Our Righteous Covering
Joseph had a dream about a magnificent “coat of many colors” which got him into a lot of trouble by stirring up his brothers’ jealousy, since he seemed to be claiming special favor with their father Jacob.[i] You, too, dear Christian have been given a magnificent robe to wear which would certainly stir up the envy of the world around you, if only they knew. Sadly, we believers often act as if we don’t know how wonderfully our Father has clothed us in the righteousness of His Son. We walk around grieved or guilt-ridden at the sight of our “filthy rags,” never once realizing that our spiritual nakedness before God couldn’t be more gloriously covered![ii]
I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. Isaiah 61:10
All scripture citations are from the English Standard Version (ESV) unless otherwise noted.
At the very beginning of our Fall from grace, the Lord God demonstrated that we need two kinds of coverings: one to cover our disastrous and 
deadly separation from Him by sin; the other to cover the extreme humiliation of our “nakedness” in our own eyes. Since these two vital coverings are interwoven, however, it is easy to lose sight that they are separate issues which need separate solutions. If we were going to be saved, the Lord first had to provide a covering for our wretched exposure as fallen creatures. He had to make a way for our sins to be covered. However, sin itself was not the only element working to destroy us. The Fall radically demolished our standing before God, leaving us “bare” before His eyes (as well as our own).[i]
Having been created to reflect the Lord God’s magnificent Image, Adam and Eve were clothed in His glory.[iii] They needed no other covering: They were nude, but not “naked.” Grace and glory covered them with innocence and purity. Their position in God’s eyes and their own was vastly different from what it immediately became once sin entered in. If this is hard to picture, simply look at your cat or dog. They are truly “nude,” yet in their created innocence they look beautiful to our eyes and absolutely “normal” in their own. They would look ridiculous wearing clothes! So, it was with us. In the beginning…
Why Do We Need a Covering?
We all know instinctively that we need a covering. Most of us would feel ashamed to go around naked. We carefully cover ourselves with clothing, especially our most intimate parts. Not only that, we all hate to have our wrong-doing exposed. Unless (or until) we are caught red-handed, there is a nearly universal tendency to cover-up our misdeeds so no one else can find out about them. But it goes deeper still. We seriously don’t want others to know key things about ourselves, especially the wrongness and weaknesses we harbor on the inside. We don’t even like the sight of it! We certainly don’t want others to see it. So, from an early age we learn to keep this inward “nakedness” covered up. This has a long history.
The Great Coverup goes back to the Garden. When Adam and Eve sinned, they fell from their created state of perfect union with God. Before the Fall, everything about them was innocent and pure. Both their outward ways and their innermost thoughts flowed in the “ancient ways” of the Lord.[iv] His ways are paths of peace, love, joy and righteousness. Not only did they live in perfect union with God, they experienced joyful, fully transparent intimacy with each other. Nothing about them needed to be covered over or covered up. They were nude, but they didn’t feel naked.
And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Genesis 2:25
The Paradise Lost that Was Lost
This is the true paradise that was lost when they fell into sin – the loss of purity of relationship with God, with each other and within themselves. Later, they would be exiled from the Garden with no way of return allowed.[v] That exile is usually what we think of as “Paradise Lost,” but it actually began with the invasion of innocence as the sin nature (of the Enemy) came into both Adam and Eve, destroying their perfect communion with God and each other. Immediately, our first parents realized that something was wrong.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 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. Genesis 3:7-8
As their eyes “were opened” they began to see from the new perspective of their fallenness, judging right and wrong based on their own understanding, rather than on the Lord’s. What they saw made them want to cover up. Without delay, they gathered fig leaves and sewed them into what seemed to them to be a suitable covering. From whom were they hiding their newfound nakedness? At this point it is from each other! Only later, when they “heard the sound” of the Lord’s approach, did they try to hide from God -- by using the trees for cover, not the fig leaf loincloths.
This often gets overlooked, yet it is telling of the way we live. We begin life trying to hide our nakedness from each other, once we leave the innocence of infancy behind. First, it’s our body’s nakedness, then it’s our soul’s. Just like Adam and Eve, we sew together all kinds of fig leaves in a vain attempt to hide the truth of how impure and imperfect we are inside. We naturally feel ashamed of the “world of iniquity” we see inside our hearts.[vi] We are also understandably embarrassed by our weaknesses, ignorance and foolishness. So, we cover it over by pretending it’s not there, or with excuses, or by striving to be perfect, or by trying to please everyone, or by… you name what it’s been for you.
God Gives Two Solutions
None of this is God’s solution. Seeing their predicament, the Lord God responded in several unexpected ways. Two are relevant here. First, He asked Adam why He was hiding. Of course, the Lord knew everything Adam was thinking and why, but He wanted to get Adam looking deeper than his own understanding. Adam said, “I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:10). To this the Lord replied, “Who told you?” This is crucial. Adam was being shown that his feelings and thoughts were coming from a source other than himself, which was also not from God. If we are ever to break free of the tyrannical hold our nakedness has over us, we will need to discover and fully believe in God’s solution.
