Are you naked?

After some heavy Bible-reading last night after I posted, I just have to crank out another few pages about something very important. And that something is nakedness.

Nakedness is a pretty common theme in the Bible. Lot’s daughters got into trouble looking at his nakedness, as did Noah’s son. The soldiers cast lots for Jesus’ clothing. All around the world, people wear clothes. They may be different styles and different degrees of coverage, but we all put something on ourselves. We all attempt to cover ourselves in some way. So nakedness must be important.

In yesterday’s post, I was writing about the Garden and the Fall. When Adam and his wife ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the first thing they noticed was that they were naked.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her [like, right next to her, watching her—way to go, Adam], and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

                                                                                --Genesis 3:6-7

Now, these were perfect people. This was a man and a woman made in the likeness of Jesus. And they still did this thing. And when they did it, they, like middle-schoolers having a nightmare about showing up to school without clothes, became hyper-aware of the fact that they were naked.

Their solution to this problem? Sew together a few fig leaves to cover themselves up. If you’ve ever seen a sixteenth-century statue, you know what a pitiful covering fig leaves are.

But don’t we do the same thing? Don’t we try to cover ourselves with fig leaves? When we realize we have sinned, or even when we realize how imperfect we are, we attempt to glaze over our shortcomings by justifying ourselves or self-deprecating……….spiritual fig leaves.

I guess Adam and his wife thought their fig leaves were pretty pathetic too, because the next thing they did was hide.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.—Genesis 3:8

Um, He’s God….He can see you.

But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

God already knew what Adam had done…and was seeking his company anyway.

And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

At least Adam didn’t lie here. He probably didn’t have much practice with lying, being originally righteous and all.

God’s response to Adam here is interesting. He does not accuse. He already knows everything. He only asks questions.

He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

As I said before, God already knew the answer to both of these questions. See, Adam and his wife (later to be named Eve) had not ever been accused before, because they had never sinned before. They didn’t know they were imperfect before God, because, honestly, they probably had not been thinking about themselves too much before that point. They had just been enjoying God. But when they sinned by disobeying God, they knew that they were naked, because they knew that they were capable of sin. They knew that, compared to their Beloved, they were flawed, unholy, inadequate—naked.

Adam set the precedent for all humanity in the way that he answered God’s questions. He turned around, pointed one accusing finger at his wife and another at God, and said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”

Adam responded like a little kid who breaks something, points at his sister, and exclaims, “She did it!” From that moment on, we have all tried to justify ourselves by condemning others.

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?”

And the woman points her finger, too: The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

In case you haven’t noticed, everyone in this scenario is pointing a finger of blame except for God. They’re using one hand to hold up their pitiful fig leaves and another to point at each other and say, “Look…she’s naked!”

I had been wondering why the world is the way that it is—why the world condemns every one of us. Why we blame each other to get out of things. Why we constantly justify ourselves. Why I self-condemn whenever I encounter imperfection in myself. We’re addicted to it.

God took me all the way back to Genesis to explain this: that we all know we are naked, and we are struggling to cover ourselves, instead of asking Him to cover us.

After God questions the woman, He turns right back around and curses….the serpent. The devil was the first one He cursed. I think that shows God’s merciful nature—He knew who was really to blame. Then He laid a curse on His beloved. How it must have wrecked His heart—yet it would be against His just nature not to banish them from the Garden.

But note what He does next. Before He even drove them out of the Garden, …the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them (3:21).

He clothed them.

It was probably pretty nightmarish for Adam and Eve to watch God make clothing. They had never seen death before, and probably couldn’t even conceptualize it. But here He was, slaughtering an animal before them. It was probably horrifying beyond their imagination. But it was how God clothed them. He covered them then, with the first animal sacrifice the world had ever known.

