Nakedness Without Shame
Genesis 2:25
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.


There they stood, just as they came from the hands of God. They did not need to blush; they felt no shame. It is sin that has connected nakedness and shame together. No sin, no shame. There is no blush upon an angel's brow. Unfallen man had the unashamed nakedness of innocence; but with the Fall this has passed away, not to be returned to, even under redemption, but to be replaced by something higher, the glorious raiment of a righteousness that is unfading and divine. Unfallen man needed no covering, and asked for none; but fallen man, under the bitter consciousness of the unworthy and unseemly condition to which sin has reduced him, as unfit for God, or angels, or man to look upon, cries out for covering — covering such as will hide his shame even from the eye of God. Hence He who undertook to provide this covering, must bear the shame. And He has borne it — all the shame of hanging naked on the cross; the shame of a sinner; the shame of being made the song of the drunkard; the shame of being despised and rejected of men; the shame of being treated as an outcast, one unfit for either God or man to look upon — unfit not only to live, but even to die within the gates of the holy city (Hebrews 13:11, 12). All that shame has He borne for us, that we might inherit His glory. He stooped to the place of shame below, that we might obtain the place of honour in the better paradise above. Thus walked our first parents amid the groves of a paradise that had not then been lost. Thus dwelt they in its bowers as a home, and worshipped in it as a sanctuary.

(H. Bonar, D. D.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

WEB: They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.




Two Hallowed Institutions
Top of Page
Top of Page