Genesis 1-6
Closing the series, the theme of sight across Genesis 5-6 and John 3 connects to marriage: believers must marry other believers, though the church itself is not in the marrying business. Drawing on 1 Corinthians 7 and Matthew 22, singleness and marriage alike close things out, set against the resurrection state to come.
Adam before and after his sin gets contrasted, grounding original sin and total depravity in the concrete geography of Genesis 3. God bars Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life, a barring reversed only because in the New Testament we are, geographically speaking, in Christ himself.
Any easy division between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ sins gets questioned, insisting God is never the author of temptation even while examining Christ’s own temptation in Matthew 4:5-7. Adam’s sin, read this way, is far graver than we tend to admit, which is exactly why Christ’s success on our behalf matters so much.
The creation of man and woman is read as fundamentally covenantal, working closely through the nakedness and no shame of Genesis 2:25. Drawing on Matthew 19’s picture of Christ and his bride, marriage carries an eternal intention, with the church itself as the most basic family unit.
Continuing from God’s sovereignty over time, the focus turns to how we ourselves are meant to use it. Adam is more than a mere creature; he is a son, and the garden he is given anticipates, with real similarities and differences, the paradise of Revelation 22.
Against modern seminaries that treat the Bible as too complex for ordinary believers, time and space in Genesis 1 and 2 get worked through directly. God, sovereign over time itself, nonetheless submits to it, exposing our own idolatry of time and pointing toward an eternal sabbath.
A better translation of Genesis 2:2 opens up its significance: God resting on the seventh day, preaching, as it were, from his own temple. That day carries eternal qualities, setting the very pattern for how we are meant to rest.
Genesis is neither myth nor philosophy nor abstract theology, opening the question of what role systematic theology can rightly play alongside it. Walking through the creation account shows a God who involves himself directly in what he has made, and asks what it means for us to be proper lords over it.