After dealing with their excuses and dealing out their consequences, the Lord took a drastic step. Rather than killing them (which is what Adam feared), He slaughtered an animal instead.[vii] Is this the first-ever animal sacrifice made as an atonement for sin? It would appear so. Later, an array of specific instructions would be given at Sinai, launching the Old Testament sacrificial system. Animal sacrifice formed the core, because only blood can atone for sin, since sin produces death.[viii] Here, we see it here in embryonic form. Adam and Eve are “covered” by the blood of the sacrifice – atonement means covering – while their nakedness is covered by the animal’s skin.
And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. Genesis 3:21
Our Problem with God’s Solution
This brings us to more familiar territory. Most Christians are well-schooled in the correct truth that our sins have been fully and completely atoned for (covered) by the Blood of Jesus. He is our Lamb of sacrifice, slain from the foundation of the world.[ix] By faith we can receive His Blood as both a covering and a cleansing. We receive His Blood atonement as full covering for our sins and sinfulness the moment we are born again. At that time His Blood also cleanses us from our sins. Going forward, whenever we may step into sin and repent, we can ask to be cleansed by the Blood once again. But the Blood always keeps us covered during the whole process of our growth in Christ (also known as sanctification). This is a fantastic covering!
Nevertheless, there is a genuine problem here. However, it is definitely not with the Blood. We couldn’t hope for a better covering than the Blood of Jesus. Watchman Nee wrote that if we only knew what the Blood of Jesus means to the Father, we would never have an anxious moment at the sight of our sins and sinfulness, ever again. We would know with exuberant faith that our sins – past, present and future – are totally and gloriously covered in the eyes of our Heavenly Father. He is fully satisfied with that covering! But are we?
That our specific sins of thought, word and deed are covered and cleansed by the Blood of Jesus alone is hard enough to believe. It is a good deal harder to believe that the deep and desperate wrongness about us – our sinfulness – is also covered by the Blood. This is a stretch for many Christians, who see the “world of iniquity” within and fear that God also sees it and holds it against them. He doesn’t. He chooses to see the Blood covering instead. The problem is on our side and it is a faith problem. We may believe it well enough with our heads, but our deep heart can be left unconvinced.
The problem doesn’t end here. We evidently need something more than a sin covering alone.[x] We also need a nakedness covering. We need something like that skin covering the Lord God first prepared for Adam and Eve so long ago. The issue of shame that we have isn’t just a matter of sin guilt, as tremendous as that is. Yes, that has to be dealt with first, just as it was in the Garden. Death came to a substitute. The atoning blood of an animal was shed. But then the skins were given. In conversion, God applies the Blood as our covering and cleansing from sin. This has to come first. Then, however, He also covers us with a second “garment of salvation” -- with a robe of Righteousness taken from our sin-bearer, Jesus.[xi] We are clothed in His Righteousness!
Two Intertwined Gifts of Grace
This is truly praise-worthy! The Father takes off the “filthy garments”[xii] of our own attempts to be righteous and replaces them with the Righteousness of His Son as our new garment of salvation. In His eyes we are already the fully upright, fully matured, entirely holy, sons and daughters that we will one day be in heaven. He sees us as if Christ is fully formed in us, because we are clothed in Christ’s own righteousness. This doesn’t mean that He can’t also see us as we are (for He certainly still works to correct our wrong ways). But it does mean that He is always relating to us just as if His work of sanctifying us is already completed.
And be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. Philippians 3:9
Another way to describe this incredible gift of grace is by the word justification. In justification, God so thoroughly cancels our sins by the Blood of Jesus that He looks upon us just as if we had never sinned. The difference is that justification speaks of the Blood covering for our sins. The Robe of Righteousness speaks of a salvation garment that covers our nakedness. These two conditions – sin and nakedness – are intertwined, but not identical. That’s why two different kinds of coverings are given to us. Our Father knows that the sight of our sinfulness needs to be covered before His eyes, and before our own. He also knows that our pitiful, exposed nakedness also needs to be covered before His eyes, and before our own.
The problem (once again) is with our faith. The Father sees this new dual reality covering us and is satisfied. We can only see it by faith. For us to gain eyes to see with confidence what the Father sees, our faith has to grow beyond head knowledge to deep heart conviction. Otherwise, we will be an easy prey to accusations from the enemy’s camp exposing our sinfulness or our weaknesses to us.
Easy to Receive; Hard to Believe
These two gifts, the blood covering and the robe of righteousness, are easy to receive. Every Christian receives them at the moment of new birth. But they are very hard to believe in sufficiently to receive the true benefit. As mentioned earlier, many Christians walk about with little confidence before God, believing that there is something wrong with them due to the sinfulness they keep seeing inside. That inner sinfulness is wrong, but it’s already covered. Nevertheless, they have a hard time believing in the Blood covering. It is arguably even harder to believe that an invisible robe of righteousness covers our nakedness! What? Don’t we still see so much weakness, ignorance and foolishness within? These aren’t issues of sin. They are issues of nakedness. You can cleanse us of our sins all day long. The nakedness still remains.
