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 (Heb_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.)
What was man’s glory is now his shame
That very state of body which was, in Adam and Eve, their highest glory, would be, in us, should we be seen in that state, our deepest shame. It was the very glory of man, and would have continued to be so, had he remained in his original innocency, that while all the other animals had need of hairs, feathers, and scales, etc., to cover their unsightliness, man alone was created with that dignity and beauty of body, that he could appear, uncovered, in the glory of his created nakedness. But all this glory is lost. We are now compelled, not only for necessary protection, but for the sake of avoiding the deepest turpitude, to cover our bodies with more study and care than any other animals of God’s creation. For they all come into the world covered by nature. (M. Lather.)
