Was Adam Saved or Condemned?

Word-Of-The-Day: ‘The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.’ (Genesis 3:21)

A question came up from someone in the Life Group I teach a while back; was Adam righteous and was he ‘saved’?  All Adam did was cause the fall of mankind into the depths of sin and opened up the gates of Hell, condemning all who have sinned (all of us) a chance to play the game that no one wins at, ‘Bobbing for Brimstone’. 

Unless there is atonement for sin, we cannot escape this fate.  For us, it was Jesus who through His sacrifice on the cross and His resurrection who gives us that atonement for sin, with the caveat that we must accept Christ as Lord and Savior to receive His gift of atonement to be righteous in God’s eyes.

But what of Adam, and the others who lived, and died, before Christ?  The interim solution that God provided for atonement was through animal sacrifice.  Although this was not solidified until the Levitical (or Mosaic) Laws were given to Moses by God, with ‘prescriptions’ of sacrifices given for certain sins or activities, we do know there were animal sacrifices made to God prior to this. 

Noah, for example, gave a burnt offering to God after the ark hit dry ground (Genesis 8:20).  Even before this, the first animal sacrifice by man noted is from Abel, who offered up the life of an animal to God, in comparison to the (interesting and thought-provoking) vegetable sacrifice offered by his brother Cain (Genesis 4:3-4). 

We often sing praise of ‘the shedding of blood’, but simply shedding the blood, even with Jesus’, is not enough.  One could not simply cut an animal for a few drops of blood and call it ‘good’.  Abel’s sacrifice, as well as Jesus’, only became satisfying and acceptable because of the death of the sacrificed.  The animal had to give up its life to atone for the sins of the one it was sacrificed for. 

Jesus had to give up His life to atone for the sins of all mankind, as He was sacrificed for everyone who ever lived (John 3:16).  Again, it must be stressed one can only be saved by acknowledging Jesus as the Ultimate Sacrifice and that He is the Lord of All, and having Faith in Him and His promises.  Jesus died for all, but only those who accept Him and His sacrifice will be saved.

For Adam and Eve specifically, God performed the animal sacrifice to cloth Adam and Eve in (Genesis 3:21).  Some scholars state this was not animal skins but when the human body was formed. This theory does not make sense as there was physically animals and trees present in the Garden of Eden, and God’s own account of making Adam and Eve from the dust of the ground and breathing life in through their nostrils, walking through the Garden and naming the animals.  

They were also ‘awaken’ after eating the forbidden fruit, and were embarrassed to find themselves naked so they grabbed fig leaves to cover themselves.  In other words, they tried to cover their sins – and their physical bodies – by sacrificing vegetation. 

God did not find this suitable, so He covered them by sacrificing an animal (or animals) and providing its skin onto them – thus the first official article of clothing is the leather jacket.  If you skin an animal it will die, thus the animal(s) God took the skin from had to die; their lives were sacrificed to have their hides cover Adam and Eve.

After the Fall, Adam and his sons Abel, Cain, and Seth continued to have personal interactions with God.  After Cain killed Abel, it is not clear that God had interaction with Cain after sending him to Nod, but He did continue to interact with Adam and Seth, showing that they continued to have a relationship with God, and with Adam being proclaimed a son of God (Luke 3:38).

We can surmise he is righteous in God’s eyes.  God also gave Adam the promise his offspring would eventually defeat Satan, sin, and death (Genesis 3:15).  Those righteous, believing in God and obeying Him, even if committing a sin but showing remorse and following through with the proper animal sacrifice prior to Jesus (those in the Old Testament) have been retroactively covered with Jesus’ sacrifice as stated in (Hebrews 10:1-10). 

Like us, Adam, Abel, David, Noah, and other Old Testament heroes are saved through Jesus, by His blood and by their Faith.  Amen!