"Who told you that you were naked?"

What made the humanity to become so self-centered? When God created Adam and Eve, they weren't self-centered. They were God-centered. They walked naked in the garden. They didn't care the fact that they were naked. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame (Genesis 2:25). Look at the animals. All of them are naked.

[This is one thing the evolutionists can't answer. When did humanity start wearing cloths to hide their genitals? What was the origin of the thing called shame? Monkeys don't wear cloths. All of a sudden when the monkey became a human, he started going for shopping at Macy's?]

Adam and Eve bore the glorious image of God when they were created. God created man in his own image. He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. They were blinded (in a good way) by the glorious harmony they had with God. They not only felt free, but they were truly free. God gave them total freedom, including the freedom to choose evil. (If freedom didn't include freedom to sin, it isn't real freedom.)

They chose to eat from the wrong tree, lost their god-centeredness and gained self-centeredness. They weren't created to posess a knowledge of good and evil, yet they chose to have it. Bible says, "then the eyes of both of them were opened". Ha! All of a sudden, they are looking at themselves. Now they are seeing everything through that newly opened set of eyes. It says, they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves and then they hid.

When God came looking for them, He found them hiding out of shame and asks this question, "Who told you that you were naked?". Which implies that the only third person there, which is God himself, not seeing them as naked. They became sin-conscious. Their god-consciousness died.

The good news is, the Second Adam (Christ) restored it for you an me. He cleansed our conscience (Heb 9:14). He don't expect you to feel shame today. He don't want you to hide from Him. He don't want you to sew your own filthy rags (obedience to the law, self effort, good works etc) today.

If you are in Christ and still going to God begging for forgiveness, thinking that you are rejected by Him when you sin, he is going to ask you this question: "Who told you that you were naked?". It is the law what tells you that you are naked (not worthy, sinful etc). It is the knowledge of good and evil (law) that makes you self-centered. Law only condemns! Law has no place in a Christian's life. (Gal 3:23-25) So, dump the knowledge of good and evil (which you were never meant to have) and eat from the Tree of Life. There is freedom, because there is no condemnation!

It wasn't oxygen!

"And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being" - Genesis 2:7

What was it God breathed into Adam's nostrils? Have you ever wondered? Was it the 'air' we breath? Was it oxygen? Check this excerpt from 'In His Image' by Dr. Paul Brand:

When I heard that verse as a child, I imagined Adam lying on the ground, perfectly formed but not yet alive, with God leaning over him and performing a sort of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Now I picture that scene differently. I assume that Adam was already biologically alive - the other animals needed no special puff of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide to start them breathing, why should man? The breath of God now symbolizes for me a spiritual reality. I see Adam as alive, but possessing only an animal vitality. Then God breaths into him a new spirit, and infills him with His own image. Adam becomes a living soul, not just a living body. God's image is not an arrangement of skin cells or a physical shape, but rather an inbreathed spirit.

We know the rest of the story, that Adam sinned and lost what was inbreathed into him and became dead spiritually (the wages of sin is death). The Life of God went absent from him. He was no more bearing the image of God.

Fast forward to the New Testament, the last Adam (Jesus) came to earth to give us what we lost in the first Adam. Acting out of His unconditional love and grace, He resolved the cause of death - sin, once and for all and made the entire world capable of receiving the Life through simple faith.

Do we realize that it is the very Life raised Jesus from the dead is what raises us from the state of spiritual death, when we simply receive Him by faith?

• "In him was life" - John 1:4

• "For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it." - John 5:21

• "Whoever believes in me has crossed over from death to life." - John 5:24

• "For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." - John 6:33

• "I am the bread of life." - John 6:35

• "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." - John 6:53

• "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." - John 8:12

• "I have come that they may have life" - John 10:10

• "I am the resurrection and the life." - John 11:25

• "I am the way and the truth and the life." - John 14:6

• "By believing in the Son of God, you may have life in his name." - John 20:31

By faith, we receive the very inbreathed spirit (Life) what Adam had before the fall and we now become a living spiritual being. Alive to God! And now, God want us to give flesh to that spirit, to live out the image of God here on earth. We have His very own likeness! It's mind boggling!

Genesis

It was a book which greatly influenced me in my childhood (even today) with it’s unique story of creation then the rude sounding story of expelling Adam and Eve from the garden.

