Hence it was absolutely necessary that the Son of God should become a victim or sacrifice for us, that by the offering of himself he might accomplish all these things for us; that he might take away sin, swallow up death and restore unto us the obedience which we had lost. All these treasures therefore we do possess in Christ, but in hope. Thus Adam, and thus Eve, lived and conquered by this hope. And in the same manner all believers live and conquer, by the same hope, and will so live and conquer until the last day. Death is indeed a horrible and invincible tyrant; but the divine power thus makes that, which is in all things horrible, nothing; just as the same power of God made out of that which was nothing all things. For only behold Adam and Eve. They were filled with sins and with death. But as soon as they heard the divine promise concerning the Seed of the woman, which should bruise the serpent's "head," they were comforted by the same hope which comforts us, that death shall be destroyed, and sin shall be abolished, and that righteousness and life and peace shall be restored. In this hope did our first parents live and die, and on account of that hope they were truly holy and righteous. In the same hope do we also live. And when we come to die, we hold fast this hope of eternal life for Christ's sake, which hope the Word always sets before us, while it commands us to trust in the merits of Christ. But in vain do we expect to attain unto that perfection in this life, that we should be altogether righteous, that we should love God perfectly and that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. We do indeed begin and make progress, but sin which is in our members ever wars against us and is ever present; so that it ever mars or altogether prevents this our obedience. As therefore this life of ours, on account of the death within us and before us, may truly be called a death; so righteousness is altogether buried under our sins. It is in hope therefore alone that we hold fast life and righteousness, as things altogether hidden from our sight, but which will be revealed in their time. Meanwhile our life is a life in the midst of death; and yet, in the midst of this death, we hold fast the hope of life by the teaching, commanding and promising Spirit of God. This consolation is blessedly set forth in, Ps. 68:2, "He that is our God is the God of salvation; and unto God the Lord belong the issues from death." For we ascribe to our God the great glory that he not only helps us in this temporal life, as the devil sometimes stands by his worshippers, as is manifest from numberless examples among the heathen; but the glory which belongs to our God, is that "to the Lord our God belong the issues from death;" that he delivers from death those who are oppressed thereby on account of their sins and translates them into eternal life, Col. 1:13. And our God does this as Moses here teaches us by crushing the "head" of the serpent.