“Salvation” series (post #5)

When Adam and Eve became sinners by eating the forbidden fruit, God had all kinds of options as to how He could have responded. He could have given them a good scolding, patted them on the heads, and said, “Now don’t do that again.” He could have thrown down a couple of lightning bolts to kill them on the spot and created another man and woman to replace them. Or He could have deleted all of creation, including them, and started the whole Genesis chapters 1 and 2 process all over again from scratch for another try.

But God didn’t do any of those things. Instead, He personally came down to Eden and pronounced various judgments upon Adam, Eve, the serpent, and Satan (who at the time was still inside the serpent’s body). And then He did something completely unexpected: He shed blood in the Garden of Eden. As Genesis 3:21 says:

Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. (N.K.J.V.)

And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. (N.A.S.B.)

And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife. (N.L.T.)

You’ll notice that Genesis 3:21 doesn’t explicitly say that any shedding of blood took place that day. This leads some to contend that presenting the event as the world’s first blood sacrifice is a faulty interpretation. As the critics say, “Preaching that God shed blood in the Garden of Eden in order to cover Adam and Eve’s sins is reading way too much into a verse that merely explains that God made clothes for them.” However, the killing of either one animal or two (perhaps God killed one animal per person) is undoubtedly implied by the use of the word “skin” or “skins.” For example, even though you don’t have to kill a sheep in order to sheer its wool and use the wool to make clothing, there is simply no way to make clothing from an animal’s “skin” without first killing the animal. No animal can live without its skin.

Furthermore, if Genesis 3:21 isn’t a record of the world’s first blood sacrifice, then why did Adam and Eve’s son Abel kill some of the firstborn of his flock and bring them to God as an offering? And why did God accept that offering but reject the bloodless offering that was brought by Abel’s brother Cain? (Genesis 4:1-7) For that matter, since neither Cain nor Abel had been born when God had made that clothing for Adam and Eve, how did those boys know to bring their offerings to God and how did Abel know that an offering should involve the death of an animal? The only answer is that Adam and Eve taught their sons what God had taught them about the importance of a blood sacrifice.

Further evidence that Adam and Eve taught their children about the necessity of a blood sacrifice when approaching God can be found in the New Testament’s one-chapter book of Jude. Jude’s purpose in writing his book was to warn the early church about apostasy, which is the falling away from revealed truth, and as examples of apostates, he cites: the unbelieving Israelites from the Exodus story (v.5); the angels who did not stay in their rightful place (v.6, read Genesis 6:1-7); the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah (v.7); Satan (v.9); the prophet Balaam (v.11); the rebels who sided with Korah against Moses (v.11); and Cain (v.11). As Jude verse 11 says:

Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain…

You see, if an apostate is one who has fallen away from revealed truth, and if Cain is listed as an apostate, someone must have taught him some truth somewhere along the way. And that must mean that Adam and Eve taught him the truth about sacrificial blood. He then went apostate when he rejected that all-important truth by going “in the way of Cain” to bring God a bloodless sacrifice of harvested crops.

Getting back to God killing that animal or those animals in Eden, He was working on multiple levels by doing that. First, He wanted Adam and Eve to see firsthand what the horror of physical death looked like because up until those deaths they hadn’t had any visual reference on that subject. What a site it must have been for them to watch that red stuff begin pouring out of a lifeless body!

Second, since Adam and Eve’s sinful state had now created a newfound shame within them concerning their nakedness, God was addressing the practical need of them requiring clothing. They had tried to meet this need by covering themselves with fig leaves, but those fig leaves weren’t acceptable to God. So, He made them animal-skin (hide) clothing.

Third, and most important, God shed that blood in order to provide Him with a way to forgive Adam and Eve for their sin. What Adam and Eve did not know, because God had never told them, is that He holds to the concept of blood atonement. Blood atonement is the doctrine that says an innocent life can be taken as payment for the sin debt owed by a guilty life. What did that animal (or those animals) do to deserve dying? Absolutely nothing. In that sense, innocence was involved. So, why did God do that killing? He did it to provide a substitutionary sacrifice for Adam and Eve. It’s that simple.

They didn’t know it at the time, but God had just evidenced to them a couple of major theological truths that He would later reveal more fully to the human race. One of these truths is summed up in Leviticus 17:11, where God says to the people of Israel:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. (N.K.J.V.)

This verse explains why God wouldn’t accept Adam and Eve’s fig leaves as coverings for them. Those fig leaves might have covered the couple’s nakedness, but they could never cover the couple’s sins. Why not? It was because those fig leaves didn’t have blood. It’s blood that indicates life, and the only way that God will accept a substitutionary sacrifice is upon the basis of life-for-life. Actually, Adam and Eve’s fig leaves have been called “the world’s first religion.” In other words, it was the human race’s first attempt at addressing the sin problem. But it didn’t work because it didn’t approach the problem in God’s way.

The other major theological truth that God killing those animals evidenced is very similar to the first and is summed up in Hebrews 9:22. There we read these vitally important words:

…and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. (N.I.V.)

Here again we see that for Adam and Eve to receive forgiveness for their sin, blood had to be shed. If their problem had been no more than them needing clothes, God could have handled that by merely shearing a couple of sheep, without actually killing the sheep. But Adam and Eve’s problem ran much deeper than that. They were now sinners, and God only forgives sin on the basis of blood shed via literal death. The innocent must die for the guilty. Anything short of that, and the sinner still stands condemned in his or her guilt. In that regard, fleeces from sheep wouldn’t have helped Adam and Eve any more than fig leaves did.

And here’s where we will put a period on this subject for now. Rest assured, though, that we will pick things up from right here in the next post. Now that we understand the concept of blood atonement, how far back it goes for the human race, and the incalculably high value God places upon it in regards to the forgiveness of sin, we can trace the concept down through history. Trust me, it will be an interesting ride. And where will it end? It will end with a man named Jesus dying on a Roman cross. Stay tuned.