Nakedness in Genesis

Our Sunday School class has been going through Genesis and I had a few thoughts about how we see nakedness and shame used in the Bible. First we see in Gen. 2:25 - "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." Before human sin and the fall man was naked and without shame. Then in chapter 3:7 that as soon as they disobey and eat the fruit that "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths." It's interesting that the shame and guilt they now have is tied to their nakedness. It gets more interesting in 3:10 when Adam says to God "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself." I'm sure Adam's fear comes from the fact that he has disobeyed God and sinned against him, but he expresses that by says he was afraid because he was naked. Clearly this means more than just that Adam didn't want God to see him without cloths, because he was hiding after he sewed the loincloth. Despite his physical cloths, we see that man is now naked before God because of the shame and guilt that comes with sin. God's response in the next verse is "Who told you that you were naked?" Adam and his wife had been naked the whole time, but the fall has completely changed the human condition. Man's attempt to cover his nakedness, atone for his sin, was insufficient and God had to make the payment for the sin. In 3:21 "the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them."

The theme of nakedness is seen again in Genesis in chapter 9. Noah (I'm not sure that it's correct theologically to call Noah a type of Adam, so to avoid potential error I'm going to call Noah the Adam version 1.1. I can't call him the 2nd Adam because Jesus is THE 2nd Adam, and that would be confusing.) is a type (Maybe?) of Adam in the sense that he is the patriarch of mankind. In the first two chapters of Genesis, God creates the world and everyone is a descendant of Adam. In chapters 7-8, God re-creates the world and everyone is a descendant of Noah. The first thing we learn about Noah after the flood subsides is in 9:20-21 "Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent." So after Adam sinned he realized he was naked, and after Noah sinned he lay in his tent naked. I think part of this story involving Noah's nakedness and his son's responses is that even though God recreated the world in a sense through the flood, sin and nakedness and still not totally dealt with. In the case of Adam, God needed to provide cloths for him. In the case of Noah, his sons had to cover him. Neither could solve their problem on their own.

Lastly we'll leave Genesis and look at the 2nd Adam. Jesus is called the 2nd Adam by Paul in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 because sin entered the world through Adam, and the grace of God came into the world through Jesus. Both Adam and Jesus were representatives of mankind. The amazing thing is that Jesus set aside his righteousness, his clothing, when he died on the cross. When Jesus was crucified he was literally becoming naked for us. The Roman soldiers in John 19:23 "took his garments and divided them into four parts." In Jesus' work on the cross, nakedness was fully dealt with. Man's sin brought on shame and guilt, and just as in Genesis, God provided a way to cover that nakedness. It was all hung on the cross, so that we might be clothed. Paul can now say in Galatians 3:27 "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Now when we stand before God we are not naked, but dressed in the righteousness of Christ.