“I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them,
and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.”
(Ecc 3:18, KJV)
The Scriptural narrative is drenched in blood. Not strange then to consider it the only “living” book (Heb 4:12) in all the libraries of the world, for “life … is in the blood” (Lev 17:11). This life blood is not only a theme, but a mysterious force that conveys the enigma of what we call life. The Word has the ability to penetrate “even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow” (Heb 4:12). We often read this verse without giving heed to the one that follows it, which classifies the Word not as a text, but as a Person: “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” We know that this Word is Jesus, who became flesh and lived amongst us (John 1:1 & 14), the Son of the living God, but is also the Word as Inscribed Christ. Jesus, in his totality, is translated into a book and his LIFE pulsates through it (for argument’s sake one could call it the ink of the Book which falls upon your eye or ear, penetrating you).
To frame it differently – When the Word penetrates, all things are visible and made manifest, “all [things are] naked and have been exposed” (ASV). Through the Word that leaves God’s mouth (Matt 4:4), the words of Scripture become a Person WITHIN us, who make everything visible, extending as far as the twilight zone between soul and spirit, the seat of our decision making.
We know that man lost his glory after the fall (Rom 3:23). This glory was man’s covering, and it was only after it was lost that man first realized that he was naked. The term naked does not primarily mean that your genitals are exposed to others – this was already the case before the fall. Nakedness is a state of being without the glory of God. Our linking of nakedness and sexual consciousness is inaccurate. Thus many people still think that the fall in the garden of Eden was a sexual sin. (With the poor apple – which was not even the fruit of the tree of Life – doomed to be the eternal symbol of sexual temptation!) This is truly not the case. Along with all other things sexuality too became perverted after the fall (Rom 8:21).
In the last verse of Gen 2 it states that “they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (verse 25), and the word naked here is the Hebrew word arom. The next sentence of this narrative continues in Gen 3:1, which reads as follows – “Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?’” The word cunning is translated from the Hebrew aram, the root meaning of arom. Aram means “to be shrewd, subtle, crafty”. In his nakedness, without the covering of God’s glory, man is at the mercy of his free will, which is always directed towards promoting himself, and providing in his own needs. This is the fleshly nature of self-gratification. When the naked man, through disobedience, chooses wrongly, he loosens himself from the glory of God which covers him like a garment, and becomes naked, “shrewd, subtle, crafty”. Adam and Eve were embarrassed because the Word that was spoken to them resulted in their being naked and exposed, and reduced them to little more than animals, as the Scripture quoted earlier attests.
- Sela: Link this teaching to Ezek 28.
- Read: Jos 23; Ezra 6; Isa 39
- Memorise: Isa 23:14
- For a deeper understanding: Read Max Lucado’s God came near.
