That First Sacrifice

Genesis 3:8–24

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• they hid themselves from the LORD God among the trees of the garden
• I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked
• the LORD God made for the man and his wife garments of skin, with which he clothed them
• God banished him from the garden of Eden

Applying the Word to My Life:
I have been thinking about vocation a lot as of late. The word is derived from the Latin for “to call,” and that is the thing: a vocation is a calling. If we have to be called to something, it implies that we would not do it without some prompting. There is some sacrifice there. In my life, I’m a lawyer. I like it and I do well at it, but if money weren’t an issue and I could choose whatever I wanted, it might not have been that. A calling asks something of us. It pulls us past preference and comfort.

Adam and Eve committed the first sin—turning their free will inward to do what they wanted instead of what God wanted—and that changed everything. It created a world where selfishness, pain, suffering, and wounds would happen. It changed our relationship with God and with each other. The world outside the garden is not just harder. It is different.

God already knew the world they had chosen. Before Adam and Eve went out into that new world, He prepared them for the journey. He gave them garments to protect them from the elements and from the world they had chosen to enter.

The garments God provides them are made of skin. That makes plain the terms of the new world they chose. In that world, life requires sacrifice. Protection now comes at a cost. The first sacrifice is right there at the beginning, done by God Himself, where He takes the life of some of His creation to protect His most beloved—to protect His children as they begin to suffer the consequences of their decision to leave His protection.

That reality has been known, at least in part, through civilizations across the ages. There is a deep recognition that something must be offered for the safety, protection, and welfare of others. People have seen the outline of that truth because it is woven into this world from the beginning. But what is only dimly perceived there is brought into full light in the sacrifice of Christ.

The first sacrifice foreshadowed the Passion. But it was subtle, easy to miss, easy to disregard in a selfish world. The sacrifice of Christ could not be missed. It was so large that everyone could see it. And still it was hard to understand—not because it was too complex, but because self-interest had seeped so deeply into this world that true sacrifice had become foreign to us.

But the fact remains that life, all of it, requires sacrifice on the part of others. Christ’s Passion saved our souls, but our bodies require sacrifice too. We are not independent. To function, we need the help of others. This started at the very beginning of our lives. Our parents gave up their time, money, strength, and peace to give us life. But it continues every day. Others work to give us the things we need to live—water, electricity, roads, food, order, shelter. Without sacrifice, we would have nothing.

But Easter does not let us stop there. The first sacrifice in Eden tells us that love now carries cost in the world we chose. The Cross shows that God Himself is willing to bear that cost. The Resurrection shows that such love is not defeated by death. What began as protection for exile is answered in Christ by the opening of the way home. The first sacrifice covered wounded children leaving the garden. The risen Christ opens the path home for those exiled children who can now return to the Father.

That changes the way we have to think about duty too. Duty is not just the grim recognition that I owe something back because others have sacrificed for me. In Christ, it becomes something brighter. It becomes the chance to live the kind of life that resurrection has made possible. I am not here merely to consume what others have given. I am here to become gift in return. Christian duty is love awakened by love, sacrifice answered by sacrifice, life poured out because life has first been poured into me.

Life still requires sacrifice on the part of others. That has not changed. But Easter says something even greater: sacrifice united to Christ does not end in nothing. It becomes life. Because He lives, love poured out is never wasted.

And maybe that is part of what Easter finally teaches us to see. Sacrifice is real. Duty is real. Love still costs something. But in Christ, none of that is pointless anymore. The risen Lord shows us that self-gift is not the end of joy, but one of the ways we enter into it.

That is true in the Christian life as a whole, and it is true in smaller ways all through ordinary life. I may not have chosen every demand of my vocation on my own terms, but I have come to know the joy that can live inside of giving myself to something beyond preference. I see it when I get to use the gifts God gave me to help people through some of the best and worst days of their lives. I see it in the way that service to others gives me a way to provide for my family.

The sacrifice is real and will always be there. But I can choose joy, and the Resurrection is the path that leads me there.

My Response for Today:
Today, I will notice one place where I am tempted to resent the cost of love and instead remember that in Christ even sacrifice can become a path to joy.