In Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3, Part 4, & Part 5, I have tried to explain through both internal and external evidence that a literal interpretation of Genesis, especially the more contested first 11 chapters, is the more accurate interpretation of Genesis. In this part, I hope to explain why a correct interpretation is critical if we are to have right doctrine regarding all of the Bible.
First I want to look at generally where the different interpretations lead. Then I will look at several specific principles in the Bible and see how they are affected by these starting assumptions.
Assumption of an Old Earth:
If the Earth is old, then the deep layers of sediment were caused by deep time and slow accumulation of sediment, mostly dust, and therefore can’t be caused by a global flood bringing a global flood into question.
If the Earth is old, then there are billions of years, instead of 5 days, before the creation of Adam and Eve. This brings into question the existence of Adam and Eve.
If Adam and Eve were not created on day 6, were they real people? Did God really mold Adam from the mud and breathe life into him? Did God really make Eve out of Adam’s rib?
If Adam and Eve were not created on day 6, then how were they created? Were they created through 100s of millions of years of death and error through the process of Darwinian Evolution?
If Adam and Eve were created through Darwinian Evolution, then death did not come into existence due to the sin of Adam and Eve as Genesis 3 states. If death existed before sin, then is it really true that “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”(Romans 6:23)?
If the “wages of sin is death” is not true, then do we really need a savior? If so, what are we being saved from?
If Genesis is not supposed to be interpreted literally even though it is written in the form of historical narrative, then how do we know what other parts of the Bible can’t be interpreted literally? How can we know what to believe? How can we believe the Bible at all?
If the Bible’s description of beginnings is untrue, how can we say the rest of the Bible is true? How can we know what to believe and what to not believe?
Assumption of a Young Earth :
If the Earth is young, then everything was created in 6 days just as Genesis clearly states.
If the Earth is young, then all of the deep sediments have to be created by catastrophic action like the global flood of Genesis 7-8.
If the Earth and everything on it was created in 6, then there was a real Adam and Eve who were the first humans and all humankind descended from these two individuals and are therefore one race.
If there were a real Adam and Even, then it makes sense that the Bible’s narrative of the first sin being Eve believing the false lies of the serpent and Adam also sinning by disobeying God’s single rule is true and death entered the world through this sin. (FYI, Sin entered the world through Adam rather than Eve because God put all of creation under Adam’s authority. It was Adam’s responsibility to teach God’s laws and ensure that all of God’s laws were obeyed.)
If death entered the world through Adam’s sin, then the original creation was “very good” just as the Bible claimed. It implies that we have a very good, loving creator who created a paradise for us. He did not create sin, suffering, or death. They are a consequence of Adam’s free choice and the existence of sin, suffering, and death today are evidence of God’s mercy and slow judgement and not sadistic creation of suffering.
If we believe that the Bible is best interpreted by reading the clear meaning of the words and not trying to force other “implied” principles into it, then we can believe the clear words of the Bible and know what God has said. We can trust every word of the Bible.
Biblical Principles based in Genesis:
Marriage:
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:18)
The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”
For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:23-25)
These verses tell of how God saw that Adam needed a helper to be complete and how He formed this helper, Eve, to become His wife. Due to the way God created her, He intended them to become one and to never be separated. He defined marriage as one man and one woman joined together for life to be helpers to each other. Marriage is not a social construct, but the original design of the creator God.
Gender/Sex
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27)
The original design of humanity was that all people were either male or female. There was (and is) no other gender. Males and females were part of God’s “very good” creation. Any time we try to change God’s very good design, we are guilty of grievous sin.
Death
God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)
Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. (Genesis 1:29-30)
Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:9)
The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
And you will eat the plants of the field;
By the sweat of your face
You will eat bread,
Till you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:17-19)
God’s very good design did not include death. Every creature was designed to eat only plants. There was no predation. There was no parasitism. A good and loving God would not create life through a billion years of death and suffering. An omnipotent God would not need a billion years of experimentation and error to get His creation right. A good and omnipotent God would speak His perfect creation into existence.
Instead of asking how God created everything so quickly, we should be asking, like the early church, why did it take our awesome God six whole days to create the world? (Answer: He did it to set an example for us knowing we would need six days of work and a seventh day of rest to be at our best).
Adam was personally told the punishment for disobeying His one law, “but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:17) Death never had to enter the world, but God gave Adam and Eve a free choice and they chose unwisely. We have all been paying the price since that day. Death and all of the evil in the world come from these very real choices. God is not the one who created death and suffering. The choices Adam and Eve made led to these consequences.
Salvation
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. (Genesis 3:15)
From the very beginning God had a plan for the salvation of mankind. He knew we would chose disobedience and mistrust instead of obedience and trust, but He was loving enough to plan a solution to the problem of sin. Jesus is the seed that will bruise the head of Satan (eternal damnation in Hell after the end of the age) as Satan bruised Jesus’s heel (crucifixion on the cross for our sins). A bruised head is deadly, but a bruised heel is not and Jesus rose from the dead and conquered the grave.
If we deny a literal Genesis, we lose the reason for salvation and we lose the fact that God had a solution to sin from the very beginning. If we deny a literal Genesis, then God made the world evil with all of creation groaning in agony. Only in a literal interpretation of Genesis can we see God’s very good plan for mankind.
Murder
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28)
Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And he said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground. Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. (Genesis 4:6b:11)
Murder is wrong because man is created in the “image of God.” Murder is wrong because God personally formed Adam and breathed life into him. Murder is wrong because God told mankind to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” Anytime we kill a person, we are destroying the image of God. God clearly shows what He thinks of murder in the historical story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 when He says “Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.”
All of these principles are clearly explained in Genesis. Even much smaller principles, like why we wear clothes and animals do not, are explained in Genesis. Now we need to look at the most important principle of all.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.
But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.
So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:12-21)
The Gospel is all about forgiveness of sin, but it doesn’t make sense until we understand what sin is and what the punishment of sin is: death and separation from God. Both are defined in Genesis.
“For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.” The grace of Jesus only makes sense for a real Jesus if there was a real Adam “So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men”. We need Genesis to make sense of the Gospel. We need Genesis to know that we are guilty of sin and that we are dead men walking who are eternally separated from the loving creator God who died to take away our sins. We need Genesis to know that Jesus, in His bodily form, descends from Adam so He can be our kinsmen redeemer.
The foundation of the Gospel is Genesis, just as its fulfillment is the Gospels.
I hope these posts have grown your understanding of the Bible, its clarity, its inerrancy, and its internal consistency, and that this will help you grow in your faith in Jesus Christ, the savior of the world. To God be the Glory!
Trust Jesus.
your sister in Christ,
Christy
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