Genesis 3:12, “The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate…”
Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us–for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree…'”
The First Adam brings a curse on his bride, the True Adam bears The curse for His Bride.
Today’s picture grows out of two things. First, I’m continuing to read through Revelation and was struck over the weekend by the beautiful reality that the Lamb–God the Son–has a Bride, and that Bride is the Church……this got me thinking over how the created universe is like a “Garden of Eden” created to be enjoyed by the True Adam (Christ) and the True Bride (The Church) in the age to come…..thus making the historical garden of Eden and the historical Adam and Eve a sort of prefiguring and parable of what God is ultimately intending. This, in turn, cast a brighter light on the distinction between how Adam treats his sinful Bride (joins her in her sin and then blames her for it), vs. how the True Adam treats His sinful Bride (lives a perfect life, bears her sin and punishment and brings her to Himself in holiness).
The second impetus for this picture is a discussion a friend and I were having with two Mormon missionaries in our area. The Book of Mormon presents Adam’s sin as–in some senses–honorable….almost as Milton does in Paradise Lost…..as if Adam did a good thing by “choosing love” and being with his wife so that the human race could continue. This, of course, subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) makes Adam–and by implication, Satan–the hero of the creation account (as some might argue Milton did as well). It’s an incredibly perverse reading of Eden and I wanted to highlight Adam’s folly and Christ’s glory in this image.
