Genesis 3:24

Genesis 3:24

(and Romans 7:24)

I. Man's fallen life, viewed externally and internally. (1) Externally. Man was condemned to toil and sorrow, no longer fed by the sacramental fruit of the tree of life, exiled from the garden and debarred from entering the gate, which was closed against him by mysterious shapes and by points of flickering fire. The echoes of sin and sorrow, of care and business and pleasure, that are wakened up for us in the fourth chapter, are the beginning of the moral and physical history of man as he now is. (2) Internally. Strange and terrible possibilities of sin lurk in this human nature of ours. Who can measure the possible distance between himself now and himself twenty years hence? There seem evermore to be two wills in the mystery of the one will. There seem to be two men in the one man, the two wills and two men of whom the apostle speaks in our text.

II. The redeemed life. As we have placed Adam at the head of the fallen life, we place Christ at the head of the redeemed life. Christ is here in these opening Chapter s of Genesis. Dim and indistinct the promise must be admitted to be; just as on some pale winter morning we see a shape dimly in the mirror, and yet recognise it because we have known it before, so in that dim winter morning of prophecy we can see Christ in that first promise, because we have met Him before in the Gospel and the Church.

The redeemed life includes: (1) forgiveness; (2) an emancipated will. In Christ Jesus the fallen life may pass into the redeemed life; in Him, exiles as we are, we may win a right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates and pass into the city which is our home.

Bishop Alexander, Norwich Cathedral Discourses,4th series, No. 4. (See also Contemporary Pulpit,vol. v., p. 65.)

The world was created (1) that it might be a place to exhibit the Lord Jesus Christ; (2) that it might be a system of probation. Adam was placed in probation; Christ was placed in probation; the life of every man is probation.

I. The temptation of Adam and the temptation of Christ were in the main the same. Both had their trial in three great seductions: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.

II. In both the sin, if they had committed it, would have been one and the same.

III. While the probation and the guilt were the same in both, Christ's temptation was severer than Adam's. Adam had nothing resting upon him but his own responsibility; Christ was carrying the burden of a world. Adam was invited to the mere gratification of his own appetite; Christ had set before Him a specious miracle the glory of God and the advancement of an empire which might be held for mighty ends. Yet Adam fell and Christ rose. Adam's falling dragged us down; Christ's rising drew us up.

IV. Note the exceeding mercy which placed at the east of the garden of Eden "Cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." Eating of that tree after the fall would have perpetuated a being marred and disgraced. Love barred the way, that man might not go on with his self-destruction.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 10th series, p. 122.