Advent Week One: Hope and Justice

When I considered the illustrations I would create for these four weeks of advent, I knew I wanted to stay away from things people would expect to see around this season. No inns, no stables, no shepherds in a field. At least, not yet. These occasions need to be told, but as we come out from a study of the Old Testament, I wish to linger in those pages a little longer and point back to prophecies and practices that point forward towards the long-awaited Messiah we now celebrate at Christmas time.

HOPE AND JUSTICE: The Protoevangelium

We revisit Genesis 3 in the first week of advent, in the moments after Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and are found guilty before God. Within the words of a bleak and sorrowful curse, God does not leave humanity without hope. God says of the serpent,

“Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

This is the hope of the Gospel: for the serpent is Satan, and the offspring of the woman is Christ. Though Satan may have believed himself the victor when Christ died on the cross at the hands of sinful men, Christ crushed his head in triumph over evil death when he resurrected three days later. And we too, as those who have found life in Jesus Christ, take hope as the sons and daughters of God. For while darkness still surrounds us, we continue in faithful service to our God because we know that He has conquered, and we know that a day is coming when Christ will return to destroy the wounded serpent and the powers of darkness forever.