Genesis 3: 19, 20
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (But) Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
--NIV
In the name of the Seed of the Woman in Whom we live, amen.
They had been told that they would die if they ate of it, and they certainly did. Man went from being in a face to face relationship with his Creator, to one in which he could find nothing better than to blame his Creator for the evil which he himself had done. Death is separation, and man certainly became separated from God by disobeying Him, by eating what God told him not to eat. There was nothing that man could do to make it right. He was doomed to be afraid of His creator. He was doomed to scramble for excuses, and the only excuse he could find was to blame God.
Still God came to him. Still God spoke those life-giving words about the coming Seed of the Woman who would crush the Great Serpent’s head. Adam didn’t miss those words. They were not wasted on him. After God spoke those life-giving words He went on to tell Adam how difficult his life would be. But all Adam could see was that he was just given a second chance in the Promised Seed—the Christ. He held onto the promise and Scripture literally says, in contrast to how difficult his life would be, “But Adam named his wife Eve, because she would be the mother of all the living.”
It is a beautiful wordplay that should not be missed. If all Adam meant by the name he gave his wife was that she was only to be the mother of the physically living, his words would have been very hollow. They would have been hollow because the difficult life that God described could hardly be praised as life. But the Seed of the Woman would restore eternal, spiritual life. Eve, by her seed became the mother of all the spiritually living. Christ Jesus, born of a virgin (the Seed of a Woman but not a man) brought life to the dead.
This fact has never changed. In a world that can do little more than blame God for all its problems, the promise still gives life in the Seed of the Woman. God grant you His Holy Spirit so that you cling His life-giving word—the Gospel. Amen.
Prayer: Dear holy, Triune God, You alone are worthy of thanks glory and praise for You loved us even when we rebelled against You. Even in our day, so many years after the Seed of the Woman crushed the Serpent’s head, You still reach out to us with Your promise of life. Open our minds to understand, and our hearts to believe Your promise so that we may glorify Your name forever, amen.