I. What is being confessed in this article?⤒🔗

Here it speaks of God’s direct reaction to man’s fall into sin.

1. This article deals with what God did to make mankind happy again immediately after he perished both physically and spiritually, through man’s own fault. In particular, God’s incomprehensible goodness and wisdom were then revealed. God’s intervention is vividly described: when he saw how deeply man had plunged himself in his misery, he went to look for him of his own accord when the latter had fled from him in fear and trembling. And God did not condemn him immediately but comforted him with the promise to give him his Son.
2. This Son would be given to us as a true man, for he would be like every other human, brought into the world through a woman. He would crush the head of the serpent—the devil—and make man blessed.

II. How God saw man←⤒🔗

1. “He saw that man had thus plunged himself into physical and spiritual death and made himself completely miserable.” What is meant by the physical and spiritual death? One thing is clear: that this refers to the situation of Adam and Eve immediately after the fall. So it is said of people who were alive and well and in good spirits that they had not only plunged into spiritual death but also physical death. This is because someone who no longer entrusts the care of his body to the Creator and seeks other places for it has in fact handed his body over to death. Despite all his cares, he has then plunged himself into physical death. He lives and works like a dead person and he eats and drinks like a dead person. Such was the situation of man after his fall into sin.
2. In addition, his death is also called "spiritual." Again, this does not mean that his spirit could no longer do anything and was completely disabled, but that this spirit (or soul) had broken with God. On account of his spirit, a man can think and feel; in short, everything we do as human beings we do with our spirit. But when this human spirit had broken its bond with God, all its spiritual activities were directed against God, who is the source of life. Immediately after the fall, Adam and Eve abused their spiritual capabilities to contradict God (Genesis 3:12-13). They were spiritually dead, because their living spirit turned against God.
3. All in all, then, “spiritual and physical death” means that man, in both body and soul, has broken with the God of life.          
   God saw this happen. He saw that man was then hopelessly lost and utterly wretched, because when the bond with God is broken, then at the same time the relationship between man and his fellow man is also disrupted. A sad proof of this is already the ugly way in which Adam spoke of his wife in Genesis 3:12. But then also the relationship between man and all nature is disturbed. The earth was cursed, with all the consequences this entailed (Genesis 3:17-19).

III. How God came to seek and comfort man←⤒🔗

1. So man had turned his back on God and thus plunged himself into death. God saw that. The most critical question is, “And what did God do then?” The extremely surprising answer is that then God went looking for him! Here we find the start of the gospel. Because we need to realize that nothing more could be expected from a dead person. He did not even cry to God for help, but fled trembling before him. And once called to account, he was unrepentant. Adam shifted his guilt to his wife — and in doing so to God — while Eve passed her guilt on to the serpent. The initiative to look for man therefore lay entirely with God alone.
2. As we saw, man behaved outrageously rebellious after God sought him. Therefore it is all the more miraculous that God, after having confronted man, also comforted him by promising that his own Son would come to make him blessed again. This one was to be born of a woman, according to Galatians 4:4. This means that he would come to earth as a true man. (There will be more on this in the next article.)
   He would come to crush the serpent’s head, in other words, to conquer the devil once and for all.
3. These words are part of Genesis 3:15. This article therefore wants to make it clear that God promised his Son right after Adam’s fall. This text is rightly called "the mother promise" to indicate that all other promises are, as it were, derived from it. When we compare the Bible to a beautiful flower at its best, then the mother promise is the same flower, but still in the bud. Yet everything is already present. It just needs time to become reality. Therefore, Genesis 3:15 already contains the complete gospel. The main point is already clear, or can be read out of this promise, even though Adam and Eve, for example, will not yet have been able to understand that God’s own Son had to be crucified.
4. This is confessed against the opinion of the Anabaptists that the Old Testament is only a Jewish book with only temporal promises. The gospel begins immediately after Adam’s fall, but, moreover, the whole Old Testament testifies of the one gospel. Everything centres on the coming Christ. Abraham saw the day of Christ (John 8:56). David was promised that one day a son of his line would reign forever (2 Samuel 7:12). Isaiah 53 contains rich and meaningful prophecies concerning the suffering of the Christ and what it would mean. Christ himself also judged the Old Testament in the same way(Luke 24:27, 44; John 5:39). The Bible is a united book that always speaks of the Christ who came to “make man blessed forever.”

IV. God’s marvellous wisdom and goodness←⤒🔗

According to this article, the fact that God went to look for lost man testifies in particular to his wisdom and goodness. Never were these two qualities more impressively exposed than in God’s searching love for sinners.

God’s goodness became apparent when he went to look for man: “Adam, where are you?”  while man afterwards also showed no rapprochement, no turning toward God (Genesis 3:12-13). For this reason, as in Article 13, it speaks here of God’s gracious goodness. But at the same time his incomprehensible wisdom became clear, because no one could have come up with this plan to save people: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined... “ is what God has prepared (1 Corinthians 2:9). This plan of salvation through Christ crucified is as foolishness for man, yet this foolishness of God is wiser than men (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Points to discuss←⤒🔗

1. It is alleged that there is a contrast between Article 16 and Article 17. In Article 16 it is confessed that only a limited number of people are being saved, while in Article 17 it is stated that "man" — i.e., mankind in general — is made blessed.
   Make it clear that this is only an apparent contradiction.
2. The Bible says that the unbelievers will also rise bodily, (Daniel 12:2; Acts 24:15). Does this actually mean that it no longer applies for such people that they have plunged themselves into physical death? See, for example, Matthew 5:29-30.
3. In view of this article, is it correct to say of buried believers that they are plunged into physical death as long as they are buried? Think of Paul’s language about burial as a "sowing" in 1 Corinthians 15:35-44. See also Answer 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism.
4. This article speaks of God who “set out to seek man when he trembling fled from him." Was God’s seeking limited to this one time? See Genesis 12:1; John 15:16; and1 John 4:19. Also, how are we to explain the various reformations of God’s church?