Crushing the Head of the Serpent

The first prophecy about Jesus arises from the curse narratives in early Genesis. After the fall of Adam and Eve, God curses Satan and tells him that he will put enmity between the woman and him. God declares that Satan’s seed will bruise the heel of the woman’s seed, and that the offspring of the woman – one in particular – will crush the head of Satan (Genesis 3:14-15). While that one member of Eve’s lineage will suffer with a bruised heel, the satanic serpent will lose all of his power when his head is crushed and his body rendered useless. *The Hebrew word for bruise in the curse narrative (שׁוּף H7779) can be rendered as to bruise, to crush, to break, to cover, or to fall upon. It denotes sudden violence. 

From that early passage, the Bible quickly sets in motion another narrative – a long, repeating story line in which two families emerge. One of those families is born from the spiritual fatherhood of Satan, and one of those is born from the spiritual fatherhood of God. This narrative is threaded throughout both the Old and New Testament scriptures. In the Old Testament, Abel was a child of God, but Cain a child of the Devil (Genesis 4:1-16, 1 John 3:10-12). In the New Testament, certain religious leaders are children of the devil (John 8:44), while others become the Children of God (John 1:9-13).  At the end of the age, God will separate the sheep from the goats. The sheep will inherit a kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world, and the goats will be cast into an eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:31-46). The parable of the wheat and the tares tells the story of God’s children, and the Children of Satan growing together in the same field. When the field reaches maturity and the harvesters are able to easily tell the two apart, the wheat will be gathered to the kingdom, and the tares will be gathered for the fire (Matthew 13:24-43).

Jesus crushed the head of the serpent on the cross dousing his power (Colossians 2:13-15). While the cross ultimately rendered Satan impotent, his time was not completely done.  In the remainder of the human age, he continues to roam to and fro.  But God has built a family, a community, and a called out assembling of believers who follow his son, Jesus Christ. These believers became his body (Ephesians 4:11-16). The Body of Christ is not just a title that those of us who belong to Jesus carry around. It is also what we do. We are Christ’s hands and feet on Earth, and we wrestle with the powers of darkness (Ephesians 6:12). Paul tells us in Romans 16:20 that the head of those powers will be crushed beneath our feet by the power of God – bringing to fruition that very first prophecy of Jesus!