³ For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.

Adam and Eve attempted their own righteousness when they “sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings” (Gen 3:7). After God’s judgment on them, He “made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them” (Gen 3:21). Why the fuss over clothes when they had gotten along just fine before? This was not an invention of the Victorian age. And there was certainly an aspect of sin-induced modesty where there had been none prior. To be sure, the “private parts” were the focus of the cover-up, the very distinguishing, complementary parts of their physical bodies to be used in jointly fulfilling God’s command to “[b]e fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth …” (Gen 1:28). However, the first couple’s nakedness was more than simply a matter of shyness or decorum. How do we know?

It was not just Adam and Eve who sensed a need to cover up, but also God. And their way of doing it was not sufficient; God had a better plan. So He replaced their vegetation with animal skin. Leaves picked off a tree supplanted by skin removed from an animal. Clearly, a tree would easily recover and grow more leaves. The animal from which the skin was taken would have died. And that is the difference. While in the creation account itself we don’t receive enough commentary to fully understand the meaning of this switch, we do see, as salvation history unfolds, the central role that a substitute, the sacrificial death of an animal, stands in for a human’s need for atonement. Ultimately, of course, the substitute is the perfect God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ.

God’s clothing of Adam and Eve on the outside was symbolic of what should be true on the inside. We can surmise that this covering was what kept God’s promise of death (Gen 2:17) at bay to allow them time to begin populating the earth. Interestingly, the atonement in Israel was seen as a “covering” of sins, keeping God’s judgment against Israel at bay until the “fullness of the time came [and] God sent forth His Son …” (Gal 4:4).

These things—the animal skins, the substitutionary animal sacrifices—symbolized the greater work of God in making people acceptable to Himself. But the Jews looked for righteousness in the symbols themselves, not in the God who gave them the symbols. It would be like Adam and Eve trusting in the skins God gave them to make them right before Him. In reality, the skins should have reminded them precisely that their own way of living was grossly insufficient for a righteous relationship with a righteous God.

Lord, help me not confuse my religious observances with true righteousness.