to His righteous judgment, then we will also see that our loving and merciful God has a perfect and just plan for all in the first Adam. He has a very good reason why He made us physical and in “corruption” first (Jer 18:4, 1Co 15:50).

Ecc 3:16 And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there.

Deu 32:4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

1Co 15:46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.

This whole earthy life sets us up for God’s final spiritual judgment through Jesus, the Word of God which is His comforting rod and staff. God brought judgment on Adam and Eve when they transgressed His commandment, which typifies God’s spiritual judgment in all of us at the appointed time:

Gen 3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to [Hebrew: êl or el] thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Gen 3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Gen 3:18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
Gen 3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

To the natural mind it appears that the actions of Adam and Eve actually changed or altered God’s plan to now bring new things, like judgment, to the fore. To believe that the thoughts and actions of creatures can alter God’s plan and purpose is an idol of the natural mind which God has placed there “so that no man can find out the work that God makes from the beginning to the end” (Ecc 3:11). God knows “the end from the beginning”, and He made Adam and Eve naked, which they only discovered afterwards. When we “discover” things we naturally tend to think nobody knew about it beforehand! In our natural childlike ignorance we go out to proclaim something which is already known, as in the case with Adam and Eve when they informed God what had happened. God also approaches the natural or carnal mind on the level He deceives it (Eze 14:1-10, Jer 4:10, 1Ki 22:22, 2Th 2:11).

Psa 18:26b ….with the froward thou wilt shew thyself froward.

That is why the froward spirit which God sends within the best human argument is such a powerful delusion and it causes natural man to be puffed up in thinking of themselves as “wise” for having “vain knowledge” or “science falsely so called” (Job 15:2, 1Sa 18:10).

1Ti 6:20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.

God is not reacting to the thoughts and actions of His creature, because He is the only cause of everything in His creation. He is also not “allowing” anything to happen because the Scriptures clearly say He is “working all things after the counsel of His [one] will” and no one can resist that will, whether for good or for evil (Eph 1:11, Rom 9:16-19). His preordained judgments on all natural thoughts and actions are only revealed to us at the appointed time (Pro 16:1, Psa 139:1-3, Eze 11:5, Eph 1:11). God caused the serpent and Adam and Eve to do what was recorded in the Scriptures, and the importance of judgment is now also revealed and what that entails. First of all, it is clear that the serpent and Adam and Eve were not judged “eternally”, but the judgment was of a limited nature – until they returned to the dust (Gen 3:19). Judgment related to their thoughts and actions within the body of dust which God created in naked, weak flesh and for which He ordained a basic diet of plant life, as no meat was eaten before the flood of Noah:

Gen 1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

Eating “every herb bearing seed” and green plants is spiritually seen as the “diet” of a weak and immature spiritual person in the Scriptures:

Rom 14:2 For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs.

As with the natural shadow, an immature spiritual person is called a babe or a child in the Scriptures, and this is also linked to the drinking of milk in a spiritual sense. In this spiritual state we are not skilled as yet in God’s “word of righteousness”:

Heb 5:13 For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe.

Like Adam and Eve, we all start off as babies in spiritual blindness. When we are introduced to Jesus Christ, judgment is one of the principles of the doctrine of Christ which are taught to us, especially as it specifically relates to the laying of the foundation on which the deeper spiritual revelations of Jesus are built:

Heb 6:1 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection [maturity]; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,
Heb 6:2 Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
Heb 6:3 And this will we do, if God permit.

The word “eternal” next to judgment in verse 2 is wrongly translated as such. It is translated from the Greek word “aionios” which relates rather to an age or limited period. Every person “in Adam” is first given an age or period in this carnal blinded condition “under the law…in [our natural] members”, which is a state of spiritual death. Nothing relating to this period is “eternal” – neither “the body of this death” nor the mind of death. Death is in essence a temporary creation of God (Gen 2:7, Isa 25:8).

Rom 7:23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
Rom 7:24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

Rom 8:6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

All in the first Adam are appointed by God to first experience this state of spiritual death, before the final judgment is brought on us when this eon of death is completely destroyed. ALL death (all carnal minds) will be destroyed and consumed by the life and mind of Christ:

Heb 9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

1Co 15:26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

1Co 15:54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
1Co 15:55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave [Greek: ‘hades‘], where is thy victory?

