² [the gospel of God] which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, ³concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh …

Promises are the building blocks of God’s plan of glory, of revealing Himself in all His glory to all that is not-God. Of course, before He created, there was nothing that was not-God, but the story of glory for us to comprehend begins with His creation. He is not a pantheistic God. Pantheism is the belief that all is God and God is all; all that is created is part of Him. The Bible teaches that God is not co-extensive with creation, but He created it to exist in a materially separate way. Yet, God created everything to reflect His glory, like a mirror in which He could see Himself (see Isaiah 6:3, Ps 72:19). Nowhere is that reflection seen more clearly than in the fashioning of humankind in His image (Gen 1:26-27, 5:1-2, 1 Cor 11:7).

But with the fall into sin (recorded in Genesis 3 at the earliest stages of God’s revelation to us), the rest of the story is all about God restoring that reflection, that image of God in humankind, to a place where His glory can be seen once again. That is the hope of the promises that saturate the Scriptures. The first such promise is in God’s curse on the serpent, who coaxed Adam and Eve to their spiritual fall: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel” (Gen 3:15). Cryptic though it seems, with the hind-sight of later Scripture, we understand the seed (i.e. descendant) of the woman to be Jesus, and the seed of the serpent to be Satan. Although Satan will inflict a relatively minor injury to Christ (death from which Jesus was raised – depicted as “bruise him on the heel”), Jesus would destroy the devil forever (depicted as “bruising you on the head”).

From that point on, the outline of revelation in Scripture is organized around the singular thread of successive promises, all leading to the glory of God being restored and magnified in the greatest possible way. The book of Romans weaves these promises together in a logical fashion to show that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the seed (descendant) of the woman in Eden. He is the one promised throughout all of Scripture to not just fulfill God plan to restore His glory in creation, but actually be God’s plan. The Old Testament lays out the promises, preparing us for Christ. The New Testament shows Christ to be the fulfillment of those promises. And the book of the Revelation pictures Him in the future returning in glory.

Lord, help me see Your glory in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.