I have listened an hour long sermon a pastor preached trying to prove that 6 days of creation weren’t really 24 hrs days instead 1000 years days. All because somewhere in Bible it said 1000 years is like one day to God. Some people find it so difficult to believe that God really created the dry land in 24 hours. Using my limited common sense I thought that was ludicrous to think that way. If God took 1000 years for creating light (for example), what does it mean? Did he create a little light such as a candle light and waited 1000 years to get it evolved to sun and moon and stars? Or did he do a lot of research in his heavenly laboratory to figure out how he can produce light which will cover the entire earth? Or was he raising fund for this experiment? I thought he just SPOKE and it came into existence.

The way he created man was amazing. It was a unique creation. He didn’t just utter ‘Let there be a man’, but he was really involved in his creation. I had a picture of an artist with a long grayish hair and long beard, who is specialized in creating sculptures, bending down near to the sculpture's face and breathing his breath in to it through the nostrils. All of a sudden the sculpture became alive and started moving. His heart started beating, his skin became glossy, he can now think, see, taste, hear and talk. It’s pretty amazing, if we think.

My Mom always wanted us to read Bible from cover to cover and there were some special days such as the week of Easter, which is considered holier than any other week, she would insist us to take up our reading.

Then I would pick the only bible we had then and start reading loudly from Genesis chapter 1. As far as I can remember I had read it may be up to the sixth chapter then I will yawn and feel tired. I even thought, 'why am I reading this fairy tale?' I will look around to see if my Mom is there, if she isn’t then I will slowly close the Bible sneak out to play.

I thought God was rude not to let Adam and Eve eat from that one tree. He sounded even ruder when he said ‘when you eat of it you will surely die’. That wasn’t fair, I thought. But until few years ago, I didn’t even know that Adam didn’t really 'die' on the day he ate that fruit. It came to me as a huge revelation where I almost jumped out of joy. I read he lived 930 years and produced few children. A dead man cannot produce children!

So, did God lie? Did He say that they will die if they eat that fruit just to scare them? Was it to show them that He is capable enough to take their lives if He wants? Did he have a superiority complex?

Then the revelation hit my brain, a light bulb went on. He died spiritually! He didn't die physically or even mentally. It is very difficult for a mentally dead person to produce children! The element of godliness in his being left Him. He lost his wholeness and was broken. The spirit of God indwelled Him is no more indwelling him. It left an emptiness in Him. It opened the eyes of his flesh and he found that he was naked. He didn't feel close to God and he tried to hide. He felt unfulfilled and restless. He gained his knowledge of good and evil, declared his independence from God and lost (spiritual) LIFE. Wow! Now it makes sense why Jesus came to give us LIFE and He is called the 'second Adam'. Now it makes sense what it means to be 'born-again', being born from God and indwelled by his spirit. Now it makes sense why we feel so unfulfilled and restless until we find that life in God. Now it makes sense why we feel so empty even after gaining all the money, fame, glamor and power.

When ever I get a revelation from Bible, I get so excited that I feel that I will die if I don’t share it with someone. I hadn’t started blogging then (about 5 years ago). I hadn't even heard about such a thing. So I preach to my wife and she would try to conjure up her entire energy to listen to my long, boring, theological ramblings. Then she will yawn. Then I will feel sad and discouraged. (Now a days my preaching to her is not about Adam and Eve but about the difference between law and grace) These days she has learned to yawn while keeping her mouth closed. I wouldn’t even know if she really yawned until I see tears in her eyes. Now I am practicing it as it is very helpful while attending some meetings at work. I wish I had known this technique earlier while I was in the "church".

Recently when I got a chance to share some spiritual stuff with my Mom, the first thing I told was that Adam didn’t really physically die on that day and explained to her what it meant. It said, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image. If the Dad was dead, his son was also dead; and all of us, down to this century born dead spiritually into this world, helplessly fallen short of god's glory. No wonder why we don't have to teach people to sin, they will learn it by their own. The restoration, forgiveness and life Jesus offered makes much sense now.

There is sin, independence, deception, ungodliness, sacrifice, blood, covering, grace, law, punishment, death and pretty much everything scattered throughout Bible, are in the book of Genesis. Tear the book out and the entire Bible wouldn’t make any sense at all. Thank God, for using your servant Moses to write down this book for us!