“… for I am the Lord, your healer.”
(Exodus 15:26 ESV)
You and I have a fatal disease that we inherited from our original father and mother, Adam and Eve. We are born sinners under the curse of the law, guilty before a holy God, separated from Christ, and without hope (Eph. 2:12).
And yet, well before we ever had this problem, God provided the solution.
Well before He created the world, before He made man and woman, and certainly before sin ever infected the Garden, God in His infinite foreknowledge and divine will provided the healing remedy for our sin-sick souls (Rev.13:8, Acts 2:23). He gave His only Son – His prized Lamb – over to the hands of angry, wicked men to be slaughtered so we sinners could be redeemed (John 1:29, Acts 2:23).
The shedding of innocent blood has always been God’s remedy for sin.
Before the fall, Adam and Eve were naked before God and each other, and were not ashamed. However, after they disobeyed, their guilt and shame so disturbed them that they tried to hide behind coverings of fig leaves they made for themselves (Gen. 3:7).
Their man-made attempt to cover their guilt was wholly inadequate because this isn’t God’s way. Instead, He graciously made coverings for them both from animal skins (Gen. 3:21). Scripture demonstrates here that God accepted the death of an innocent animal as substitute for their immediate death, as a shadow and type of Christ’s substitutionary atonement to come later. He remedied their sin through the shedding of innocent blood. Francis Roberts said rightly, “In the valuable virtue of Christ’s death, it extended and reached backward towards the foundation of the world.”
This picture in Genesis 3 beautifully depicts a merciful God covering the naked sinner with the garment of Christ’s righteousness – the “skin” of the perfect Lamb of God whose innocent blood was shed when He was punished in our place (John 1:29, Gal. 3:13, 2 Cor. 5:21).
Under the Old Covenant, the shedding of animal’s blood was only a temporary solution, a mere foreshadowing of God’s eternal plan for our redemption. But when the blood of God’s own perfect Lamb is applied to our heart, we are healed once and for all (Heb. 9-10), so that when we appear before God in the “last day” we will not be naked and ashamed. We will be clothed in Christ’s perfect righteousness. This is the heart of adoring God both now, and even for eternity, that we might adore God for Christ’s perfect sacrifice and salvation.
But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5 ESV)
