“I was like a beast before You.”
(Ps 73:22, NKJV)
When the naked man disobediently chooses the wrong way, he loosens himself from the glory of God which covers him like a garment, and becomes naked, “shrewd, subtle, crafty”, and exposed like an animal. In such a state David said “I was so foolish and ignorant; I was like a beast before You” (Ps 73:22).
In the previous teaching we came to this insight – Because all created beings have free will, including angels, they can all choose and choose wrongly – thus God discovers deception even in his angels (Job 4:18)! [Thus the Bride will one day also judge the angels – see 1 Cor 6:3. More about this later.] I reiterate – Adam and Eve’s nakedness was the loss of glory. They were embarrassed as the Word that was spoken to them rendered them naked and exposed, little more than animals.
When God dressed Adam and Eve in a garment of animal skin, after the fall, this dress in the original Hebrew means covering. It was the first time since their existence in the garden that Adam and Eve were faced with the concept of death. God had warned them that if they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die (Gen 2:17). Now they needed an example of what death meant (just as Noah had to try and understand the concept of rain before rain had ever fallen on the earth!), and had to understand that an innocent sacrifice was needed to cover their nakedness. The spiritual principle underlying this is that “the blood makes atonement for the soul” (Lev 17:11). In this process of clothing the first human beings the prototype is established, that only the blood of an innocent sacrifice can bring forgiveness.
These “dresses of skin” thus also had the function of illustrating to Adam and Eve that when your spirit is not alive you have the same status as that of an animal – both beings only have a soul dimension and a mortal body. Man and animal are thus not very different.
In Ecclesiastes this is beautifully illustrated – “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. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. “ (Ecc 3:18-19).
This has the implication that man, devoid of spiritual capabilities, can only bring forth his carnal person. The non-born again person ponders only carnal things (Rom 8:5), and is thus carnal (Prov 23:7), bringing forth only death (Rom 8:6), and such a state of thought and life is enmity with God (Rom 8:7).
But what exactly is this glory that man lost in the garden of Eden? John 1:14 spells it out as follows – “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” This is what we have lost – grace and truth.
- Sela: Ponder this definition of glory which sadly we have always overlooked.
- Read: Jos 24; Ezra 7; Isa 40
- Memorise: Isa 40:5 (and praise God’se sense of synchronization!)
