“I will greatly rejoice in Yahweh; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”
~Isaiah 61:10
The theme of clothing is woven into the warp and woof of Scripture. Man is created naked and unashamed, but he wasn’t to remain unclothed. As creation around him was immature and, in that sense, naked, needing to be clothed with the glories created by man’s dominion, man himself was to mature and be clothed with garments of glory and beauty. We can know this with certainty because the resurrected and ascended Christ Jesus, the last Adam, is clothed in his glorified state. He was naked and ashamed on the cross, but in his exaltation, he is gloriously vested (see Rev 1). Man’s destiny was to be clothed, and his clothing would be the glory for which God created him.
Man sinned and fell short of this glory (Rom 3:23). After the first sin, the man and woman sought to clothe themselves with fig leaves, covering their shame. This wasn’t the glory God intended. God shed blood and clothed them with the skins of animals.
Nevertheless, God’s plan was unchanged. Man was still to take dominion of the earth and make clothes for glory and beauty from it. The world would fight him in various ways, but God intended man to share his glory so that man would be clothed in the way God himself was clothed. God clothes himself in creation (see Psa 104:1-2). This is the manifestation of his glory. God desires that man share his glory, clothed in a glorified creation.
Images of this glory are given in the high priest of Israel. When God delivered the children of Israel from Egypt, they plundered the Egyptians. From this old, decimated world that was Egypt, God provided the materials to make a new world. This was the world of the Tabernacle with its principal figure, the high priest, the new man. God made clothes for the high priest, and these clothes were “for glory and for beauty” (Ex 28:2). The high priest’s garments were made from animal (wool), mineral (gold, silver, and precious stones), and vegetable (linen). The high priest wore creation like a garment. He is the living image of the invisible God who wears creation as a garment.
Isaiah 61 refers to these priestly garments throughout the chapter and, toward the end, calls them “the garments of salvation” and “robe of righteousness.” These are parallel, describing the same thing with slightly different images.
Isaiah 61 is structured by creation imagery. “The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh” begins the chapter. The chapter ends with the image of a man and woman, bridegroom and bride, clothed and in a fruitful garden. The middle of the chapter describes ruins, a formless and void world. The Spirit is brooding over the ruins and will re-create the world, culminating in a glorified husband and wife in a fruitful garden. The one upon whom the Spirit rests, the Anointed One, of whom Isaiah prophesies, is coming to make a new creation. He will not turn back the clock and make everything as it was in the beginning. He will glorify the world with the man and woman at the center with their garments of salvation.
The garments of salvation and robes of righteousness are not abstract concepts, ideas that need down-to-earth illustrations so that we can grasp them. The garment of salvation is the glorified creation. The developed creation, the new heavens and the new earth that will be our garments, will be our salvation. Salvation is not an escape from the earth, a bodiless existence in a distant immaterial heaven. Salvation is being clothed with the glorified creation.
The One for whom we wait in this season of Advent does not come as a bodiless spirit or transform into one after his work is completed. He is the Spirit-anointed One who clothes himself with the creation, hovers over its ruins, and then transforms creation into glorious garments. At the end of Isaiah 61, we learn these garments are not for him alone. He takes a bride under the wing of his garment. She is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, sharing his garment. I speak of Christ and the church.
In your baptism, you have “put on Christ” (Gal 3:27). The one who took on the creation and brought it to its intended glory in his resurrection and ascension is your garment of salvation, your robe of righteousness. In him, you are glorified.
Work remains to be done. Christ has glorified the creation in his own person, and now all creation must follow. This is our continuing work in the world until Christ’s second Advent. In the power of the Spirit, whom we share in our union with Christ, we are to work to make everything we touch in the creation a glorious garment worthy of Christ and his bride.
