Christ, Our Covering
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.”
- Romans 4:7-8
A covering is meant to protect and conceal. Clothes protect us from the effects of weather and can conceal us from being seen.
Before the fall, Adam and Even had no covering on their bodies. They were carefree, unaware, yet fully protected. How? Because God was their covering and there was no sin in the world yet to hurt them.
He was their shield.
Though they were in their most vulnerable state, God covered them and they were able to experience life like little children. Children only have to worry about playing. All other responsibilities are “covered” by their parents. So it was with Adam and Eve, until the serpent tempted them to disobey God…
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?’
So he said, ‘I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself’” (Genesis 3:6:10).
Once the fall occurred, the implication was that Adam and Eve realized their vulnerability and rejected God as their covering. Their response was to make their own coverings.
Where faith once existed, fear took its place. There was no going back because their eyes had been opened. God knew their homemade fig-leaf coverings wouldn’t do, so He made the first sacrifice to produce animal-skin coverings for them.
They rejected the covering of the fullness of life from God, which resulted in needing to be covered by something supplied by death. This symbolically conveyed the consequence of their choice to disobey— death.
God’s plan, however, was always to reverse the curse through Christ’s sacrifice. He became our covering once again by conquering death itself.
Since the beginning, our man made coverings were never enough. Humanity has tried to cover up their sins by doing good things, but no amount of good deeds can ever take away the root of the problem. Our good deeds are as filthy rags to God (Isaiah 64:6). Even continual animal sacrifices couldn’t reverse the curse (Hebrews 10:3-4). They were merely a shadow of what was to come through Jesus Christ.
Take a Moment:
Are you still relying on “fig leaves” to cover you? Or have you trusted that Christ’s sacrificial blood has covered you once and for all (Hebrews 10:10,14)? In other words, do you think your good deeds restore you or prove your restoration back to God? Or are you relying only on what Christ did to cover you? This decision is tantamount. This is the difference between faith and fear. Either we are living in fear, grasping for a covering or we are living by faith, trusting that Christ was and is and always will be our only sufficient covering.
Trusting that Christ is our covering is what it means to live by faith.
-Alina