Your Fig Leaves Will Not Hold

"The LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them."
Genesis 3:21

Adam and Eve's first attempt to deal with sin was sincere, creative, and completely useless.
They sewed fig leaves together.
The leaves covered part of what they could see, but they could not remove guilt, silence shame, restore fellowship with God, or repair the corruption now running through the human heart.
They worked on the outside because the outside was the only part they could reach.
God had to provide what they could not.

Our Better Fig Leaves
Modern people do not usually sew clothing out of vegetation. We have found more respectable coverings.
Some people hide behind achievement. If they accomplish enough, perhaps success will answer the accusation inside.
Some hide behind comparison. They may not be righteous, but they can always find someone worse.
Some hide behind victimhood, busyness, humor, anger, religious activity, theological precision, or the reputation they worked hard to build.
Church people can produce particularly impressive fig leaves. We know when to arrive, what words to use, which sins to condemn, and how to answer the questions. We can spend decades in church looking covered while remaining untouched at the heart.
But no human covering will hold on the last day.

God's First Word About the Future
Genesis 3 could have ended in judgment. Instead, while Adam and Eve are still standing in the wreckage, God turns to the serpent and gives a promise.
An offspring of the woman will come. The serpent will bruise His heel, but He will crush the serpent's head.
The wounds are not equal. A wounded heel heals. A crushed head does not.
The first gospel promise in Scripture is spoken in the middle of a curse, on the worst day in human history, to guilty people still holding their failed covering.
God's first word about humanity's future was not, "You have ruined everything beyond repair."
It was, "I am sending Someone."

A Covering That Costs a Life
At the end of the chapter, God removes the leaves and clothes Adam and Eve with garments of skin.
Moses does not call this a sacrifice, and we should not force a word into the text that God did not place there. But the shape of what happens is difficult to miss.
Their covering cost human effort. God's covering cost a life.
Something died so that the guilty could be covered by something God provided.
That pattern moves forward through Scripture until it reaches Jesus Christ. He does not simply help us improve our covering. He bears our guilt and clothes His people in a righteousness that is not their own.
The gospel is not God teaching us to sew better leaves. It is God giving us the covering we could never make.

The Way Home
God drove Adam and Eve from the garden and placed cherubim with a flaming sword at the entrance. The way back to the tree of life was closed.
Years later, cherubim were woven into the curtain guarding the Most Holy Place in Israel's tabernacle. The message remained: sinful people do not stroll into the presence of a holy God.
Then Jesus died.
The temple curtain tore from top to bottom - not by a human hand reaching up, but by God opening the way down.
Adam reached for a tree and brought death. Christ was nailed to a tree and brought life. Adam hid from God in a garden. Christ obeyed His Father in a garden. Adam said, in effect, "My will, not Yours." Jesus prayed, "Not My will, but Yours."
The promised offspring came. His heel was bruised at the cross, and the serpent's head was crushed.

Multiplication Moment
What fig leaf are you still trying to make hold?
What accomplishment, explanation, comparison, religious activity, or carefully managed appearance are you asking to do what only Christ can do?
Bring it into the light. Stop improving the covering.
Come to Christ with empty hands and trust the covering God provides.

This article was adapted from the Doctrine of Man Sunday School series, taught by Doug Modic at Cornerstone Bible Church.