Genesis 3:7 Commentary and Bible Study

That is putting the finger right on what happened to them and what they brought about in their lives. Suddenly, they felt naked, they felt exposed. Suddenly they felt that their condition was dishonourable and distasteful, and had to be covered up. Why did they feel that? Because they were guilty. Guilt had come in, and they felt exposed, they felt tainted, they felt corrupted. God must not see them like this, was their immediate instinct and reaction. And secondly, but not primarily, because lust had come in. With the fall, lust, and so with lust came shame. And they felt inadequate, desperately inadequate. But why should they be ashamed of their bodily nakedness? Why should they not simply be ashamed of their sin? Why was there a physical dimension to their shame? Because God has made us so that our bodies are a mirror of our souls. There is a correspondence between the faculties of the soul and those of the body. Although we have two parts, they are united in one so that the soul and body work together and view themselves as one. Prior to the fall Adam and Eve walked naked before God in their bodies and they walked naked before God in their souls. They had no desire to hide anything from God. Their thoughts were open to him and they communed with him, being happy that he should see all was within them. While they obeyed him they had no thought which they wish to hide, and this reflected itself in the handling of their bodies. Husband and wife are not ashamed and do not feel the need to cover their nakedness from each other. So before they sinned, Adam and Eve were not ashamed to walk naked before God; they did not know what shame was (2:25).‘The eyes of them both were opened.’ These words have not appeared before except as the prediction of the serpent himself. Was the serpent therefore right in what he said about the effect of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Was he right about God’s reason for holding it back from them? No, for their eyes were opened in a sense that was entirely different sense to that meant by Satan. Instead of the wisdom that he had promised would follow, through their making themselves the independent procurers of their destiny, they realised with horror that they now for the first time had guilt before God. The new understanding which they had gained was an understanding of evil, just as the serpent had told them, but it was evil that was deep within them and had corrupted their whole being. It was the knowledge of evil through personal experience of evil.So ‘they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.’ How inadequate! By covering their bodies, they did not of course cover the true source of their discomfiture. Their sense of nakedness originated in their guilt, and this covering could not hide their hearts from the Lord.