Naked

“He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid’ ” (Genesis 3:10, NIV).

This is the story of the first two people mentioned in the Bible. Their names were Adam and Eve. According to the Book of Genesis, God made Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed life into his newly formed body. Afterward, God created Eve using a rib bone taken from Adam’s side. The creation of the first two people was the crowning achievement of God’s creation of the world. His pronouncement upon his work was “…it was very good…” (Genesis 1:31, NIV).

Everything was perfect in the Garden of Eden, the home turf of Adam and Eve. It was Paradise, after all, and man and woman lived in harmony with God and his creation.

That is, until Satan came slithering onto the scene. Satan tempted Adam and Eve to disobey the one command God had given them, to abstain from eating the fruit of one specific tree in the garden. Rather than obeying God, Adam and Eve listened to this charming snake. Its cunning words were so seductive, so inviting. So, they looked at the fruit hanging from the tree. Then they touched it. Then Adam and Eve picked the fruit and ate it. For the first time, they tasted sin and were ashamed. And from that moment their intimate relationship with God was broken. With sin came guilt, and with guilt came shame. Adam and Eve suddenly realized that they were naked, and, for the first time, they felt like they had to hide from God their Creator.

But a plan was already in the works on the part of God. Paradise, temporarily lost, would one day be restored. God would soon revisit his creation, this time in person, at another tree called Calvary. There he would take the guilt and shame, the sin of all people, all the way to the grave. And for all who would believe in him, Paradise would return. The relationship between God and man, once whole, then torn apart, would be realized again through God’s redeeming work on the cross.