By the end of Genesis 3, God has pronounced judgment. But God has not executed a final judgment upon creation. It is permitted to continue. Humanity and even the serpent continue. Some have drawn the conclusion that sparing humanity indicates an intent to actually save sinners. There is the hint which will later be developed that God will do more than lengthen human life. 

            Kuyper sees it as gracious that God has not ended creation with the Fall. Yet, that may need a caveat that God has reasons to permit humanity to continue (as addressed earlier in Kuyper’s work). Grace is grounded in God’s glory. Whether one contends God’s decision to permit life is the same nature of “grace” as the “grace” to save sinners is a question for another place.

            But Kuyper is correct that the salvation of sinners is not immediately in view in Genesis 3. We cannot even know if Adam or Eve possessed the category to consider the matter when God drove them from the Garden. If they did draw such a conclusion, it would be only in what they “overheard” in God’s judgment of the serpent. God does not say, and I will gracious forgive sin.

            Kuyper sees the hierarchy of God’s concern being God’s honor. That our salvation eventually is drawn from the same well as God’s honor is a curious thing. Kuyper locates this observation in the Reformed confession. It seems to me (and I have not traced out this matter) that before the confession is Anselm contending for God’s honor:

Logically, his first proposition is that all the actions of men are due to the promotion of God’s honour, and that sin has defrauded God of this honour. “The entire will of a rational creature ought to be subject to the will of God.… This is the debt which angel and man owe to God; no one who pays this, sins, and every one who does not pay it does sin.… This is the sole and entire honour which we owe to God, and which God exacts of us.… He who does not render to God this honour, which is His due, takes away from God what is His own, and dishonours God, and this is to sin” (i. 11, 4–6)

George Cadwalader Foley, Anselm’s Theory of the Atonement: The Bohlen Lectures, 1908 (London; Bombay; Calcutta; New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), 124. Here, the emphasis is upon what is the nature of sin. But this mirrors what could be the nature of redemption and answers the question Cur Deus Homo?

            Noting that God’s first move is honor and to protect that honor gives rise to Kuyper’s concept of “common grace.” He sees “common grace” as restraining sin. By beginning with a judgment upon the Serpent and promising future judgment upon the Serpent, and goes after the alliance between the primeval couple and the Serpent.

            Kuyper takes the concept for particular grace to be found in Eve’s pronouncing the name of Cain. (Gen. 4:1) That is a good read, but I am not convinced it is necessary understanding. 

            The restraint of occurs in the heart and is a different work of God. Adam and Eve feel shame for their sin, rather defiance (like the Serpent). From this shame, Kuyper also sees the hint of a restraint of sin. This does not mean Adam shows evidence of particular grace. Interestingly, we display our sin to those we think will approve; we hide from those who may shame us. Particular grace will transform the evil hear to a heart set upon God. Common grace will merely restrain.

            Also, sin did not cause them to drop dead on the spot (a fact Kuyper has already mentioned).  God works upon sin by weakening that which weakens us. He does not reference Owen, but attacking the vitality of sin is mortification. We are not instantly freed but have a principle which acts against indwelling sin.

            There is also a more general restraint of sin. We know this in our own experience, whenever we see a “decent” act from another. WWII where the world worked to rid ourselves of a peculiar evil would evidence. People who show a kindness or do not steal when they would not be caught.

            Our species has advanced in many wonderful ways; and continues to fail in other. What irrationality explains such exaltation and continual sin so often in one human heart? What explains Nazis who cared for their family and destroyed the “other’s” family? Is that not odd?

            The restraint of sin in the human heart of others, that even criminals have friends, shows something. There is a restraint of sin in others, a restraint that is of far more application than upon the Church alone. God limits sin even in some monsters. Hitler was a monster, and he was kind to his dog. Would not a thorough monster destroy everything?

            God limits sin to keep the world as a possible habitation for the Church; at a minimum for the church. “Without common grace, the church of Christ would not find a place to stand among our human race.” (301) This limitation appears without. It also appears within by the hint of conscience. It appears in Adam and Eve. Just as sin has spread to all, then the restraint of common grace is a universal inheritance of the race.