Thinking about God’s attributes may be hard work, but no other object of study is more suitable to humble and expand our mind. It allows us to forget ourselves and focus all our attention on the only true God who is the source of all life and blessings.

When we talk about God’s attributes we try to answer questions such as “Who is God?” and “What is God like?” Now, these questions may seem futile—how can our finite minds grasp who God is or what He is like? These questions may also seem rather abstract, questions that scholars, but not ordinary Christians, may find fascinating. Instinctively, we tend to be much more interested in what God has done for us rather than in who He is. In a sense, this is understandable. Arguably, one of the achievements of the Protestant Reformation was to refocus people’s minds on what God had done for them in Christ. John Calvin frequently criticized medieval theologians for “merely toying with idle speculations”1 about the nature or the essence of God. However, Calvin and the other Reformers did not deny the utility of thinking about God’s attributes. On the contrary, they encouraged a knowledge of God that would foster pietas, as they called it, what Calvin defined as “that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces.”2

However, the topic of God’s attributes was explored in greater depth by seventeenth-century Reformed theologians.3 Among those, no one wrote a more comprehensive study than the English Puritan Stephen Charnock. His Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God is the most extensive Puritan treatise on the doctrine of God. It was written at the end of his life for the congregation in Bishopsgate, London, that Charnock copastored with another famous Puritan, Thomas Watson. Unfortunately, the work was left unfinished when Charnock died in 1680 while writing a discourse on the patience of God. The work displays the qualities that make him one of the best Puritan theologians: a sharp mind, remarkable exegetical skills, and a peculiar gift for striking metaphors and analogies. However, this work is especially valuable and still worth reading today because of its typical Puritan emphasis on practical applications.
Charnock never gives the impression that the attributes of God are simply qualities that describe who He is; rather, He affirms the classical Christian doctrine that God is all His attributes fully at the same time. There is no distinction between His attributes and His essence (divine simplicity). Charnock’s focus is also firmly Christocentric, as he always shows how Christ claimed these divine attributes for Himself. Now, these discourses on the existence and attributes of God are nearly one thousand pages long,4 and one may ask why he wrote so much on this topic. I believe it is because Charnock knew that glorifying God is our privilege and duty as Christians, and we cannot glorify Him as we should if we do not have a right view of His attributes. Charnock’s colleague in Bishopsgate, Thomas Watson, wrote that to “glorify God” means, among other things, to have “God-admiring thoughts.”5 This is exactly what Charnock tries to instill in us through those discourses. In one of the introductory discourses he makes the crucial point that worship is essentially an act of understanding, an idea that we desperately need to recover today. Says Charnock:
Worship is an act of understanding, applying itself to the knowledge of the excellency of God, and actual thought of his majesty, recognizing him as the supreme lord and governor of the world, which is natural knowledge; beholding the glory of his attributes in the Redeemer which is evangelical knowledge.6
Let us start where Charnock starts, with God’s eternity. Charnock begins by affirming that it is possible for us to think about such an attribute. Although we clearly cannot grasp fully what God’s eternity means, we can understand that this attribute is real:
Though we cannot comprehend eternity, yet we may comprehend that there is eternity; as though we cannot comprehend the essence of God, what he is, yet we may comprehend that he is.7

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Jesus clearly represents the seed of the woman who’s crushing the Serpent, and his children are clearly set in opposition to the children of the Serpent. If John is describing the outworking of Genesis 3:15, then he appears to understand the seed of the woman in that verse in both an individual and a collective sense.

