The faith we now call Christianity reaches back to a time when Adam and Eve were the only human beings alive.
Before their children, before the nations, before people built religions of their own, God announced the woman’s Seed.
Here is the foundation of what I call the first faith of all mankind: trust in God’s promised deliverance—the promise that would unfold across the ages and reach its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
Its purpose was older still. Before Adam drew his first breath, God had already purposed redemption through Christ, who was foreordained before the foundation of the world.
That purpose entered the human story as a promise in Eden.
Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Their eyes opened, they recognized their nakedness, and they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.
Then they hid from the God who made them.
God had warned them that eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would bring death. When He confronted them, the consequences were real. His authority had not moved an inch.
He addressed the serpent, and within that judgment came a promise reaching far beyond the garden. The woman’s Seed would bruise the serpent’s head. The serpent would wound Him, but that wound would never give the serpent the final victory.
The story would travel through generations before its full meaning stood before human eyes: Jesus Christ, wounded at the cross and victorious over the grave.
Humanity could never provide that Savior. God would provide Him.
He knew what He would permit before Adam ever reached for the fruit. The promise in Eden revealed within history what He had already purposed before history began.
The generations that followed received more of that unfolding promise. They trusted what God revealed while much of its fulfillment still lay beyond their sight.
Abel approached God by faith. Noah believed His warning about a coming flood and built the ark. God had spoken about something Noah had yet to see, and Noah trusted Him enough to put his hands to work.
As humanity spread, people also turned away from the Creator. Romans describes them exchanging His truth for falsehood and worshipping created things. Human imagination could produce gods in abundance. The promised deliverance still depended upon the God who had spoken.
Then came Abraham.
God gave him a promise that reached beyond his household and stretched across the nations. Abraham believed God, and God counted his faith as righteousness.
There was no completed Bible sitting beside his tent. Moses had not yet climbed Sinai. Israel had not received the law.
Faith was already there.
Paul later explained that the blessing promised to all nations was the gospel announced beforehand to Abraham. He identified the promised Seed as Christ.
The road to Bethlehem ran straight through that promise.
In time, Israel built the tabernacle. Priests served, sacrifices were brought, and blood was shed. Each generation encountered the same need: sinful people needed mercy from a holy God.
The sacrifices pointed forward to the Savior. Their repetition kept the need before the people, but the blood of animals could never take away sin.
That required the One God had promised.
Jesus entered human history in the flesh and walked among the people He had come to rescue. He carried our sins to the cross. Men placed His body in a tomb, and death appeared to have closed the matter.
Then He rose.
The serpent’s wound had not defeated God’s purpose. Christ had accomplished the saving work toward which the promises and sacrifices had pointed.
The faithful before His coming trusted God and the promises He revealed to them. We look back upon the Savior’s finished work. Across those ages, their salvation and ours rest upon Him.
Faith receives what Christ purchased.
Jesus identified Himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Acts describes His followers as belonging to the Way, and the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.
What we now call Christianity rests upon the Savior toward whom God’s promises had been pointing all along.
The name came later. The faith did not.
Early Dutch donuts were called oily cakes. They did not suddenly become a new food because people began calling them donuts.
Likewise, the faith did not suddenly become new when its followers came to be called Christians. The Way and Christianity point to the same Savior.
God establishes the way of deliverance. We respond to the mercy He offers. He has already declared where faith and rejection lead, and no human label can rewrite those consequences.
The promise was spoken when humanity consisted of two people in a garden.
Its fulfillment is Jesus Christ.
He is still the Way.
“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.” —Genesis 3:15
—Jeff Wager
#WagerEssays #TheEssayDepot #WhatGodSays #Apologetics #Theology