Falling To The Ground

The LORD God said to the serpent, . . . “You are cursed.”   Genesis 3:14

Hope began on the very day that the man and woman sinned. And it began with a curse! When a person or thing is “cursed,” it is set apart for destruction. So when God cursed the serpent, he was announcing that evil would not stand. Satan would not have the last word. Adam and Eve must have been overjoyed at hearing this news.

If God had not promised an end to evil, who else could? Without the Curse, we would be stuck with the knowledge of evil forever. Our newspapers continue to report another massacre, another atrocity, another dictator—we can’t get free from it. But God said, “You are cursed,” and from that moment on, our enemy was under a sentence of destruction.

Then God pronounced a second curse. He turned to the man and began to speak. Adam must have held his breath. God was looking straight at Adam as he spoke that dreadful word, but Adam was in for a surprise. Instead of saying to Adam, “You are cursed,” God said, “The ground is cursed because of you” (Genesis 3:17).

God announced he would destroy evil, and he deflected the Curse away from Adam so that it fell on the ground instead. God is just, so the Curse must go somewhere, but he directed it away from the man and the woman. At the right time, God would direct the Curse to fall on his Son. That is what the cross is about: “Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13).

Whenever the man and the woman experienced the pain and disappointment of life in this fallen world, they were reminded of the Curse that fell on the ground, not on them. On the very day that they sinned, they discovered the grace and mercy of God.

For further reading, see Galatians 3