The First Act of Faith and the First Atonement Text: Genesis 3:20-21
Introduction: After the Catastrophe
We come now to the immediate aftermath of the fall. The catastrophe has occurred. The covenant of works has been shattered, and with it, the entire created order has been plunged into ruin. God has walked in the garden, confronted the guilty parties, and pronounced the curses. The serpent is cursed, the woman is cursed in her childbearing, and the man is cursed in his labor, fated to return to the dust from which he was made. The verdict is in, the sentence has been passed: death. It is into this bleak and desolate landscape of judgment that we find our text. And what we find here is not the whimpering of defeated rebels, but rather two of the most astounding things imaginable: a radical act of faith from the man, and a radical act of grace from God.
Everything has changed. The relationship between God and man is broken. The relationship between man and woman is fractured. The relationship between humanity and the creation is now one of toil and hostility. And yet, in the middle of this wreckage, God had already sown the seed of the gospel. He did this, remarkably, while cursing the serpent. In Genesis 3:15, God promised that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head. This is the protoevangelion, the first gospel. It is the promise that a champion would come from Eve, a son who would undo the devil's work and restore what was lost. Our text today shows us the first human response to that promise, and God's first tangible picture of how that promise would be fulfilled.
What Adam does here, and what God does here, sets the pattern for the entire story of redemption. We see the nature of saving faith, which is to believe God's promise in the face of all contrary evidence. And we see the nature of God's salvation, which is not a patch-up job, but a substitutionary sacrifice. Man's pathetic attempts to cover his own shame are stripped away and replaced by a covering that God Himself provides, a covering that cost a life. Here, in the twilight of Eden, we see the first flicker of the light that would one day blaze forth from a cross on Calvary.
The Text
Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. Then Yahweh God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and He clothed them.
(Genesis 3:20-21 LSB)
An Audacious Faith (v. 20)
We begin with Adam's response to the pronouncement of judgment and promise.
"Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living." (Genesis 3:20)
This is a staggering statement. Put yourself in Adam's sandals. You have just been told that you are going to die. "For you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Gen. 3:19). The specter of death now hangs over everything. Your wife has just been told that her childbearing will be filled with pain. You have just been evicted from paradise. The whole world is groaning under the curse you brought upon it. And what is your first recorded act after hearing all this? You turn to your wife, the very one you were blaming just moments before, and you name her "Life-Giver."
The name Eve, in Hebrew Hawwah, is related to the word for life. Adam names his wife "Life" precisely when death has entered the world. This is not optimism. This is not wishful thinking. This is raw, naked faith. Adam heard two things from God: the sentence of death, and the promise of a serpent-crushing seed who would come from the woman. And in this moment, Adam chose to believe the promise over the sentence. He looked at the woman, not as the source of his fall, but as the God-ordained vessel of his redemption. He heard the gospel in Genesis 3:15, and he believed it. This is the first act of justifying faith in human history.
Notice also the reassertion of Adam's headship. In Genesis 2, God gave Adam the task of naming the creatures, which was an exercise of his delegated dominion. Making rights and naming rights go together. By naming his wife, Adam is stepping back into his role as covenantal head, but this time not in innocence, but in faith. He is no longer blaming her; he is leading her by naming her according to God's promise. He is saying, in effect, "Woman, God has promised that life will come through you, and I believe Him. Your name will not be 'Death-Bringer' or 'Trouble-Maker,' but 'Mother of All the Living.'" He is preaching the gospel to his wife, and to himself.
This is what faith does. It takes God at His word, especially when circumstances scream the opposite. It looks at a death sentence and sees a promise of life. It looks at a fallen woman and calls her the mother of the living, because she will be the mother of the One who is the Resurrection and the Life. Adam was the first man to believe that the grace of God in a promised redeemer was greater than his own sin.
A Gracious Covering (v. 21)
Immediately following Adam's act of faith, God responds with an act of grace. He addresses their most immediate problem: their shame and nakedness.
"Then Yahweh God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and He clothed them." (Genesis 3:21 LSB)
Earlier, Adam and Eve had tried to solve the problem of their nakedness themselves. They "sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths" (Gen. 3:7). This is the first act of dead religion in the Bible. It is man's attempt to cover his own sin and shame through his own efforts. It is flimsy, pathetic, and utterly inadequate. Fig leaves wilt. They provide no real covering. And when God shows up, their fig leaves do nothing to assuage their fear; they still hide.
God rejects their self-righteous, works-based solution. He doesn't tell them to sew better fig leaves. He removes their pathetic coverings and provides a covering of His own design. And notice what it is made of: garments of skin. Where do garments of skin come from? An animal had to die. For the first time, blood was shed in God's creation. An innocent creature was slain so that the guilty could be covered.
This is the first sacrifice. And it is a picture, a type, a foreshadowing of the entire sacrificial system and its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ. God Himself performs this first sacrifice, teaching Adam and Eve a foundational lesson: the only acceptable covering for your sin is one that I provide, and it will cost a life. Your fig leaves of morality, of good intentions, of religious observance, are useless. You need a righteousness that comes from outside of you. You need an innocent substitute to die in your place.
God did not just make the garments and toss them to Adam. The text says He "clothed them." This is an act of tender, personal care. The very God against whom they had rebelled now stoops to dress them, to cover their shame. This is grace upon grace. He is teaching them that salvation is not a cooperative effort. It is not man meeting God halfway. God does it all. He provides the sacrifice, and He applies the covering. As the prophet would later say, "He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness" (Isaiah 61:10).
The Gospel in Skin and Bone
These two verses, sitting here in the rubble of the fall, are a beautiful summary of the gospel. Man's part is faith, and God's part is everything else. Adam believed the promise (v. 20), and God provided the atonement (v. 21). This is the pattern. This is the way.
We are all born children of Adam, naked and ashamed. And our first instinct is to run for the fig leaves. We try to cover ourselves with our own good works, our respectability, our political activism, our church attendance, our personal moral codes. We think that if we can just sew together enough impressive leaves, we can make ourselves presentable to God. But it is a fool's errand. Our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, as wilting fig leaves. They cannot cover the deep shame of our rebellion against a holy God.
The gospel call is to do what Adam did. It is to hear the promise of God in Christ and to believe it. It is to stop trusting our own pathetic coverings and to stand naked before God, crying out for mercy. It is to have faith in the promised Seed of the woman, Jesus Christ, who came to crush the serpent's head.
And when we do, God does for us what He did for Adam. He strips away our filthy rags of self-righteousness. And He clothes us. He clothes us in garments of skin, but not the skin of an animal. He clothes us in the perfect righteousness of His own Son, the Lamb of God who was slain from the foundation of the world. An innocent substitute died so that we, the guilty, could be covered. Jesus was stripped naked on the cross, bearing our shame, so that we could be clothed in His righteousness, bearing His glory. God provides the sacrifice, and by His Spirit, He clothes us in it. He does not just save us; He draws us near and covers us with the glory of His own Son. This is the gospel, preached first in Eden, and fulfilled at Calvary.