The Table

Tag: grace

  • Who Told You That You Were Naked?

    There was a time when shame didn’t exist.

    That’s difficult for me to even imagine.

    Genesis 2 ends with Adam and Eve naked together in the garden, and Scripture tells us they “felt no shame.”

    No guilt.

    No fear.

    No insecurity.

    No wondering what the other person was thinking.

    No need to pretend.

    No reason to hide anything from each other—or from God.

    They were completely exposed and completely unashamed.

    And then Genesis 3 happens.

    Did God Really Say?

    The serpent begins with a question:

    “Did God really say…?”
    — Genesis 3:1

    It’s interesting that the first temptation recorded in Scripture begins by casting doubt on the Word of God.

    Did God really say that?

    Is that really what He meant?

    Can God really be trusted?

    The serpent tells Eve that eating the fruit won’t result in death. Instead, their eyes will be opened and they’ll become like God, knowing good and evil.

    There was just enough truth mixed into the lie to make it believable.

    Their eyes would be opened.

    They would gain knowledge they didn’t have before.

    What the serpent conveniently left out was what that knowledge would cost them.

    Adam and Eve already knew God was good.

    Everything they had experienced confirmed it.

    They lived in a world untouched by sin. No guilt. No shame. No fear. No hatred. No pain. No death.

    God had given them abundance and withheld one thing.

    And somehow, the serpent convinced them that the one thing God withheld was evidence that He couldn’t be trusted.

    They had absolutely no reason to believe God was holding out on them.

    But they did.

    And honestly, aren’t we still doing the same thing?

    God says something is good, but we decide something else looks better.

    God establishes a boundary, and we wonder why He’s keeping something from us.

    We know what He has said, but we convince ourselves that maybe our way will work out just fine.

    Adam and Eve had one prohibition.

    They broke it.

    And everything changed.

    Their Eyes Were Opened

    The serpent was right about one thing.

    Their eyes were opened.

    But the first thing Scripture tells us they noticed wasn’t some wonderful new level of enlightenment.

    It was their nakedness.

    And for the first time, they were ashamed.

    So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

    Think about that progression.

    Sin.

    Shame.

    Cover.

    They had never needed to cover themselves before.

    Nothing about their physical bodies had changed.

    What changed was what sin had done inside them.

    The innocence was gone.

    And their first instinct was to cover what they suddenly believed needed to be hidden.

    Thousands of years later, we’re still sewing fig leaves.

    Ours just look different.

    We cover the parts of ourselves we don’t want anybody to see.

    We manage appearances.

    We carefully choose what people get to know.

    We hide failures.

    We hide sin.

    We hide insecurity.

    We hide pain.

    We create versions of ourselves that we think will be more acceptable than the truth.

    The coverings have changed.

    The instinct hasn’t.

    Then They Hid

    Covering themselves apparently wasn’t enough.

    When Adam and Eve heard God walking in the garden, they hid from Him.

    Sin. Shame. Cover. Hide.

    That’s what sin does.

    It doesn’t draw us toward the One who can actually deal with it.

    Our instinct is to run away from Him.

    And then God asks an extraordinary question:

    “Where are you?”
    — Genesis 3:9

    God wasn’t confused.

    He hadn’t misplaced Adam.

    He didn’t suddenly discover an empty garden and wonder where everybody had gone.

    He knew exactly where Adam was.

    And He knew exactly what Adam and Eve had done.

    Yet God came into the garden.

    He called for the people hiding from Him.

    Adam finally answers:

    “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

    And God responds:

    “Who told you that you were naked?”

    I love that question.

    Not because God needed information.

    He already knew the answer.

    But Adam had just described something that had never existed in their relationship before.

    I was afraid.

    I was ashamed.

    So I hid from You.

    Something had broken.

    And God gave Adam an opportunity to tell the truth about it.

    And Then Came the Blame

    God asks Adam whether he ate from the tree.

    This is Adam’s opportunity.

    Tell the truth.

    Own what you’ve done.

    Instead:

    “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

    There it is.

    Sin. Shame. Cover. Hide. Blame.

    And Adam manages to blame two people in one sentence.

    Eve gave him the fruit.

    But ultimately?

    God gave him Eve.

    Adam essentially says, This wouldn’t have happened if You hadn’t put this woman here.

    Then God questions Eve.

    And she does it too.

    “The serpent deceived me.”

    Nobody wants to say:

    I sinned.

    How familiar is that?

    We explain.

    We justify.

    We point toward what somebody else did first.

    We talk about our circumstances.

    We find all kinds of reasons why our behavior was understandable.

    Sometimes those circumstances really do matter.

    Other people really do sin against us.

    People hurt us.

    People deceive us.

