From the types in the previous lesson we see that the significance of God’s focusing on man in His creation of the universe and all things is that He desired to prepare for Christ a counterpart, that is, the church. In order to become the church as the counterpart of Christ, the God-created yet fallen man needs to be redeemed, to be saved, and to live before God by Christ as a burnt offering to God for God’s sweet satisfaction. Therefore, in the revelation of the Bible, following the type of Adam and Eve for Christ and the church, there are the initial types of Christ’s redemption and salvation.
In the Bible, God used the skins of the sacrifices with which God made coats for the fallen Adam and Eve to put on, the sheep with their fat which Abel offered to God, the burnt offerings which Noah offered to God, and the seed of the woman who would bruise the head of the serpent, as the primitive types concerning Christ’s redemption and His salvation. These may be called the initial types of Christ’s redemption and His salvation.
Before the fall, Adam and Eve, the first ancestors of mankind, were in a state of innocence; they were sinless and had no consciousness of sin. Therefore, although they were both naked, they were not ashamed (Gen. 2:25).
Adam and Eve were tempted by the serpent, Satan the subtle one, and disobeyed God’s command so that they rejected the tree of life, which signifies God as life, and took in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which signifies Satan as the source of sin and death (Gen. 2:8-9, 17; 3:1-7). Thus, they sinned before God. Their offense and disobedience (Rom. 5:18-19) constituted their sinful conduct. Furthermore, the evil nature of Satan, which they received into them by their committing sin and by their fall, became their sinful nature (Rom. 5:12, 19). After they had sinned in this way, they became sinners, having the sinful conduct outwardly, the sinful nature inwardly, and the consciousness of sin.
After they sinned, the fallen Adam and Eve became conscious of their sin and realized the shame of their nakedness. Hence, they took the leaves of a fig tree to make skirts for themselves to cover their shame. This indicates that sinful men tried to remove the shame of their sin by the works of their own hands and by the human cultivation of their conduct. However, in doing this they were not able to cover their nakedness in the eyes of God. After the fall men needed a bleeding sacrifice for redemption. Thus, their attempt to cover their shame with a product of the vegetable life could never work.