God said to Adam “Who told you that you were naked?”
In Genesis 3, God’s first question to Adam was “Where are you?” The first human since creation, who had walked with God daily, had hidden from God because as soon as he tasted the fruit, Adam knew something was different.
Adam had never experienced shame until sin came. I’ve read this account many times, including verse 7, where “they sewed leaves together” and have never considered this. Who taught them how to sew?
The only other voice they heard was the voice they yielded to that brought sin. It was the same voice that told them to hide. It seems reasonable to believe that Satan would have told them how to cover themselves. They were now spiritually separated from God’s glory over them. They wanted to do something about it. “Make some clothes. God may not see it.”
I wonder if there was a bitter aftertaste from the fruit.
How deceptive to think we can hide from God. I think all of us can look back to a time when we knew we had done something that was going to change everything. An action that opened our conscience to a satanic, gleeful voice that tells us our covering is removed, that God wants nothing more to do with us, or at least He won’t once He knows what we’ve done.
There’s a rapid intake of heaviness on our souls when we sin. We want to hide. Our spirit tells us “Something is different”. Something feels yucky. Have you ever wished you didn’t have to be around you? And we change from people who enjoyed the mere thought of being with God to people who both dread that He will come to talk to us about it and fear that He won’t.
I know it is the enemy who tells me I’m naked and exposed to God when I sin. It is the enemy who says, “Cover up and hide”. So when God asks where I am and who told me I am naked, my confession has to be “The devourer”, for that is the intention of Satan, to separate me from God based on my behavior. He wants to devour my security in God’s Fatherhood because I’ve blown it (again).
What the enemy does not remind me of is this: I wasn’t covered in God’s presence based on my behavior before I messed up. Then, and now, I am covered in God’s presence based on the behavior of Jesus. Now what? Do I spend my days walking around in spiritual nakedness or do I re-consider the question and change the outcome?
The truth is that the one who told me I’m naked is the father of liars, according to Jesus Himself. (John 8:44)
Jesus became sin so that I might be made righteous. I was and am reconciled to God through the blood of His cross. (Colossians 1:20) That’s mercy seat blood. That’s covenant blood. And according to Ephesians 1: 19, God has extended that covenant redemption to every believer, and that is an “exceeding greatness power”, the greatest power in the Universe.
That power is Truth. It is the promise of God’s faithfulness. In the blood of the covenant, it’s not me who’s naked, but it’s the liar who tries to sell me leaves.
For His Glory 