    People fail us.

    But someone else’s sin never removes our responsibility for our own.

    Adam was responsible.

    Eve was responsible.

    And we are responsible too.

    What a Mess

    By the time God pronounces judgment, everything has changed.

    Relationships will now involve conflict.

    Work will involve struggle.

    Creation itself is affected.

    And death has entered the human story.

    What a mess.

    And none of it surprised God.

    That’s something I don’t want us to miss.

    God didn’t create the world, watch Genesis 3 happen, and suddenly have to come up with Plan B.

    He knew.

    He knew humanity would choose itself.

    He knew His creation would reject Him.

    He knew what our rebellion would cost.

    And still, He created.

    And still, He loved.

    And before humanity ever sinned, God already had a plan to reconcile sinners to Himself.

    We even get the first glimpse of it right here in Genesis 3.

    God tells the serpent that an offspring of the woman will come. The serpent will strike His heel.

    But He will crush the serpent’s head.

    The story isn’t over.

    Not even close.

    God Provides the Covering

    Adam and Eve tried to cover themselves.

    Fig leaves.

    Humanity’s first attempt at dealing with its own shame.

    It wasn’t enough.

    Later in the chapter, Scripture tells us:

    “The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”
    — Genesis 3:21

    God provided what they could not adequately provide for themselves.

    There is something profoundly beautiful about that.

    They sinned against Him.

    They hid from Him.

    They blamed each other.

    Adam even blamed God.

    And God clothed them.

    There were consequences for their rebellion. Grace doesn’t mean sin doesn’t matter.

    But judgment wasn’t the end of the story.

    God was still providing.

    God was still showing mercy.

    God was already pointing toward redemption.

    We Can’t Get Back In

    Adam and Eve eventually have to leave Eden.

    God places cherubim at the entrance to guard the way to the tree of life.

    Humanity can’t simply stroll back into the garden.

    We can’t undo what happened.

    We can’t remove sin.

    We can’t make ourselves innocent again.

    We can’t manufacture our own way back into the presence of a holy God.

    We cannot save ourselves.

    If we’re going to get back into God’s presence, God Himself will have to provide the way.

    And He does.

    The rest of Scripture is the story of that rescue.

    The promise whispered in Genesis 3 becomes clearer and clearer until eventually we meet the offspring of the woman.

    Jesus.

    The One who comes to deal with the sin we couldn’t undo.

    The One who bears the judgment we deserve.

    The One who defeats death.

    The One who makes it possible for sinful people to come back into the presence of God.

    And when we reach the end of Scripture, do you know what we find?

    The tree of life.

    Again.

    What humanity lost in Genesis isn’t lost forever.

    Chaos doesn’t win.

    Sin doesn’t win.

    The serpent doesn’t win.

    Death doesn’t win.

    Jesus does.

    Where Are You?

    There’s something else about Genesis 3 that I can’t get away from.

    Adam and Eve sinned.

    Then they covered themselves.

    Then they hid.

    But God came looking.

    Maybe you’ve been hiding too.

    Maybe you’ve gotten very good at sewing fig leaves.

    Maybe you’ve carefully constructed a version of yourself that keeps anyone from seeing what you’re ashamed of.

    Maybe you’ve even convinced yourself that if God knew the whole truth about you, He wouldn’t want you anywhere near Him.

    There’s a problem with that.

    He already knows.

    God knew where Adam was.

    He knew what Adam had done.

    And He walked into the garden anyway.

    The answer to shame isn’t getting better at hiding.

    It isn’t creating a more convincing covering.

    And it certainly isn’t blaming somebody else.

    It’s coming out of hiding and telling the truth before the God who already knows it.

    Because the same God who confronted sin in the garden is the God who promised a Savior.

    The same God who pronounced judgment also provided a covering.

    And the same story that begins with humanity being driven away from the tree of life ends with redeemed humanity standing before it again.

    So maybe God’s question still deserves an answer.

    Where are you?

  • But God…

    There are two little words in Ephesians 2 that might be among my favorite words in the entire Bible:

    But God.

    You really can’t appreciate those two words, though, without reading what comes before them.

    Paul begins Ephesians 2 with some pretty terrible news.

    “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…”
    — Ephesians 2:1

    Not struggling.

    Not spiritually underperforming.

    Not mostly good but in need of a little improvement.

    Dead.

    That’s Paul’s description of humanity apart from Christ.

    And dead people are helpless.

    We like to believe that if we work hard enough, learn enough, behave well enough, go to church enough, serve enough, or clean ourselves up enough, we can somehow make ourselves acceptable to God.

    But you can’t improve your way out of being dead.

    That’s the problem.

