The Great Chasm

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

–Genesis 3:21

We have a big problem. Specifically, we have a sin problem. The Bible says we have all inherited the sin virus. Not one person is righteous. On the other hand, the Bible describes God as “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Isaiah 6:3). God has no sin in Him. Habakkuk 1:13 says about God, “Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and You can not look on wickedness with favor.” A holy God cannot allow sin to go unjudged. That means there is a great chasm between God and us because of our sin.

We tend to downplay the breadth of this chasm. We might not be as close to God as the church fathers were, but we’re certainly closer to Him than mass murderers are, right? That’s an illusion. Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? The south and north rim are separated by an average of ten miles. Imagine all of humanity gathers on the south rim of the Grand Canyon to try to jump to the north rim. First, some mass murderers and terrorists jump. They make it about six inches before falling to the bottom of the canyon. Then some pastors and missionaries take a running leap, and they make it three feet before they fall. Then the apostles manage to fly ten feet over the chasm, but they, too, fall to the bottom. There’s a measurable difference between how far the murders and the apostles jumped, but compared to ten miles, the difference is inconsequential.

Only God can span the chasm between holy God and sinful humans. Alexander Pope famously wrote, “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” Forgiveness is part of the heart of God. Romans 5:8 says, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We see God’s heart of forgiveness in the garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve sinned, their first instinct was to cover their guilt, so they sewed together fig leaves to try to hide their nakedness. But there is nothing we can do to cover our own guilt.

Genesis 3:21 says, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” When God killed an animal for its skin, He was teaching us two important lessons. First of all, only God can provide a covering for our sin. Second, that covering involves something innocent dying for the guilty. What God did for Adam and Eve was pointing to what Jesus would one day do for us by dying on the cross–God’s radical solution to our sin problem.

Today’s devotion is adapted from “What Every Christian Should Know About Sin” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2022.

Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism, ed. B. M. Wantilove (J. M. Dent, 1903), 21.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.