Shame's Remedy
The word advent means the arrival of something long awaited. Advent for a Christ-follower is a celebration of remembrance of Christ's arrival on Christmas morning after such long anticipation of a Messiah. One way to awaken excitement over the true meaning of Christmas is to look back at the many passages of scripture in the Old Testament that promise Christ arrival. One of my favorite Advent passages that is often overlooked is in Genesis 3 the story of the fall of man. Not the typical story we associate with Christmas, but it is here at the very beginning of the Bible that God foretells of our promised Messiah. At the first instance of sin, God’s promise of rescue and redemption were already present.
We see in Genesis 2:25 that before sin entered the world there was no shame. “Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.” There was a time of glorious freedom when no shame existed in the world. Before sin, there was no shame. They were naked but felt no shame; they were naked physically, emotionally, and spiritually. They lived fully exposed in all aspects with the purest sense of God’s love. They were free. They were innocent. They were trusting. They were designed for closeness and intimacy with God and each other and experienced no shame, just peace and contentment. I hate the way shame feels. It makes my stomach ache, my heart race, my skin crawl and it makes me want to climb into a hole and hide. That’s exactly what it causes Adam and Eve to do as well.
Then in Gen 3:7 after being convinced by the serpent's cunning manipulation that God was withholding something good from them, they ate the forbidden fruit. The enemy’s lies will always make God seem restricting to keep us blinded to the joy of contentment in all He has given. “At that moment...they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness” (Gen 3:7). Shame was experienced for the first time ever by human beings. They felt the uncomfortable sting of shame and they hid. Shame is evil. Conviction is good. Shame causes us to hide and cover. Conviction leads us to repent. The enemy tempts us to sin by saying, “Come on you deserve this, it will be so pleasurable” Then he slaps us with shame afterwards saying, “I can’t believe you would do such a wicked thing.”
The part of this story that causes my heart sorrow is Genesis 3:8-9, “As the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord. Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” I imagine God looking forward all day to this part of the day when He enjoys deep connection and relating conversations with his friends over their walk and instead of welcoming his presence they are hiding. All of us can remember the feeling as a child when someone hid from us and we could hear them whispering or giggling in the shadow. It brings an intense feeling of rejection. Not only did Adam and Eve believe the deception of the enemy that God was keeping something good from them but now instead of taking their daily walk with Him, they are hiding from Him. This grieves me because I hide too. I cover too. Adam tells God they hid because they were naked and afraid. The Lord’s response to Adam is so fatherly, “who told you that you were naked?”(Gen 3:11). I resonate with this question as a mother of teenagers when I hear them say something negative about themselves, I want to know: where did that idea come from? Who planted that idea? God is saying to them who told you that you weren't enough, inadequate, or deficient? Who told you that you were anything other than my beloved creation? In a world where we only post the perfect and we feel the pressure to have it all together, what happens on those days when we realize we are actually naked? Left wanting? Inadequate? Our response like Adam’s is Fear, a panic of how are we going to make it in all of our inadequacies?
We find the answer a few verses down as God declares to his enemy and ours. “He (Christ) will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Gen 3:15). Christ has become our adequacy. Jesus, called the 2nd Adam throughout the New Testament, brings us back into the intimacy of the garden. Satan may always be snapping our heels in this life but Jesus crushed his head and through his victory over death on the cross brought us back from death into eternal life in heaven. God covered their immediate shame as well. Sin always requires sacrifice and God killed the first animals to provide the skins to cover Adam and Eve’s shame as a sign of how Christ blood would forever provide a covering and remedy for our shame.
2019/12/05 at 3:27 pm