Remember that Adam and Eve first tried to hide their nakedness from each other? That meant that they had the same shame on the inside that we have. It wasn’t sin guilt alone that they were feeling. They were experiencing what it was like to see their “naked” dependence upon God so embarrassingly revealed to their own eyes. They had no wisdom of their own. No strength apart from what they could receive. Before the Fall, their lives were a seamless web of grace-given strength and wisdom, clothed in the glory of the Lord. The grace-giving nature of God was all the covering they needed. Without that, after the Fall, they were immediately ashamed at the sight of how weak, vulnerable and foolish they found themselves to be apart from God. This is what they tried to hide from each other, along with the sin guilt. This shameful sense of nakedness passed down the generation line along with the guilt of original sin. We, too, try to hide from ourselves and from each other the nakedness we feel.
The Paradise to Come
The Robe of Righteousness is God’s way of re-covering us. It is not the same glory once conveyed to us as created beings, crowned with purity and innocence. Nevertheless, it is a true glory. It is woven from the glorious nature and merits of our Savior, Jesus Christ. His righteousness now covers those who believe.[xiii] If we can see this, truly see this by faith, then we lose all fear of letting others see how weak and vulnerable we are, or how lacking in any righteousness of our own.
This new-found, grace-given ability to be “buck-naked” before God and totally transparent before others is absolutely liberating! We can easily and happily show the Lord any whacky or wicked thing going off inside of us, and then ask for His help. We can also “unveil” our own inner goofiness to others in ways that bless and liberate them. This is not a license to sin, but a wholly different way of dealing with sin. Rather than fighting to hide how messed up we are, we make our inner sinfulness a lively, unembarrassed part of our conversation with the Lord as we seek His help in overcoming its impulses. Why hide anything from our divine Helper when all we have to do is step out of the woods and show ourselves, knowing that we are fully covered in His sight? Likewise, why hide from others the help we may need from them or the encouragement we may be to them? Nothing liberates like full disclosure! This enables us to re-enter the glorious liberty of the children of God, a true state of paradise on earth.
For the creation was not willingly subjected to vanity, but because of Him who subjected it on hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Romans 8:20-21 MKJV
There is still no going back to the Garden, so don’t throw your clothes away! There is no going back to original innocence and purity here on earth. And don’t think that we’ll enter some kind of nudist colony in the sky when we die. We will all be fully clothed in heaven.[xiv] Whatever the original plan was, our bodies will remain clothed into eternity. What will change is that all the fig leaves covering our soul will be entirely stripped away. We will all “know” each other -- not in the Biblical sexual sense, but in the intimate personal sense. Our lives will be open and transparent to everyone we meet up there, as theirs will be to us. Don’t believe me? Check the contract. It’s in the fine print.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall fully know even as I also am fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:12 MKJV
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Scriptures on Coverings
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 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." He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" Genesis 3:7-12
Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. Genesis 37:3-4
And He answered and spoke to those who stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy clothes from him. And to him He said, Behold, I have caused your iniquity to pass from you, and I will clothe you with ceremonial robes. Zechariah 3:4 MLJV
Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, put on forever the beauty of the glory from God. Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God; put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting; for God will show your splendor everywhere under heaven. Baruch 5:1-3 (a book of the Apocrypha)
"But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen." Matthew 22:11-14
Endnotes
[i] These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. Genesis 37:2-4
[ii] But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. Isaiah 64:6 KJV
[i] And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Hebrews 4:13
[iii] The original Hebrew word for “crowned” means “to encircle”, “to surround’. In other words, Adam and his wife were surrounded by God’s Glory and Honor. They had been clothed with the Glory of God and didn’t need natural clothing: “You made him (man) a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him (or clothed him) with glory and honor.” Psalm 8:5 See http://revivalhut.com/clothed-in-glory/
[iv] Thus says the LORD: "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, 'We will not walk in it.' Jeremiah 6:16
[v] Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever -- "therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. Genesis 3:22-24
[vi] “World of iniquity” is James’ phrase for our tongues (James 3:6). But our tongues only give expression to what is in our hearts (Matthew 15:18). Hence, the heart is a world of iniquity hidden deep inside us, with its darkest depths hidden even from us: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9
[vii] Adam knew that the Lord warned him that death would result, if he ever disobeyed the command. As we know, Adam died spiritually that day and only later died physically: And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Genesis 2:16-17
[viii] Is death a divine punishment for sin, or the natural and inevitable consequence of sin? Either way, the result is the same: The soul who sins shall die. Ezekiel 18:20
[ix] And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Revelation 13:8 KJV
[x] I say we evidently need something more than a sin covering alone, for the simple unarguable reason that the Lord Himself has provided something more: for Adam and Eve it was the skins; for us it is the Robe of Righteousness.
[xi] I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. Isaiah 61:10
[xii] But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. Isaiah 64:6 KJV
[xiii] And be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. Philippians 3:9
[xiv] This is one of many passages that show people fully clothed in heaven: Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?" I said to him, "Sir, you know." And he said to me, "These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Revelation 7:13-14