The Right Covering

In Genesis 3 we find the fall of mankind. Sin enters the world through Adam and Eve disobeying God. This causes them to realise that they are naked and now they are afraid of the consequences of their sin. Even before God confronts them, they know that the incredible personal relationship they had with God prior to this has gone forever.

Previously they were covered by God’s grace, love, and acceptance. Now they cannot face God, who is searching for them, and decide that their nakedness (spiritual and physical) must be covered. They resort to what they can find and use large fig leaves to try and do that. We can look at this story that we know all too well and maybe chuckle at the feeble efforts they made. However, down the generations, mankind has been doing much the same thing – seeking to cover nakedness and spiritual vulnerability with a host of ‘fig leaves’ that never work and never last.

We often rely on self-sufficiency, the work of our own hands, to cover ourselves. We’re always creating some work of our own efforts that we foolishly think will merit God’s favour. Like a man with a cheap toupee, we find ourselves constantly checking our fig leaves in the mirror, hoping that their inadequacy will not be noticed.

God had to pronounce the just sentence on Adam and Eve and evict them from the Garden of Eden, but in all of this we see His love shining through. He did not leave them with the totally inadequate covering that they had made for themselves. He clothed Adam and Eve. ‘And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife’ (Genesis 3:21).

The Hebrew word labash means to put on a garment. What God made was tunics. The Hebrew word kathoneth refers to a long shirt, one that reaches from the shoulders to the knees. He didn’t use leaves or even wool. God used the skin of an animal, and that meant that He had to kill an animal to do this. The first physical death in the Garden came as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin, and death would continue down all the ages. To kill the animal blood would be shed; a foretelling of the need for God to send His only Son to die in our place for us to be covered by the blood of Christ.

To this day we have a choice regarding what we cover our spiritual nakedness (sinfulness) with. We can choose our own efforts which will always fail and, in the process, leave us vulnerable to the enemy. Or we can choose to turn to Jesus and receive His covering. The latter comes at an incredible cost but is the only right covering for us. The choice is always ours to make.