How Do People Try to Cover Up Their Sins with Fig Leaves Like Adam and Eve Did?
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“Then the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig tree leaves together, and made themselves breeches.”
This quaint translation of Genesis 3:7 dates back to 1579.
The Hebrew original refers simply to “coverings,” but the translators, concerned that a “covering of fig leaves” was a little too racy, gave Adam and Eve a more substantial outfit. Of course, the whole point of the fig-leaf covering was that it was laughably flimsy and inadequate.
Before they sinned, Adam and Eve were naked, and “were not ashamed.” They lived in God’s love and warmth and had nothing to hide. Innocence imparted confidence.
Adam and Eve thought that fig leaves would protect them.
Then Adam and Eve broke God’s command and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They became lawbreakers and tried to cover up their criminal rebellion with…fig leaves. They had been created to love, enjoy, and obey God, and tried to cover up their dehumanizing vandalism with…fig leaves. They had affronted the Holy, Holy, Holy LORD—whose blazing holiness breaks out against sin in violent wrath—and thought that fig leaves would protect them.
I follow the Hebrew scholars who translate Genesis 3:8 thus:
They heard the sound of the LORD God pacing to and fro in the garden, in the wind of the storm, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?!” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
For their outrageous, criminal, foolish, dehumanizing rebellion, Adam and Eve richly deserved the fierce wrath of the Holy LORD, and they tried to hide behind flimsy foliage.
Our own “fig leaves” might shield us from the judgment of the god-of-wishful-thinking, but never the true and holy LORD.
In the same way, we try to cover up our sin with the fig leaves of religious ritual or a shallow show of morality or excuses for our bad behavior or “I’m doing my best and God should be happy with that.”
Such fig leaves might shield us from the judgment of the god-of-wishful-thinking, but never the true and holy LORD. The good news is, he shields us from his own judgment by the sacrifice of Jesus. “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5).
When you stand before God for final judgment, fig leaves of excuses and self-righteousness cannot protect you. The Cross, and the Cross alone, shields us from the steely sharp arrows of his holy wrath.
In Egypt, Israel found safe refuge in homes that had been daubed with the blood of the Passover Lamb. So we must shelter only under the blood of Christ crucified, whose blood was shed as punishment for our sins.
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