This limitation God placed on death also reveals God’s mercy, especially in judgment, and not as the false teaching of “eternal” judgment wants to portray our loving God. God’s mercy does not replace His judgment as some twist the scriptures to say. It is through this process of judgment that His mercy is revealed to all as He will utterly destroy the old sinful first man Adam (who has no mercy himself) to bring forth His new creation in the last Adam, Christ (1Co 15:45, 2Co 5:17).

Jas 2:13 For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.

God’s judgment is purposeful and is befitting His holy discretion (Luk 12:47-48, Heb 10:30). He is indeed “wonderful in counsel and excellent in working”:

Isa 28:24 Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground?
Isa 28:25 When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place?
Isa 28:26 For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him.
Isa 28:27 For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.
Isa 28:28 Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever [continually] be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen.
Isa 28:29 This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.

This is not merely an instruction in agriculture, but it is showing us that God’s mercy in judgment is far above human ways of judgment and their understanding of it (Rom 11:30-32).

2Sa 24:14 And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the LORD; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man.

God is a loving and merciful God, and He wants us to know Him and receive His righteousness (in spirit and truth) eventually. That is why God ordained the “strange work” of judgment as the spiritual “tool” to teach and give us His righteousness (Isa 26:9, Isa 28:21-22). This is, of course, foolishness to the natural mind (1Co 2:14).

Gen 3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to [Hebrew: êl or el] thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

When God told Eve that He will “greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception” it was all “settled in heaven” long before Eve was created (Psa 119:89). We know that Eve did not give birth before her “eyes were opened”. Only after this opening of her eyes, God then revealed to her a little more of what conception was all about. God already ordained this sorrowful conception before the world began and long before Adam and Eve transgressed. This physical “sorrow and …conception” is therefore a type (a shadow) of the real spiritual conception process in and through Christ, the last Adam, the spiritual “mother of all living” in spirit. That is why Eve was named as such after this judgment was pronounced:

2Ti 1:8 Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God;
2Ti 1:9 Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,

Gen 3:20 And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

Patience and pain are naturally true for every child being born, but more so in the spiritual application and antitype which is the focus for those whose spiritual wombs are being prepared to be that spiritual mother (Rom 8:20-23, Rev 20:4-6, 11-15). New birth does not come instantly through a “Lord, Lord” prayer, but by doing what he said (Mat 7:21). That is to “bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things” written (Mat 4:4). This includes the enduring of the wrath of God on our old man as symbolized by the outpouring of the seven vials in the revelation of Jesus (Act 22:14, Rev 15:8, Col 1:24). God’s “face” (His spiritual image) is revealed “from glory to glory” in the progressive destruction of our old man by His spirit (1Co 15:31, Joh 6:63).

Exo 33:18 And he [Moses] said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.
Exo 33:19 And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.
Exo 33:20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

2Co 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

The Hebrew word ‘êl‘ or ‘el‘ in Genesis 3 verse 16 is also translated 151 times as “against” in the King James translation, which helps us to see Eve as a type of the church of God who is being “married” to the Head, Jesus Christ. Marriage is a process of becoming one – making two one (Mar 10:8-9). We naturally have desires which are against the spiritual rulership of Jesus in our lives. We also complain and murmur against our Maker for doing His works (which are His words) in our lives (Exo 16:8, Psa 106:24-25, Joh 14:10, Mat 4:4). But He will eventually rule over all in the first Adam:

1Co 11:3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

Eph 5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
Eph 5:24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

Next week, God willing, we will continue discussing this theme of judgment as revealed in Genesis for the first time in the Scriptures.

[The writer may be reached at glgroenewald@gmail .com for questions or comments.]
[Detailed studies and emails written relating to these foundational themes in Scripture are available on the www.iswasandwillbe.com website, including:]

How do we Apply the Sum of God’s Word to Scripture?
What is Aionios Life?
After the Counsel of His Own Will
Aionian Life is not Eternal