(c) Eva Marie Everson
Questions 2, 3, & 4: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? … What is this you have done?” (Genesis 3:11, 13).
The Path of Silence: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin (Psalm 51:1, 2).
The Path of Memory: Write your thoughts about your daily journey or memory.
The Path of Questioning: Read Genesis 3:10–13.
And so, God came down to the Garden to commune with His creation. His artwork. His handwork. I imagine He stopped along the way to pet the lion and talk to the giraffe. To throw a stick for the wolf to fetch, then dipped His hand into the cool of the brook so the fish would know He had not forgotten them.
And then, the time came for Him to step into that verdant part of the Garden where His created man and the woman typically waited. But this evening, they were not there. They were, instead, in hiding. Shamed because they had been duped by the great liar, Satan.
Did God wait? Did He find a suitable boulder and sit upon it? Did He take time to listen to the birds calling to one another? Did He wait long enough for the lightning bugs to begin their show? Or did He count only a few quick breaths between the sitting and the standing again to go find His children? His beloved?
I am quite certain when He called out, “Where are you?” He already knew. The question was rhetorical because nothing is or can be hidden from God. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight, writes the author of Hebrews. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.[i]
Everything is laid bare.
The Greek word for bare in this text is gymnos, which when it comes to a person means “without clothing” or “the naked body.” But when it comes to the soul, whose garment is the body, it means “stripped of the body.”[ii]
When God found His Adam, His Eve, he asked them four questions. The first question, “Where are you?” A rhetorical question, for sure. But was God asking about the location of the physical (the body) or of the soul?
Adam answered, “I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
Imagine that moment. Adam was surely not looking directly at God. He had most likely lowered his gaze to the lush grass beneath his perfectly formed feet. Perhaps he gave a sideward glance toward his wife, who may have still been in hiding behind the thick foliage of a bush. Maybe a large gardenia bush, the intoxicating sweet scent of it filling her nostrils so much so that for the remainder of her days, when she caught a whiff of its fragrance, her memories crashed back to this awful moment.
But what was God doing? I imagine, like any parent whose child has misbehaved, His eyes—filled with sadness and disappointment—were focused on the guilty. Long, painful moments passed. Long and painful moments for both man and God. Until finally He asked, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” These are Questions Two and Three. They are spoken directly to Adam, who answered by shifting blame, one of our first indications that sin had indeed entered the world.
I have sinned but let me see whom I can blame for that sin. In a moment when Adam should have “manned up,” he blamed not only his wife but God as well. “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it” (emphasis mine).
Do you ever wonder how differently this may have gone had Adam simply dropped to his knees and cried out to God as David did in Psalm 51? I have sinned! I am wrong! But if you wash me with hyssop, I will be white as snow and things can go back to the way they were. Instead, Adam added sin on top of sin—like extra scoops of ice cream no one needs but few can resist—by not confessing and getting it over with.
God turned to Eve, who no doubt by now was clearly within His vision and Him within hers, and He asked the final question, “What is this that you have done?”
Eve, like her husband before her, shifted the blame, but with a twist. “The serpent deceived me,” she said, “and I ate.”
The twist comes because, unlike Adam, this answer came with at least half a confession. Yes, Satan lied to me, but, bottom line, I sinned.
Later, realizing the fig leaves the man and woman had used to hide their nakedness was less than adequate to cover their sin, God sacrificed animals and used their skins to stitch together clothing for Adam and his wife. He then drove the man and woman out of their beautiful home. Not because He did not love them, but because He did. The Tree of Life remained untouched because if man were to be so tempted to eat of it, he would live forever. “The man has now become like one of us,” God said. “Knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and live forever[iii].”
Man would live forever and sin forever, never to be reconciled with God … and this God could not bear because His plans for reconciliation had already been mysteriously and wondrously made.
We are confident, I say, Paul would write some thousands of years later, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.[iv]
We all stand naked—our sins bared—before God. We have all sinned and will continue to do so. In Romans 3:23, Paul reminds us that “all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.” This is a verse of Scripture we quote easily but rarely in its entirety. But we should, because there is redemption in that verse when we read it and the verses around it.
The righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.[v]
Our sins cannot be covered up by our meager attempts at sewing together fig leaves. But God, brokenhearted as He may have been and continues to be, has provided a way through the sacrifice of Christ Jesus. Too often, however, we have so carefully swept our sins under rugs, we have so cleverly hidden behind bushes and fig leaves that we have not heard God call out to us, “Where are you?” much less “What is this that you have done?” With those questions unanswered—unconfessed and unforgiven—we live more separately from God than we realize.
We must ask God if there is anything hidden and then ask Him to reveal our sins to us by the power of His Spirit so we can confess them and live in His righteousness. As the man of God Moses wrote and the prophet Daniel penned, You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence[vi] and [God] reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him.[vii]
Now it’s your turn to journal on The Path of Questioning. Noting the words I have underlined, plus any words you may have underlined as well, along with the questions God asked Adam and Eve—and now asks you—write your answers to Him.
Circle toward the labyrinth’s center with The Path of Prayer. Then, sit quietly for a few moments with God before returning to life as you know it.
[i] Hebrews 4:13
[ii] TheBlueLetterBible.org (Strong’s G1131)
[iii] Genesis 3: 22 (attribution inserted)
[iv] 2 Corinthians 5:8
[v] Romans 3:21b–23
[vi] Psalm 90:8
[vii] Daniel 2:22
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