Biblical Clothing 1: God's Purpose
Disclaimer: To understand the Lord's spiritual truth, you must be born from above by his Holy Spirit. Be sure you've submitted yourself to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and receive this gift from the Lord, lest you add knowledge with no power and are held eternally accountable.
Introduction
For this doctrine of Biblical Clothing, I think I want to take it piece by piece, a little bit at a time. There's a lot to cover, and I'll be linking everything together over time for your edification. Today, let's start by reviewing God's purpose for clothing.
Clothing was created by God and applied to man for a specific purpose.
While the culture is brainwashed into thinking clothing is just something a monkey-evolved neanderthal conjured up in 100,000 BC, that's just not the case. The truth is God clothed mankind, it's right in the Bible, right at the beginning after man's fall into sin. Let's take a look at those verses.
“Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.” (Genesis 3:21, KJV)
Why would God do this? Well, as we read in context, we see that Adam and Eve were ashamed of their nakedness after their sin, and tried to cover themselves with leaves.
“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.” (Genesis 3:7, KJV)
Let's take a closer look at the two Hebrew words used in these verses for aprons and coats:
"aprons"
chăgôr
khag-ore'
From H2296; a belt (for the waist): - apron, armour, gird (-le).
"coats"
kethôneth
keth-o'-neth
From an unused root meaning to cover (compare H3802); a shirt: - coat, garment, robe.
Do you see a big difference between man's standard and God's there? While Adam and Eve covered their private areas with leaves by girding on belts, God covered man's whole form with a robe-like garment. So, why would the Lord do this? Well, there are two main reasons:
- To cover the form of man, knowing we now have the proclivity to lust after each other.
- To archetype (by the killing of animals to make coats of skin) his own shedding of blood thousands of years later as the Lamb of God to cover man's sin.
That's pretty awesome, God clothed us to shield us from sin, and to point forward to his ultimate sacrifice, covering us in his own blood. There's a purpose for everything God does, and clothing is no exception.
To read and study more on this topic, the saints over at dontperish.com have a bunch of articles and audios covering biblical dress for men and women. Here's some links to a few of them:
I'll see you in the next review!