As I observed yesterday, the entire gospel is summarized in Genesis 3:21:
The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
Most readers will see the blood sacrifice prefiguring the crucifixion. But that is only half of the gospel.
At the center of the gospel is the doctrine of imputation. In the bloody sacrifice, we see our sins being imputed to Christ (Isaiah 53). But that’s not enough. That does not justify me before God. It isn’t enough that Christ bore the penalty for my sin. I must be presented before God righteous. And my righteousness must be a real righteousness. God cannot merely pretend; that would be, as Rome and Finney called it, a “legal fiction.”
Where do we get this righteousness? Adam and Eve thought they could produce their own: “and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings” (v. 7). Isn’t that typical? Our first instinct, when confronted with our sin — our nakedness — is to try harder, do better. But as Adam and Eve learned, the best covering we can make is inadequate. Nice as it may be, it is still our own, and our own righteousness is no better than filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). Adam and Eve needed what we need: a covering not of their own making, but of God’s. So God killed an animal and made garments for them of the skin. He replaced their unrighteous garments with righteous garments.
Christ did not die merely to take away our sins. A complete exchange was made on the cross: our sin for his righteousness. And it’s all there in Genesis 3:21.
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