After Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, God cursed the serpent. Genesis 3:15 states, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Scholars refer to this verse as the Protoevangelium, or the first gospel, because it’s the first promise in Scripture of the sacrifice Jesus would make on the cross.
Jesus would one day crush Satan’s head by dying for humanity’s sins and rising from the grave, while Satan would bruise Jesus’s heel on the cross.
What’s worthy to note is that this promise of salvation comes even before God curses the woman (Genesis 3:16) and the man (Genesis 3:17-19).
In Ephesians 1:4, Paul writes: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.”
God is not merely reacting to humanity’s fall; He had a plan in place for our salvation from the beginning.