Skip a few hundred pages forward to the Gospel of John. In chapter 8, we find the story of a woman caught in adultery. I bet you know it well. The people pick up stones to kill her, but Jesus says the oft-quoted line, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (8:7). Then He bent down and wrote some stuff in the sand. We don’t know what it is He wrote, but many people say it was the Law—all the principles those stone-throwers were supposed to be living by. One by one, they dropped their stones and walked away, until the woman was the only one left. (If I were her, I would’ve already run away…but I guess she was fascinated by Jesus.)

Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”—8: 10-11

Before this, Jesus had been minding His own business—the people brought her into the temple where He was teaching and demanded of Him, “Moses said we should stone her. What do you say, Jesus?” They brought her to be put to death, as was required by the law that came out of the curse on Adam and Eve. 

They brought her there to point a finger of condemnation at her before all, to uncover her nakedness. When Jesus gave His famous response, I think what happened was that the people had to admit that they were naked. And they fled home to feverishly sew together some fig leaves. As for Jesus, He said, “I don’t condemn you.”

God does hate sin, and He does not want us to run around sinning all over the place. But this is what the Bible says: For God did not send his Son in to the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God (John 3:17-18). When we call Jesus “Lord,” like the adulterous woman did, He is able to put some new clothes on us. Heavenly robes, in fact.

However, most of us react to that by acting like a toddler getting out of a bath: we run around naked, slippery-wet, through the whole house, while our Father chases us down to wrap us in a warm, soft, clean white towel. If we condemn ourselves, we don’t trust in Jesus’ righteousness; we continue to sew our own fig leaves.

Let’s look at the story of the prodigal son. This is a guy who basically told his dad that he wished he were dead so he could have his inheritance, and then he took his inheritance and blew it all on a sinful lifestyle. But then he realizes he should return to his father in humility, asking only to be made a servant.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”—Luke 15:20-21

And the father looked at him and pointed an accusing finger at him, right? Nope: But the father said to his servants, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet….”

The first thing the father does for the son is clothe him. Not only does he clothe him, he clothes him in his finest robes, and sets his seal on his hand by giving him his ring, and puts shoes on his feet so he has freedom to walk.

Self-condemnation always pours out of self-righteousness. When you condemn, you are saying that you are wise and you know what deserves to be condemned. Even when you condemn yourself, you are sewing together fig leaves, thinking they are adequate to cover your nakedness.

Like I said before, there is such a thing as godly grief over sin, and we should confess our sins. What I am saying is that we shouldn’t dwell on our nakedness. We shouldn’t live in false humility, like the prodigal son. He realized he would be better off at his father’s—and that’s why he returned with a supposedly humble spirit, not because he was genuinely sorry. Yet the father accepted him anyway, rejoicing at his return.  

God knows everything; His wrath against you would be far more than you could imagine. But He has given us His son, so that we can stop condemning ourselves, stop wearing fig leaves and animal skins—and put on the robes made for a holy people. Stop pointing at yourself, justifying yourself or talking down about yourself; confess that you are naked; and put His robes on.

For years, I would experiment with outfits, putting on different combinations of clothing to express the personality I wanted people to think I had. We have all done it. We have all agonized over our wardrobe, trying to look our best, because we didn’t believe His righteousness was enough; or, thinking we were unworthy of attention, settled for frumpy clothing as a kind of false humility, because we were too scared to don His righteousness.

Here’s the Gospel, folks. We are born naked. We know we are born naked. But we don’t have to live under the curse of the Garden, wearing these old stinky animal skins made from slaughtered flesh. We have Jesus’ robe of righteousness. All we have to do is come to Him and call Him Lord.

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

—Jeremiah 31:33-34

No longer do we have to point condemning fingers at one another—or ourselves. He has forgiven our sin, so that we may approach His throne and know Him, just like Adam and Eve did. And in this restoration, in this redemption, we don’t have to be scared when we hear the sound of God walking in the Garden. We are wearing Jesus’ robe of righteousness. And we are not naked anymore.

( P.S., I really hope someone Googles the word “naked,” and this blog pops up.)