The First Promise of a Savior

By Ryne Brewer

Scripture Reading: Genesis 3:1-15, Romans 5:12-14

I still remember it: In a foreign country, in the middle of the night, I huddled under a kitchen table with a handful of other students. Intruders had broken into the compound we were staying in. Everything around us had gone quiet. Time felt frozen. Fear coursed through my body like a current I couldn’t escape, unsure of what was happening or what might come next. Dark. Fearful. Disoriented.

That’s what I encounter in Genesis 3:1–15.

An intruder had broken in. A shadow fell over Adam and Eve, the light of perfect fellowship with God suddenly eclipsed by the darkness of guilt, shame, and fear (Genesis 3:7–10). I wonder if they had any real category for what God meant when He said, “you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:7). Did they imagine the weight of fear, the ache of separation, the disorientation of hiding from the very One who had always walked with them in love?

We do now.

The moment their eyes were opened, everything changed (Genesis 3:7). But what kind of vision had they gained, and what had they lost?

Before the fall, they saw only goodness, beauty, and unfiltered communion with God. They weren’t physically blind—the text says nothing of that. But now their eyes opened in a new, haunting way. No longer did they see through the lens of innocence and trust but through the dark veil of sin. They saw their nakedness, sewed together fig leaves, and hid (vv.7–8).

When I think back to that night in the kitchen in Haiti, I remember longing for the morning light to break through. Waiting in the darkness is uncomfortable. But waiting in the darkness without the promise of light; that’s hopeless.

And when Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, they ran from Him. But even in the thick of that shadow, a promise broke through.

A bruised heel and a crushed head (v.15).

That promise was the first beam of light in the darkness. The first ember of hope in a world that had just fallen apart. A Savior would come, not to condemn or ignore the damage. But to undo it.

As I crouched under that table, disoriented and afraid, unsure of what was coming, three words spilled from my lips like water over a rock: “Jesus, save us. Jesus, save us.” Then looking out the archway from the kitchen, a small light appeared in the dark courtyard. The promise of a rescue had come.

And that’s exactly what He came to do. The backdrop of Advent must be dark. It’s in the dark backdrop of Genesis 3:1–15 that the diamond of the promise delivers the first glimpse of hope. This promise must be lived in the tension of waiting and revealing. Because without the waiting, we cannot celebrate the overwhelming revelation of His coming.

Genesis 3:15 creates the ache for Advent. Genesis 3:15 is God saying into the darkness of our sin “Jesus, saves us.”

Written by Ryne Brewer