Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
Genesis 3: 8-10
When we disobey or defy our Maker, it deeply affects us. As much as we try to deny the impact of our guilt, it is there if you honestly look for it. If someone says they do not feel shame for their rebellion against God, they are either lying or their soul is so calloused they honestly cannot feel the impact of sin anymore. How does your sin make you feel?
Adam responded three ways to his sin. He was aware of his vulnerability, he was afraid, and Adam hid. Human nature has not changed since those days in the Garden of Eden.
Our sin makes us painfully aware that we have willingly lived outside the bounds of our protection. Sin is choosing to escape God’s lordship while electing ourselves Lord. This heavy responsibility seems fun until we need help with the consequences of our rebellion. Sin reminds us that we are essentially naked, weak, limited, and once we have stained ourselves with sin, we cannot clean ourselves from that stain. Once guilty of our sin and nakedness, we do not want our nakedness to be seen. You don’t have to tell someone they have done wrong. We all somehow know it. We saw our own nakedness. We felt our shame, and we fear the judgment of anyone else. We will even go so far as to pretend that we do not care. But we do care.
