December in Southeast Queensland is the month when snakes mate — a time to take care when walking in the garden or through long grass. It’s the disobedient first Adam’s longtime legacy to the human race. However, the very first prophecy in the Bible declares that his legacy of sin and death would end with the heel of the Messiah crushing the head of “that old serpent, the devil” (Genesis 3:15). Jesus was that Messiah (Christ) and in his act of crushing that head his heel — picturing our Lord’s humanity and so -vulnerability — would be wounded. (Was this the origin for the mythical Achilles’ Heel?)
“Jesus Christ our Lord was made a descendant of David, humanly speaking, and was declared to be the Son of God with power…by being raised from among the dead.” (Romans 1:3, 4) Psalm 1:7 is quoted in Acts 13:33 and Hebrews 1:5 & 5:5)
Further statements state that Jesus Christ is “the image of God, the firstborn of a New Creation. He is The Head of the Body, the Church, and “the [new] beginning, the Firstborn from the dead…” (Colossians 1:15, 18)
The Father’s only-begotten (I.e. uniquely-born) Son has a countless number of siblings, all of them created in his image. Jesus alone is the perfect image of his Father. However, we who believe are also sons of God through the New Birth, and as such are the image of God on earth (Hebrews 1:10).
The Last Adam has restored the human race through those who believe, so that it has again become “the image of God” that was so very marred by the disobedience of the first Adam. The time is coming when God will establish a New Eden on Planet Earth, one that will be totally snake-free and so much more fitting for the presence of His New Creation in Jesus Christ.
“A snake-free zone, you say? I’d like to see that!” You will, if you choose to serve the Lord Jesus in this life. But if you do not, you had better prepare yourself to live with snakes in the next one.