Type:
by alum Chris Sandoval
They had no concept of the gospel. Living in a remote corner or the world, these people knew little more than each other, their pagan religion, and their paradise home. Then on an especially dark and stormy day, a missionary arrived and, in fear, the half-naked natives hid among the trees. After some reconnaissance and first contact, the missionary quickly realized how lost and dysfunctional these primitives were. Their snake-based mythology had produced female superstition, male negligence, and a society of hedonistic, self-entitled victims. And so the missionary was faced with every evangelist’s challenge — how do you share the good news of Jesus with spiritually indigent and ignorant people in a way that makes sense to them? He knew what he had to do. He had to contextualize the gospel for their sake.
This missionary story isn’t that of Jim Elliot or another famous missionary. It’s actually the story of God and how He shared the gospel with sinful humans for the very first time in human history. While Genesis 1 and 2 reveal God as both Creator and Lawgiver, Genesis 3 depicts Him as the world’s first Missionary who pursued and evangelized lost humans after their disastrous fall in to sin. After condemning the serpent in righteous anger, God makes a promise, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). In this promise, often called the “protoevangelium” or “first gospel”, we hear God masterfully and graciously explain the good news of Jesus to Adam and Eve — people who knew little more than their bodies, their sin, and the serpent who deceived them.
By declaring that “he shall bruise your head,” God explained that this one Child of Eve would defeat the serpent with a fatal blow, thus doing what Adam had been unwilling to do and what his children would be unable to do by themselves.
God knew His audience. God knew what Adam and Eve needed to hear — all was not lost; God would rescue them from sin, death, and Satan. God knew how they needed to hear it — in terms they could understand and believe. And God knew when they needed to hear it — now, not later after long explanations or complicated lessons of what was yet to come. With a simple shift from the plural “offspring” to the singular pronoun “he”, God promised that one Child of Eve would represent all of her other children and stand in their place. By declaring that “he shall bruise your head,” God explained that this one Child of Eve would defeat the serpent with a fatal blow, thus doing what Adam had been unwilling to do and what his children would be unable to do by themselves. And by revealing that “you shall bruise his heel,” God foretold how the conquering representative Child of Eve would accomplish salvation for all who trust in him — he would save them by suffering for them. And just like that, with amazing brevity, profundity, sensitivity, and urgency, God shared the gospel.
Thankfully, it would not be the last time or the only way God would explain the good news of Jesus to sinners. With unwavering determination and compassion, God would continue to share the gospel with humans as they, their cultures, and their languages multiplied and filled the earth. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways,” wrote the author of Hebrews, “God spoke to our fathers by the prophets” (Hebrews 1:1). Every time, God contextualized the message for the sake of those that needed to hear it.
And yet there remained one ultimate contextualized expression of the gospel, one preeminent way of communicating the gospel to all humans so that every human might understand and believe. Thousands of years after the good news of Jesus was first announced by God, John the Evangelist declared that Jesus, the Son of God and God’s very Word of salvation, “became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
As we hear, believe, and study the gospel of Jesus, may we work hard to share it with others as God shared it with us — full of grace and truth.