The past 30 years have provided something of a renaissance in the interpretation of Genesis 3:15, with many evangelical scholars providing sound exegetical and theological argumentation that this verse explicitly anticipates a future individual offspring of the woman. However, many scholars still strongly affirm the collective understanding of the seed of the woman.
Another view proposes that the expectation of the seed of the woman is both individual and collective. In this interpretation, the verse anticipates (1) an individual coming Deliverer who will be at enmity with and exchange blows with the Serpent and (2) a collective group associated with the individual coming Deliverer who will participate in this enmity against the Serpent and his seed.
Several New Testament passages allude to Genesis 3:15 and demonstrate a collective and individual application of its outworking. Here are seven examples.
1.  Opponents of Jesus as Offspring of the Serpent
The Gospel accounts display an ongoing enmity: Jesus and his followers (seed of the woman) on one side and Satan and his agents (seed of the Serpent) on the other. On several occasions, Jesus identifies his opponents as children or offspring of the Devil. In attributing their spiritual parentage to the Devil, Jesus declares his opponents are thinking and acting like the Devil.
Jesus directly addresses the Pharisees as “serpents” and a “brood of vipers” (Matt. 23:33; cf. 3:7; Luke 3:7). A Jew identifying someone as the offspring of a serpent is, in view of the broader context of the Old Testament, quite possibly alluding to Genesis 3:15 to some degree. These statements don’t necessarily address whether the seed of the woman is individual or collective, but they do suggest Jesus understands his opponents to be representative of the offspring of the Serpent.
In John 8, Jesus identifies the Jewish religious leaders with the offspring of the Serpent in his heated dialogue with “the Jews” (also identified as the Pharisees in v. 13) who insist they’re the offspring (σπέρμα) of Abraham (vv. 33, 39). Though Jesus concedes these “Jews” are offspring of Abraham in a physical sense (v. 37), they’re not truly “Abraham’s children” (τέκνα τοῦ Ἀβραάμ) because they don’t do “the works Abraham did” (v. 39).
True offspring of Abraham wouldn’t seek to kill Jesus, a man who speaks God’s truth (vv. 37, 40). Furthermore, God cannot be their father (v. 41) since they’re rejecting Jesus, the One whom God had sent (v. 42). Instead, the Devil is their father, since they fulfill his desires in their opposition to Jesus (v. 44).
Jesus points out the two primary sins of the Devil that solidifies their connection to him: he was a “murderer from the beginning,” and he is “a liar and the father of lies” (v. 44). The Jews’ intent to murder Jesus (vv. 37, 40, 44, 59), their rejection of his truth (vv. 37, 43–47), and their propagation of lies (vv. 41, 48, 52) demonstrate their character reflects the character of the Devil. The Devil, then, is their spiritual father, and they’re his offspring.
Because Jesus is certainly alluding to the Serpent’s actions in Genesis 3 in identifying the Devil as a liar and a murderer, he’s likely thinking of that chapter in referring to the unbelieving Jews as children of the Devil—the offspring of the Serpent.
“Enmity” describes Jesus’s relationship with such offspring of the Serpent. When Jesus confronts the offspring of the Serpent, he doesn’t come peaceably; rather, he engages in a harsh war of words in which he identifies and overcomes the agents of Satan.
This enmity doesn’t end with the Serpent’s seed’s rejection of Jesus; it continues with the offspring of the Serpent persecuting, flogging, killing, and crucifying Jesus’s messengers (Matt. 23:34–35). If these entities are representative of the offspring of the Serpent and if they’re at enmity with the individual Messiah, then these references appear to support the idea of the individual offspring of the woman being fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus presents these as enemies not only of himself but also of his followers. Therefore, throughout Jesus’s ministry, the offspring of the Serpent are at enmity with Jesus and his followers. 
Though Jesus’s followers aren’t specifically identified as “offspring of the woman,” their position of enmity with the offspring of the Serpent assumes this identification. It isn’t necessary for Jesus to say, “You, my disciples, are offspring of the woman” in order to understand that the theme of enmity promised in Genesis 3:15 is being displayed in the Gospels. These conflicts support the idea of enmity between both individual and collective offspring.
2.  John’s Theology of the World (Gospel of John)
John’s theology of the world also reflects the individual and collective enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent. John presents Satan as the ruler of the world (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; 1 John 5:19), who works in direct opposition to Jesus. The “world” in this sense in John refers not to the created universe but to the sinful people and the systems that stem from those sinful people (and from their ruler, the Devil).
John positions the world in direct opposition to Jesus. Not only does the world hate Jesus (John 7:7; 15:18–24), but the world also hates believers—those who follow Jesus (John 15:18–24; 17:14; 1 John 3:13).
If Satan is identified as the Serpent from Genesis 3, and those who follow after him are identified as his “seed” or his children (or “the world”), then it seems consistent to understand John’s theology of the world as unfolding the concepts presented in Genesis 3. Satan and the world persist in their enmity toward Jesus and believers. The world “hates” Jesus and his people. Satan and the sinful leaders of this world put Jesus to death (striking his heel), but Jesus ultimately is victorious over the Devil (striking his head) and overcomes the world (John 16:33). Christians participate in this victory as they also overcome the world (1 John 2:13–14; 4:4; 5:4–5).
Though John doesn’t specifically identify believers as “offspring of the woman,” he clearly states they’re at enmity with the Devil and those who follow the Devil.
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Written by Aaron L. Garriott |
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
As Christians living in an age of instant gratification, we will no doubt succumb to the pleasures of Egypt from time to time. But more importantly, the Christian knows that nothing in this age can bring ultimate gratification. For that, we seek the city that is to come (Hebrews 13:14).

