Sooner or later we all sit down to a big banquet of consequences. Adam and Eve’s fall has affected humankind ever since. They bit the fruit and it set our teeth on edge. Not only did their behavior set a pattern but it also shaped our wills so that we too choose sin.
God brought judgment in reverse order of the previous conversation. Since the serpent started it, it was cursed to crawl, eat dust, and live in enmity with humans. Once again, we see part of the gospel story here in what scholars call the Protoevangelium. The serpent strikes Eve’s offspring’s heel, but her offspring crushes his head. Reading the Bible backwards, this is an early description of Jesus’ defeat of Satan through the cross. Satan struck his heel. Jesus crushed his head.
Eve’s consequence is severe labor pain in childbirth, and her husband’s rule over her. She will desire her husband, but he will rule over her. This rulership is pronounced as a consequence of the fall. At Pentecost, we sense that this curse of husband ruling is reversed. So Paul will write, in Christ there is not east or west, male or female, slave or free for we are all one in Christ (Galatians 3:28). At Pentecost, sons and daughters both prophesy. As Tolkien wrote, “Everything bad is now coming untrue.” Not all scholars view the reverse of the curse in this way. It is my best reading of the text.
What did Adam lose in the fall? Gardening had been easy earlier. He just harvested the things God had planted. But now he would raise food through painful toil, as well as fight thorns and thistles. He was taken from dust and to dust he would return after his death. God’s warning came true. They ate the fruit and consequently they would die, albeit not immediately. As we age, we face the reality that our bodies are mortal and perishable.
In Paul’s great chapter on resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, he identifies the reversal of the curse of death. Mortal puts on immortality. Perishable puts on imperishable. Death is swallowed up in victory. Adam’s failure and our failures are not eternally fatal. Christ who crushed the serpent’s head rose from the dead. Someday he will destroy death itself.
