And
God said to the serpent, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and
between your seed and her Seed. He shall
bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” (Genesis 3: 15)
We
can’t be sure how well our proto-parents understood human reproductive biology,
after all, at this point in history, there had not been any human
reproduction. Well, except for that one
time God used Adam’s bone tissue to clone a female version of him (Genesis
2:21, 22). But Adam was unconscious when
that happened, so anyway.
Adam
and Eve may or may not have realized what we do: that Genesis 3:15 is impossible. Biologically and legally a woman can’t produce
the prophesied male “Seed.”
Biologically impossible
In
the non-scientific vocabulary of the Bible, the seed is a euphemism for either offspring or sperm. Women don’t mthe former alone, and they don’t
produce the latter at all . For a woman
to bring forth a male seed to the serpent’s head, you’d have to have a pregnant
virgin.
And
that, as everybody well knows, is impossible.
Legally impossible
One
of the conditions of mankind’s punishment for Adam’s and Eve’s sin was
patriarchy. God declared that part of
the woman’s/ women’s sorrow would be that “Your desire shall be for your
husband, And he shall rule over you.”
(Genesis 3:16)
Generally
speaking the Paradise of gender equality (equality, not equivalence) in Eden
was replaced by a hierarchy in which women wanted but never quite achieved the
same level of authority their husbands enjoyed.”
That’s
why the line of inheritance was traced through male descendants. (By the way, if you’re looking for an example
of Divine reprieve from that clause in the Curse, read about the daughters of
Zelophedad in Numbers 27 & 36).
The
point is that even if a virgin did miraculously conceive and give birth to a
male seed, the son still wouldn’t have had the legal right to fulfill his
destiny. The law only recognized the
rights passed on through the male line.
Genesis
3:15 calls for a virgin-born child whose “father” isn’t his biological father
but is from the same genetic line as his mother.
That’s
freakin’ impossible.
Except,
there was this one time.
Biologically
(im)possible
One
day the angel Gabriel appeared to an betrothed but unmarried virgin named
Mary. He told Mary that she would conceive asexually
and have a son who would be named Jesus, and “He will be great, and will be
called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His
father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His
kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:32, 33)
“Then
Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I do not know a man?’ “ (Luke
1:34) Basically Mary said, “That’s
impossible, Gabriel. I’m a virgin, and that
ain’t about to change.”
Gabriel’s
responded, “For with God nothing will be
impossible.” (Luke 2:37)
The
same God who formed Adam directly from African dust and Eve from Adam’s tissue
sample, formed a body for Jesus in the unfertilized womb of a Jewish virgin.
“For
with God nothing will be impossible.”
Legally
(im)possible
Matthew
1 and Luke 3 list two different genealogies for Jesus. Matthew gave us the line of Jesus adopted
(i.e. legal) father, Joseph. Luke gave
the lineage of Mary, Jesus’ biological mother.
If, as traditional history maintains, Mary was an only child or the
oldest of only daughters, then her husband would have been her dad’s legal
heir. Which is why Luke 3:23 calls
Joseph the son of Heli, even though Heli was Mary’s dad.
So
legally, in accordance with the culture of the times, Jesus was the proper heir
of the Davidic line of promise going all the way back to Adam and Eve and that
impossible prophesy in Genesis 3:15.
“For
with God nothing will be impossible.”
The
impossibility of impossibility in God became the theme of Mary’s life and
perhaps the family’s motto. Surely she
taught that motto to her eldest son, her miracle baby. We
can hear echoes of that theme in Jesus’ teaching.
In
Matthew 17: 20, when the disciples began to doubt because they’d failed to cast
out a demon, Jesus said to them, “if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will
say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and
nothing will be impossible for you.”
In
Matthew 19: 25, when the disciples worried that Jesus’ they would not be able
to live up to Jesus Divinely high expectations, they asked “Who then can be
saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this
is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
From
the very beginning, when mankind first begin to screw up God’s directions, the
Lord made a point of showing that He could do the undoable.
Your
biological, medical, or physical situation may be actually be impossible.
But
with God nothing is impossible.
Your
situation under the law, in the culture, according to the social expectations
may be genuinely impossible.
But
with God nothing is impossible.
You
may be in a state of absolute spiritual darkness and lostness with no possible
outcome but despair.
But
if God can make a virgin conceive without losing her virginity, then God can
bring your lost soul back into fellowship with Him.
If
God can make two lines of genealogy meet at just the right moment to fulfill
the impossible requirements of a fallen world AND a prophetic destiny spoken
when the world was freshly fallen, then God can save even you and me when we
know that it’s impossible for us to be saved.
You
see, with God nothing is impossible.
Merry
CHRISTmas.
---Anderson T. Graves
II is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry,
and rural leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse
Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO); and
director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human
Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
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