When we fail, our first impulse is the same as that of our spiritual ancestors: to sprint headlong into the bushes.
Dubbed “The Trial of the Century,” the case of the Lindbergh baby’s kidnapping garnered attention not just nationally, but worldwide. Charles Lindbergh became an international celebrity after his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, the first of its kind. On the evening of March 1, 1932, twenty-month-old Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. was kidnapped–abducted from his crib by an unknown intruder. A ransom note in the amount of $50,000 was scrawled in broken English and left on the windowsill. It wasn’t until thirty months later that an arrest was finally made. Richard Hauptmann was found guilty and sentenced to death for the murder of the Lindbergh baby. A key piece of evidence in the trial was the homemade ladder Hauptmann had used in the abduction. Arthur Koehler, a wood expert with the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Wisconsin, was brought in to analyze the ladder. After a meticulous examination, which involved the study of grain patterns, nail holes, saw marks, wood types, and mill marks from the lumber yard, Koehler was able to match slivers from the ladder to a missing piece of wood from the attic of Hauptmann’s home. This smoking gun helped seal the fate of the guilty party. When it came to his crime, Hauptmann couldn’t leave without a trace.
And when it comes to sin, neither can we.
In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve are guilty of perpetrating the first and most consequential sin in all of history: the eating of the fruit God had explicitly commanded them not to eat from. The results were immediate: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths” (Gen. 3:7). Seeking to cover their shame, Adam and Eve’s first impulse was to sew their own clothing, thinking they could fix or–at very least–mask the consequences of their sin through their own efforts. But you don’t have to be a seamstress to imagine the inherent challenge in stitching leaves together. Unlike fabric, cloth, or skin, plant leaves are less durable and more irregular in shape. It would be difficult to imagine a fig-leaf garment that provided full coverage. There was the constant danger of some skin peeking through. The very idea of a “seamless” fig leaf garment would be absolute lunacy! No matter how furiously one sews, leaves are still made of organic matter. Organic matter breaks down and decays. Eventually, their skin would have shown through, and the leaves would have crumbled.
God knew this. He knew that, caught in the midst of their guilt and sin, Adam and Eve would hide. They would not come to him; he would have to go to them:
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, 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 and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself” (Gen. 3:8-10).
You may know how the story plays out after this. Adam, Eve, and the serpent play the blame game, and everyone loses. Curses follow. Access to the tree of life is cut off. The world as we once knew it was broken, and we suffer the consequences to this day.
All the fig leaves in the world are powerless to staunch the flow of blood flowing from such deep wounds.
If we’re honest with ourselves, when we fail, our first impulse is the same as that of our spiritual ancestors: to sprint headlong into the bushes. “We need to hide! We need to cover this up! We need to distance ourselves from God so we can fix the situation ourselves!” The one thing that seems unfathomable is to bring that failure out into the open. So, instead, we sew like mad to cover up the seams in our fig leaves so that nothing shows. We can’t let anyone – especially God – see our flaws. Rather than calling his sponsor, the alcoholic refuses to admit he’s fallen off the wagon. Rather than tell her boss the mistake that cost the company a client, the employee shuffles the numbers to make herself look better, promising she’ll make up for it next quarter. Rather than acknowledging her creaturely limits, the overachieving mom buckles down and signs her kid up for the extra after-school reading program that is sure to give her a level up on her classmates. Rather than confess his policy was a bad one, the self-promoting politician passes the buck across the political aisle in an effort to cover his mistakes. Rather than admitting to his congregation that he’s on the brink of burnout, the perfectionist pastor pastes on another smile as he climbs into the pulpit with a smile Sunday after Sunday, pretending everything is still a-okay. But as it turns out, all the fig leaves in the world are powerless to staunch the flow of blood flowing from such deep wounds.
The good news, though, is that the story of Adam and Eve doesn’t end with fig leaves. We often think of Genesis 3 as ending simply with curse and expulsion. After Genesis 1 and 2, it’s just one big, frowny-face emoji. But if we keep reading, we’ll discover a hidden mercy in the midst of the mess: “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them” (Gen. 3:21). God himself clothed Adam and Eve, and the material he used was a step-up from fig leaves: animal skins. Even as he was disciplining Adam and Eve, he was also providing for them, mercifully covering over their failures with garments of his own.
At the cross, Jesus atoned for the sins of the whole world once and for all, and he offers us the benefits of his saving work free of charge! Galatians 3:27: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” When it comes to being clothed with skin, we can do no better than the self-sacrificial Son of God: “the Word [who] became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
The only truly seamless garment, as the Apostle John so boldly proclaims, is the spotless “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).
What fig leaves are you hiding behind today? Pray that God would give you the courage to step out into the open, that you might be reminded that all your attempts to dress yourself are sorry, and instead he has clothed you in the richest, most priceless of garments.
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