What a gospel is ours, and what a Savior!  To our great shame, familiarity has numbed too many of us to our great Christ.  We grow cold and hard of heart.  May the Holy Spirit through the Word of God once more prick and provoke us with the Person and work of our Lord.  May we once more marvel and rejoice in, thank and praise, and submit to and obey the One whom to know aright is life eternal.  And in order to do so, we must consciously and deliberately turn our thoughts to Him and meditate on the truths that the Bible reveals concerning Him.  In the remainder of this brief space, we will consider a part of the very first promise concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. 

            If you had the power of God, what, do you suppose, would be your first announced promise concerning the Son in whom is all your delight?  Would it have to do with His glory?  His honor?  His praise?  His adoration?  His power?  His dominion?  Or perhaps some combination of all of those?  What love and humility, then, should it inspire in us when the first promise of God concerning His Son is one that involves hostility and suffering?  “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” (Gen. 3:15).  Has ever a loving father made such a vow concerning a son?  “I will make your life hard and miserable.  I will ensure that you have nothing but trouble.  And I will end your life with a loathsome, excruciating death.”

            Enmity.  Hostility.  Hatred.  These were the promises rendered to the Son of God.  And whose enmity did the Father evoke against His Son?  Was it the hatred of a man or even a family?  Was it the hatred of a clan or tribe?  Of a nation?  Or even of all mankind?  No, it was the hatred of the Archenemy, a rebel, a fiend, sin personified, Apollyon or the Destroyer.  The one who lives for the sole purpose of hurting and finally destroying.  The one who neither knows nor shows mercy.  The one who is altogether malevolent and who delights in causing ruin.  It was this one, Satan, whom God promised would antagonize, oppose, and war against the Son throughout His days on earth.  None has ever been put in such a crucible, for none could have withstood such fierce antagonism.  But such a life was the promise of the Father to His Son.

            Bruising.  “Bruising the heel” is a figurative way of promising that Satan would cause the Son to suffer.  In other words, the enmity and hostility that Satan would bear against Christ would be no mere philosophical or theoretical hatred.  It would issue in the suffering of the Son.  Sorrow and anguish would be His lot, not just in His culminating hours on the cross where it would be brought to excruciating perfection, but throughout His life.  All that He did and all that He was would be opposed by Satan, sometimes directly as in the wilderness temptation, sometimes indirectly by fomenting anger and murderous hatred in acquaintances, friends, and even professed disciples.  He knew what it was to be cold, hungry, and exhausted, to be buffeted and attacked with murderous intent.  He knew what it was to suffer wholly as a man that which would have destroyed any other man.  And all this was His legacy from His Father.

            And why was such a promise given by God and fulfilled against His Son?  It was for this reason:  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).  May we think more on Him and less on ourselves.  It will put this life in the proper perspective, provoke us to love and faithfulness, and fire our zeal to serve.