Time seemed to move at half-speed while I was sitting in the hospital waiting room. My wife’s surgery to remove her cancer was scheduled to be one hour. Three, four, five hours went by. The surgeon came to assure me that although the cancer was worse than the biopsy had shown, he was still actively working on removing all that he could. So I waited.
Friends and family sent text messages from hours away that were delivered instantly. In between my prayers, I ordered a burger on my phone for prompt delivery. I searched on Google for “complications with cancer surgery” and immediately had thousands of answers at my fingertips. On the one hand, I was in control of a lot. I could have a burger prepared and delivered to me within the hour. I could have an Amazon package on my doorstep the next day. I could speak to friends hundreds of miles away in live time. I could FaceTime my children. Yet I was in control of so little. I was at the mercy of the surgeon’s skilled hand. I was waiting to see my beloved wife and waiting for the doctor to report whether the cancer would take her. I was waiting on the Lord and, perhaps more importantly, with the Lord. Finally, eight hours in, the surgeon came to tell me that she was successfully out of surgery.
That lengthy day demonstrated my aversion to waiting and the plethora of gadgets and apps I had that could help curb that aversion. We’ve been conditioned to assume that waiting is something to be avoided at all costs. We are the generation of Disney FastPasses, direct flights, eBay bidding, television streaming, quick bites, and free two-day shipping. Certain occasions in life, however, remind us that we have no choice but to wait. We might be able to gratify certain desires here and now, such as ordering dinner, but the ultimate things in life require waiting, and often for lengthy periods. Because we’ve been accustomed to having answers to our inquiries with the simple click of a button or tap on a screen, we can fall victim to the illusion of control. In short, modern technology has habituated us to expect to get what we want, how and when we want it. And we want it now.
One may wonder whether our aversion to waiting is any greater than that of previous generations. It’s a fair question, for God’s people have always faced difficulties in waiting on the Lord and in not growing impatient as they expect Him to intervene for their good and His glory. The iPhone didn’t create impatience, but it has profoundly reshaped and conditioned our expectations. In particular, the modern era of digital technology has strengthened our expectations for instant gratification of our desires and, conversely, instant relief of our pain and suffering. If I’m hungry, I can order a cheeseburger. If my back hurts, I can order relief meds. Sinful patterns are often born out of inordinate desires and quick fixes, such as that of the young man who, rather than actively waiting for a godly spouse, finds a cheap imitation on a screen. But not all time-saving conveniences are inherently bad. Modern technology can enhance efficiency, save lives, enrich fellowship, and more. Yet if we’re not careful, digital technologies can infect the soil of our minds in such a way that stunts the growth of godly patience. We can become like Esau, who considered his birthright worthless compared to the immediate need to satiate his hunger (Gen. 25:32: “What use is a birthright to me?”). Whether the “technology” is a bowl of stew or an iPad, the “Buy It Now” option in all of life may give us the illusion of control and rob us of the opportunity to wait in fellowship with God and with His people.
For me, as a waiting-averse person dwelling in an age of instant gratification, is there any hope? Cultivating a spirit of waiting (Rom. 8:23) in an age of immediacy is an upstream voyage. Nonetheless, the Spirit of sanctification who indwells us (v. 9) is not inhibited by our tech-induced hyperactivity. Let’s consider three ways to better pursue faith-waiting in an age that considers waiting an impediment.
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