Grace Greater than our Sin – Genesis chapter 3 verses 20 to 24
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live for ever.’ 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:20-24 New International Version – UK (NIVUK) Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Grace Greater than our Sin
- Grace through childbirth: verse 20. Adam now gave the Woman the name Eve, “mother of all living”. There is the promise of life even after the sentence of death.
- Grace through covering: verse 21. God provides a better covering from them than the rags of leaves they had made to cover their shame (but an animal has to die to make them clothes). Death brought them a covering, pointing forward to Jesus’ death.
- Grace through exile: verses 22-24. They must not eat of the tree of life – to live forever with the misery of sin would be hell. But there is hope of a better day.
“He must till the earth in which he will after a short span decay. In the soil which he turns over with his spade, he has before his eyes both his origin and his future.
Franz Delizsch – A New Commentary on Genesis, p173
You will die. You will suffer and you will die. But that suffering and death which will free him to enter the presence of God becomes the source of his hope.
John Macarthur – The Promise of Redemption
