“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

When we think of the birth of the Lord Jesus we often think of Luke 2 when the angels announce the birth of Christ to the shepherds. But the message of the coming Savior actually appears much earlier in Scripture. The first announcement of the birth of the Lord Jesus in the Bible was spoken in the Garden of Eden.

When sin entered the world through “one man’s disobedience,” and “death through sin,” and thus “death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12), none of this took God by surprise. In fact, He had the plan of salvation prepared before the foundation of the world. Yet as soon as sin entered—placing mankind at a distance from God—He made a promise. This promise appears in our verse, declaring both the suffering of Christ on the cross (“you shall bruise His heel”) and His ultimate victory over Satan (“He shall bruise [crush] your head”).

This promise is woven throughout Scripture. Galatians 3:16 tells us, “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’ who is Christ.” This promise was given again through Isaiah: “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14). The name Immanuel comes from the Hebrew words Immanu-El, meaning “God with us.”

This promise even included the very place where the Savior would be born: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for Me One who is to be Ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.” (Micah 5:2)

Our verse reminds us that the coming Christ would crush Satan—and this is exactly what happened at Calvary, when the Lord Jesus destroyed “him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and [released] those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:14–15).

Anchor For Today:
The purpose of Christ’s coming into the world was to go to the cross—to pay the price of sin—so that you and I might have eternal life.