07-02-2016 THE SERPENT'S SEED
By John Aldworth
Posted 07-02-2016
Many people think they are naturally children of God. After all, doesn’t the Bible say man and woman were made in God’s image? It does, but that doesn’t mean that babies are innocent from birth; that people are really good underneath; that they just training to make them better and that just as they are people can go to heaven when they die.
Stopping them from being good, or like God, which is godliness, is the little problem of the serpent’s seed. This was injected into mankind way back at the beginning of time in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:15). By getting Adam and Eve to disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit (Gen. 2:17) the serpent brought sin and death to all. From then on every person on earth has been born as a seed of the serpent.
With one exception – ‘the seed of the woman’, the Lord Jesus Christ who was indeed born a holy Son of God and remained so throughout his life until, on the cross, He was made sin for us who (Himself) knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus is described as the ‘last Adam’ (1 Cor. 15:45) because, humanly speaking, He was a reproduction of the original unfallen Adam. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost from the untainted genetic seed preserved untainted in every woman from Eve on down to his mother Mary. Everyone else has been born, not holy from this unsullied women’s seed, but from this seed as corrupted by sin. Hence, we are ‘serpent’s seed’. We are all, the Bible assures us, ‘born in sin and shapen in iniquity’ (Psalm 51:5).
Right through the Bible, the serpent’s seed keeps cropping up. In Matt. 13 Jesus talks about it in the parable of the tares. These are weeds that look like wheat but are not and can only be distinguished from the true wheat at harvest time (the end of the world). Here the wheat is they that hear the word and understand it. The tares are the ‘serpent’s seed’ and the ‘enemy’ that sowed them is the devil. When sprouted they are the ‘children of the wicked one. The harvest is the end of the world and the reapers are the angels.
The end of the serpent’s seed or tares is described by Jesus in Matt. 13:41-43:
The Son of man shall send forth his angels and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity. And shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who0 hath ears to hear let him hear.
This takes place at the end of this world at the Second Coming, at the ushering of the day of the Lord. Joel 3:13 also describes this harvest of the wicked ones: Put ye in the sickle for the harvest is ripe … for their wickedness is great.
Back in Gen. 3:15 the Lord God told the serpent;
I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel.
In Rom. 16:20 this promise is reiterated to the Acts period Church of God:
And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
Shortly means shortly. And the truth that Satan’s head had indeed been bruised by the seed of the woman was revealed within the lifetime of these believers.
The Apostle Paul writes in Col. 2:14-15:
Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; And having spoiled principalities and powers He made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
This then is how Satan is knocked on the head. But what of the serpent’s seed? They are also dealt a death blow through the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. But, before explaining how, let us see who the serpent’s seed are in our time.
In Eph. 2:1-5 we learn the appalling truth that we ourselves were the serpent’s seed until God quickened us out of being ‘dead in trespasses and sins’. . Note that in verse 2 we are told that ‘in time past we walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience’. And the children of disobedience must be the serpent’s seed because it was through Adam’s disobedience that they came into existence..
In verse 3 we are told that whether Jew or Gentile we all had our conversation in time with this spirit and thus took our place among these serpent’s seed:
… in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature the children of wrath even as others.
Did you get that? We by nature are children of wrath, children of disobedience, serpent’s seed. And so short of completed salvation by grace is everyone on earth.
Verses 4 and 5 have the good news:
But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins has quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved.
As a serpent's seed to start with it’s important to know what you are saved from The answer is by being quickened by God the Father and made one with his Son Christ Jesus. It’s also important to know what we are saved for and we find the answer for that in Titus 2:13. We are told we should be:
Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and Saviour Jesus Christ. That is the reason.
Has Satan really been bruised under our feet? Are we truly no longer seen as serpent’s seed by a holy God? Thankfully, the answer is yes. Col. 1: 12-13 makes this plain. We are told we should be:
Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light (i.e. angels in heaven) , Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son.
This is the Lord’s ‘heavenly kingdom’ spoken of by Paul as his eternal home in 2 Tim. 4:18. There will be no serpent’s seed there but the question we must ask and answer is whether we too will also be there like Paul. In other words, have we taken the 'high calling of God' (Phil. 3: 14).