    The Bad News Matters

    Sometimes we’re so eager to get to the good news of the gospel that we rush past the bad news.

    But if we don’t understand the problem, we’ll never understand how incredible the solution really is.

    Paul says that apart from Christ, we were spiritually dead in sin. We followed the ways of the world. We gratified the desires of our sinful nature. And we were deserving of God’s wrath.

    That’s some pretty heavy stuff.

    But we can’t understand how desperately we need a Savior until we understand how helpless we are to save ourselves.

    On our own, mankind isn’t simply in need of some assistance.

    We are helpless.

    We are hopeless.

    And then come two of the most beautiful words in Scripture.

    But God…

    “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ…”
    — Ephesians 2:4–5

    But God.

    We were dead.

    But God.

    We couldn’t save ourselves.

    But God.

    We were deserving of wrath.

    But God.

    Our hope doesn’t begin with our goodness.

    It begins with God’s character.

    Because of His great love.

    Because He is rich in mercy.

    Because of His grace.

    God made us alive with Christ.

    Notice who is doing the work here.

    We don’t make ourselves alive.

    God does.

    We don’t earn His mercy.

    He gives it.

    We don’t perform well enough to deserve His grace.

    That’s precisely why it’s called grace.

    Grace is undeserved favor.

    Have Been Saved

    Paul continues:

    “It is by grace you have been saved…”
    — Ephesians 2:5

    I love the tense of that sentence.

    Have been saved.

    Not might be.

    Not could be if you perform well enough.

    Not will be once you’ve finally gotten your act together.

    For those who are in Christ, the work has been accomplished.

    Then Paul says it again a few verses later:

    “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
    — Ephesians 2:8–9

    Our salvation is completely dependent upon what Christ has done, not what we can do.

    Church attendance won’t save you.

    Reading your Bible won’t save you.

    Serving in ministry won’t save you.

    Giving money won’t save you.

    Being nicer than your neighbor won’t save you.

    Having Christian parents won’t save you.

    Knowing all the right theological answers won’t save you.

    Those may be good things. Some are things followers of Jesus absolutely should do.

    But none of them can make a dead person alive.

    Only God can do that.

    And that’s exactly what makes grace so astonishing.

    There is nothing we can do to earn it.

    And there is nothing about us that could ever make God owe it to us.

    So Do Works Matter?

    This is where we can swing the pendulum too far in the other direction.

    If we’re saved completely by grace and not by works, does that mean it doesn’t matter how we live?

    Paul answers that in the very next verse.

    “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
    — Ephesians 2:10

    Works don’t save us.

    But true saving faith produces works.

    I’ve said for years that faith is belief activated.

    Faith isn’t merely agreeing that something is true.

    Saving faith elicits a response to the gospel. It changes us. It begins changing the way we live, the way we think, the way we treat people, and what we desire.

    Not perfectly.

    Not overnight.

    And certainly not because we are trying to earn something from God.

    We obey because God has already done something in us.

    That’s an important distinction.

    Our works aren’t the cause of our salvation. They are the result of it.

    We don’t do good works so that God will make us alive.

    God makes us alive—and living people begin to live differently.

    James says much the same thing when he tells us that faith without works is dead.

    Real faith moves.

    Belief becomes action.

    No Room for Boasting

    And that’s why there is absolutely no room for boasting in the Christian life.

    If salvation depended upon my performance, I could compare my performance to yours.

    I could keep score.

    I could look at my church attendance, Bible knowledge, giving, serving, morality, or spiritual discipline and decide I’m doing pretty well.

    Maybe even better than you.

    But grace destroys that entire system.

    I brought nothing to my salvation worth boasting about.

    I was dead.

    But God made me alive.

    I was guilty.

    But God showed mercy.

    I couldn’t earn righteousness.

    But Christ gave me His.

    The gospel doesn’t leave us standing before God proudly displaying everything we’ve accomplished.

    It leaves us standing there with empty hands, completely dependent upon Jesus.

    And somehow, those empty hands receive everything.

    But God

    Maybe you’ve spent years trying to be good enough for God.

    Maybe you’ve wondered whether you’ve prayed enough, served enough, learned enough, changed enough, or finally become enough for Him to accept you.

    Ephesians 2 points us somewhere else.

    Away from ourselves.

    Away from our performance.

    Away from our ability to fix what is broken.

    And toward Christ.

    The gospel isn’t the story of humanity finally figuring out how to reach God.

    It’s the story of what God did for people who could never reach Him.

    We were dead.

    But God made us alive.

    We were hopeless.

    But God loved us.

    We could never earn salvation.

    But God gave us grace.

    And once you’ve really understood everything that comes before those two words, it’s hard not to stop for a moment when you read them.

    But God…