Troublesome Topic: THE NAKEDNESS OF ADAM, EVE AND JESUS IN THE GARDEN

By speaking the universe into existence God took part of what was inside of Him and brought it out for all to see, thus creation is a small replica, a picture of what God is like. Man is a special replica of what God is like, and he was intended to be the leader in this universal demonstration of the character and nature of God. He wanted Adam to multiply and fill the earth with little replicas of Adam who was a replica of God.

This does not mean that God has a body like we do. We are to be like God in character, attitude, purpose, thought and action. Those qualities are housed in a physical shell called a body.

These physical shells we live in are a marvel of God’s creation. He created them as something good, something special, something pure. He included the naked bodies of Adam and Eve in His blessing when He said that everything that He had made was “very good.”

But after the fall of man into sin, the reality of multiplying and filling the earth with little replicas of Adam became a dreaded thought, not a happy one. This is the biggest reason I can deduce for which the shame of their sinful act is so closely tied to their nakedness. It has to do with reproduction. From that moment on their reproductive organs would be involved in making little replicas of a fallen, broken, sin-filled man or woman. Their offspring would be a continuation of their shame. Therefore, the reproductive organs were the triggers of their shame, and shame drove them to cover up.

We could say that nakedness seems to refer to anything that makes people think of the reproductive organs.

Gen 2:25 makes a special point of telling us that Adam and Eve were naked and yet were not ashamed. There was nothing abnormal about it. It felt right. But now it feels wrong.

This should show us how fundamental the changes were that the fall into sin brought about. It is because of sin that we feel shame about nudity. And there is a deeper level: our shame about certain things is only a demonstration that we feel constant shame on the inside. Nakedness is tied to shame, and shame is tied to the curse, and the curse comes from sin.

If nakedness is tied to shame and shame to the curse, why are we so attracted to a naked body (i.e. porn)? Why does porn have such power over so many people? Why do we so readily participate in shameful acts?

Before they fell into sin, sex did not dominate the Adam’s thinking the way it dominates men’s thinking now. It was not problematic for them to walk around naked because sex had its proper place in life along with everything else. Since we live after the fall, seeing people walk around naked would create many problems, as does seeing people walk around partially naked, i.e. showing lots of skin and shape and leaving very little to the imagination.

Gen 3:7  and their eyes were opened and they both knew that they were naked.

They had known nakedness before in a mental sense, but it had brought no shame; it seemed normal and proper. Now it seemed wrong; they were no longer comfortable being naked. Now they knew something was wrong, and being naked highlighted that sense of wrong.

When Jesus went looking and calling for Adam and Eve after they had sinned, I believe He did not have any clothes on. They had sinned, he had not. They felt uncomfortable and He did not. He was in a state of purity so his coming to them as he had before, with no clothes, and being totally OK with that, just highlighted their shame, for they were trying to hide. It was a slap in the face that he could comfortably walk around naked yet they could no longer do so. If he had come to them with clothes on, he would have been sharing in their shame, and thus their guilt.

The reason that Jesus wore clothes when he came to earth for 30 plus years is that this was no longer the garden of Eden. We see each other through eyes and minds that are different from Adam and Eve’s. The fact that Jesus wore clothes in the NT does not mean that he was guilty of sin. However, he did come to take our sins upon himself; but he did not do so by simply wearing clothes, he did so by being condemned to death on a cross.

Adam and Eve sewed together fig leaves and made for themselves loin clothes, also thought of as belts, or aprons. Their first reaction was to hide behind a tree or bush, but then they realized that the only way to move about was to create a covering that moved with them.

Was this to hide from each other, or from God, or both?

Probably both.

The shame they felt made it hard to face anyone. So their mate, the one they had been with 24/7 for an undefined number of days, always in the buff, suddenly made them feel uncomfortable.

Notice that the loincloth covers the part of the man and the woman that are most different. All of us have buttocks, all of us have nipples. But the front, middle section is where we are most different. That is what the loincloth covered. Sin could not strip them of their clothes for they had none, but it did strip them of their confidence, marred their sense of self and interfered in their relationship with others, especially God.