War In Your Heart # 58

Christ Our Provision (continued)

In Christ - The Redemption of the Race (continued)

As a result of their extravagantly purchased knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve discovered they were "naked," which word may be taken as God's accurate description of their moral and spiritual state. They acknowledged their nakedness, which had produced in them a sense of fear and shame, which led them to hide from God's presence. They knew they had forfeited their their credentials to access and fellowship with God. In themselves they no longer had any right to any relationship with the God whom they had repudiated.

But instead of seeking God and confessing their sin, they tried to robe themselves with a garment of their own making (Genesis 3:7).

However. their homespun aprons of fig leaves were not only utterly inadequate but wholly unacceptable to God. Before the righteousness and holiness of an infinitely righteous and holy God they withered into nothingness. If Adam and Eve were to be saved from their sin and the way of access to God opened, it must be by the covering of their nakedness with a garment of God's own making; even with a divinely prepared robe of righteousness (Genesis 3:21).

Here is the very beginning of human history we have God's flannelgraph of the Cross: His vivid picture of the robe of righteousness provided for the guilty, condemned, judged sinner; even Jesus Christ Himself, who is the very righteousness of God. The prophecy promise of the bruising of the heel of the woman's Seed in Genesis 3:15 is illustrated in the death of the animals, that their coats of skins might be provided as clothing for those first two sinners. The utter futility of man's homemade robe of self-righteousness and the absolute necessity of the God-made robe of Christ's righteousness is unmistakably stated in the two following verse (Isaiah 64:6).

Nothing could be clearer than that no sinner can ever stand unashamed and unafraid in the presence of God except he stand there clothed in the very righteousness of Christ Himself. But how could that ever be? There was but one way. Christ must become the sinner's righteousness. But how? Again there is but one way. He must first become the sinner's sin (2 Corinthians 5:21).

"Him," the absolutely sinless One. Paul, Peter, John all declare Him to be the One altogether without sin. "Who knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21); "Who did not sin" (1 Peter 2:22); "in him is no sin" (1 John 3:5); "he made to be sin." Let us not try to pare these words down to the measure of our comprehension, for they are utterly beyond finite comprehension. So let us accept these words by the sheer simplicity of faith as God's fact. But what necessitated such an act on God's part? "On our behalf." God was doing something purely on behalf of the sinner when he made the altogether sinless One become what the altogether sinful one was. As the second Man, the Representative Man, Christ was made sine judicially on behalf of the sinner in Adam. How faithfully the Holy Spirit states this irrefutable fact yet, and at the same time how carefully He guards it!


~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 59)