“Who told thee that thou wast naked?” (Gen. 3:11)
It has always amazed me that the first thoughts after Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil went to evil, and not to good, and that evil was first revealed in the area of shame. I have also wondered many times why Adam said, “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” (Gen. 3:10)
I have always imagined that there was more than that to these words, because the Lord had said to them, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Gen. 2:17) but only conjecture can be applied here, for if Adam thought those words meant that the Lord was going to cause them to die because they disobeyed, they would have had to have known of death, something around them before they ate of the fruit would have needed to be seen as first alive, and then dead.
It is also interesting to note another two items here, the man Adam had a wife, Eve, and the Scriptures are clear, “And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife,” (Gen. 3:17a) and yet shame, even though they were husband and wife, was one of the first responses to the opening of their minds to the knowledge of good and evil.
One of the very first acts of grace toward humankind and the coming of the perfect sacrifice, the Lord Jesus, is also shown here, for God Himself killed two animals and clothed these first two humans. I doubt very much that He did that because the fig leaves looked uncomfortable. I would ask you to contemplate that first known response of our first parents of how they did not see good, but evil, and they saw it in the form of shame.
“When they told it unto David, he sent to meet them, because the men were greatly ashamed: and the king said, Tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown, and then return.” (2 Sam. 10:5) Apparently from the context, it was shameful for a man in that day to not have a beard, so one must wonder, how were those men treated or at least looked at, who could not grow a beard.
“Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel.” (1 Peter 3:3) It was apparently shameful for a woman in that age to “overdo it,” shall we say, for she was intentionally attempting to draw attention to herself, which of course is a means to pride and vanity. The Scriptures state that the opposite of shame in this area for a woman is modesty, (1 Tim. 2:9) and so good is represented here by modesty, and evil by pride and vanity.
But one must attempt to understand, why is it shameful to be naked in front of others, why is it, if my interpretation is correct, the knowledge of evil that brought this into the minds of our first parents. There is nowhere, anywhere on the entire planet that I am aware of where people live out their day to day lives wearing no clothing. There are of course nudist colonies, but they are generally a fad, so to speak, and do not exist generation to generation throughout the decades. One of the main reasons may be because nakedness creates lust, and the lust of the flesh is a sin, (1 John 2:16) meaning that it is evil in the eyes of the Lord. And so, again if my interpretation is correct, Adam and Eve, who were naked before the fall, knew no lust for each other’s flesh, or in fact, for their own flesh for that matter before the fall. “Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” (James 1:15)
Almost everyone will tell you, that when the lust that they have is fulfilled, shame immediately follows, and then depending on the individual, after a certain amount of time has passed, the guilty feelings, the shame, will once again begin to abate, and the edges of lust will once again begin to appear. Ask anyone who has ever been addicted to pornography, they understand this full well. Those who have been given over to a reprobate mind, (Romans 1:28) are those that find the shame lessening over time, and the lust no longer bothers them as it once did.
Again, in my own humble interpretation, since shame was one of the first responses to the knowledge of good and evil, it must be looked at in the manner to which it appeared, as a root cause. One cannot understand lust unless one can comprehend shame, but shame does not only appear in the form of the conclusion of the lust of the flesh, but also after the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (1 John 2:16) has been fulfilled. It is one of the reasons the Lord said, “That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (Matt. 5:28) And it is also why pride is only seen as a form of shame when a strong man meets someone stronger than himself.
The injury of shame is only relevant with the knowledge of good and evil.
Here is a verse for you to ponder as you contemplate these poorly written words, as you think on this term “shame.” “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” (Heb. 4:13) You can run Adam, you can run Eve, but you cannot hide.
