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Commentary on "A Garment of Innocence"
Day 6: Thursday, April 14, 2011 - Animal Skin
Overview
Today's lesson looks at the fact that God made clothing for Adam and Eve out of animal skins. Their fig leaf coverings were not adequate. The lesson points out that the skins imply that blood was shed and that God covered them; they did not cover themselves. They could not. The lesson ends with this question, "How can we learn to make the promise of the gospel, of Christ's righteousness as our own robe, the center and foundation of our lives and our walk with the Lord?
The Teachers Commentary under "Step 3" states this objective: "Help your students to understand what Adam and Eve gave up when they listened to Satan in the Garden. Emphasize that God wants to return to us what we have lost."
Observations
The lesson makes the good point that our own efforts to fix our shame are not sufficient; God has to do it. The lesson, however, states: "Just as fig leaves would have been less costly and traumatic than the death of innocent animals, so too, our works would have been cheaper than the death of Jesus. In both cases, our works, fig leaves, couldn't suffice; that's why Jesus had to die for us; that's why innocent animals needed to be slain. It could be no other way."
The above quote contrasts our works with the death of Jesus and animals. It does not explain why shed blood was necessary nor how the death of Jesus and animals took the place of our works. Moreover, the lesson puts Jesus' death parallel with animals' deaths, and there is no explanation about either.
The death theme carries into the second point in the lesson, the fact that the animal skins required shedding animal blood. "That alone should tell us how the gospel appears in Genesis 3:21."
The lesson, however, does not explain what the gospel is nor how death and blood played a role. It does not explain how blood was sufficient when our works were not, nor does it explain for what it was efficient. There is no explanation that blood is necessary for forgiveness, and certainly there is no explanation that Jesus, as God and sinless man, died the death each of our sinful lives were required to die. The focus in the lesson is on the fact that God "covered" Adam and Eve, but there is no explanation about why blood plays a role in our covering.
Moreover, the lesson is completely devoid of any mention of spiritual death and life. It focusses on how God covered the couple's nakedness...but their skin clothes did not restore them to their sinless state. The lesson never explains the temporary nature of their leather coverings nor does it explain that because of Jesus' blood and resurrection, God restores those who believe to spiritual life now, while we are still in dead bodies.
The objective stated in the Teachers Comments that students must understand that God wants to return to us what we have lost is misleading and never explained.
The lesson emphasizes that the couple lost their perfect and lovely garden life, their innocence, their free communication with God, and their un-self-consciousness. What Adam and Ever really lost was their life: their immaterial spirits disconnected from God and died.
God does restore spiritual life to us, and He does that when we place our faith in the sufficiency of Jesus' blood to pay for our sin and we repent. His Spirit indwells us then, and we are restored to life and to intimacy with the entire Trinity.
The lesson does not even hint at this reality--and the reason it does not is that Adventism does not believe humans have immaterial spirits. They believe sin is inherited genetically, and they have no way to understand the literal reality of the new birth. Adam and Eve did not primarily lose physical things. They lost their souls, and God had to restore them.
But God has not restored physical life yet. He brings our spirits to life when we believe, but He does so within our still-mortal bodies (Romans 8:10). The final restoration of our human wholeness will be at His coming when we receive glorified bodies to house our now-living spirits.
We cannot learn to make the promise of the gospel and of Christ's righteousness our own robe and the center of our lives, nor can we even have a "walk with the Lord" unless we repent and place our faith in the Lord Jesus. We have to be born again. Only then will any of these things make sense.
When we are born again by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus, we immediately receive Christ's righteousness as our robe. It is not righteousness in us; it is Christ's external righteousness that is credited to us, imputed to us, and God credits the Lord Jesus' righteousness to us. When we are born again He IS the center and foundation of our lives, and then we finally have a walk with the Lord.
He indwells us, and He then walks with us. We don't control Him. We receive Him, and He changes us. Unless we are born again by grace through faith, no amount of trying will result in a walk with the Lord, much less in attaining the righteousness of Christ. No amount of self-discipline and will can cause us to begin a process of sanctification.
We only become righteous when we humble ourselves and receive Jesus as our covering. We hide in Him, and He gives us His life now. We enter eternal life the moment we believe.
The lesson shows that God dressed Adam and Eve in skins, but it does not explain that the skins were not a restoration of anything, nor were they an undoing of their deaths. The skins were temporary; God gave them to the couple as a promise of the new birth His death would give. The skins, like the animal deaths, were shadows of Jesus.
In Him death is defeated and life is restored.
Summary
- Our works, like Adam and Eve's fig leaves, are not sufficient to undo our shame and sin.
- Jesus' blood and animals' blood is different; they do not equally offset human sin.
- Disobedience demanded death; Adam and Eve died when they ate the fruit by their spirits becoming separated from God who is Spirit.
- Only human death can atone for human sin; Jesus alone, infinite God within spotless human flesh, could carry the sin of all mankind and die an infinite death on our behalf.
- Only Jesus who was born spiritually alive--with no need to be born again--could be our Savior, because only He was without any inherited sin. He was never spiritually dead.
- Both Adam and Eve's skin clothing and the death of animals were shadows of the Lord Jesus and His blood shed for the sin of all mankind.
Copyright 2011 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised April 7, 2011. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Glendale, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.
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