The Table

Tag: jesus

  • 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?

  • Is Believing Enough?

    What James 2 actually means when it says faith without works is dead.

    “Faith without works is dead.”

    That’s one of those Bible verses that can make you stop for a second.

    Because wait.

    Aren’t we saved by grace through faith?

    Didn’t Paul make it abundantly clear that our works can’t save us?

    Didn’t we just establish that Jesus doesn’t need our help finishing what He accomplished on the cross?

    Yes.

    Absolutely.

    So what in the world is James doing?

    Is he contradicting Paul?

    Is he saying faith gets us started but then we have to produce enough good works to stay saved?

    Do our works somehow prove to God that we deserve the salvation He gave us?

    No.

    James isn’t telling us how to earn salvation.

    He’s asking us to think seriously about what saving faith actually is.

    And there’s a difference between believing something is true and entrusting yourself to it.

    Faith is belief activated

    I’ve been saying this for years:

    Faith is belief activated.

    I used to make the people in one of my Bible studies write it in their Bibles because I wanted them to remember the distinction.

    James makes that distinction pretty hard to miss.

    “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” — James 2:19

    That’s uncomfortable.

    Because apparently it’s possible to have correct information about God and still not have faith in Him.

    The demons aren’t atheists.

    They know God exists.

    They know who Jesus is.

    Their theology on some points may be more accurate than ours.

    But they don’t trust Him.

    They don’t love Him.

    They don’t surrender themselves to Him.

    Knowing something is true isn’t the same thing as trusting it with your life.

    Think about a car.

    I can stand beside a car and believe everything necessary about it.

    That’s a car.

    It runs.

    It has gasoline.

    It’s mechanically sound.

    It’s capable of taking me from Indiana to Florida.

    I can sincerely believe every one of those things.

    But if I never get in the car, I’m not going to Florida.

    At some point, belief has to become trust.

    I have to get in.

    That’s the distinction James is making.

    Then what about the works?

    This is where we can easily get the order backward.

    James isn’t saying:

    Faith + enough good works = salvation.

    He’s saying that genuine faith does something.

    Not because we’re frantically trying to prove we’re Christians.

    Not because God is keeping a heavenly scorecard.

    Not because we need to pay Jesus back for saving us.

    Works don’t create saving faith.

    They flow from it.

    When we begin trusting Christ, the Holy Spirit begins changing us.

    Our attitudes begin to change.

    What matters to us begins to change.

    The way we see other people begins to change.

    Our relationship with sin begins to change.

    What we do with our time, abilities, resources, relationships, and opportunities begins to change.

    Not perfectly.

    Not all at once.

    And certainly not identically in every Christian.

    But living faith doesn’t remain completely disconnected from the life of the person who possesses it.

    That’s why James gives such a practical example.

    Suppose someone is hungry and doesn’t have adequate clothing. We see the need and say:

    “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed.”

    And then we walk away.

    James essentially asks:

    What good did our words do?

    If I claim to love someone but can repeatedly look directly at their suffering without ever being moved toward them, there’s a disconnect between what I say I believe and what my life reveals.

    James isn’t asking whether we’ve accumulated enough charitable acts to qualify for heaven.

    He’s asking whether our professed faith is alive.

    Look at the people James chooses

    Then James gives us two examples of faith accompanied by action.

    Abraham.

    And Rahab.

    That’s quite a pair.

    Abraham trusted God when God asked something of him that made absolutely no sense from a human perspective.

    God had promised him descendants through Isaac—and then told Abraham to offer Isaac.

    Abraham obeyed.

    Not because Abraham was earning his salvation.

    He acted because he trusted the One who had made the promise.

    His action revealed his faith.

    And then there’s Rahab.

    Rahab was a prostitute.

    If James were trying to teach us that good moral behavior makes someone acceptable to God, Rahab would be an awfully strange example to choose.

    But that’s exactly the point.

    Rahab heard what God had done.

    She believed Israel’s God was truly God.

    And then she entrusted herself to that truth.

    She protected the spies.

    She took a risk.

    Her belief changed what she did.

    Neither Abraham nor Rahab is presented as someone who accumulated enough good deeds to impress God.

    Their actions revealed where their trust was placed.

    This isn’t a call to spiritual paranoia

    There is a danger when we talk about examining the fruit of our faith.

    We can become so focused on ourselves that we start taking our spiritual temperature every fifteen minutes.

    Did I do enough today?

    Am I changing fast enough?

    Would a real Christian still struggle with this?

    Do I have enough fruit?

    And suddenly we’ve created another to-do list.

    We’re staring at ourselves instead of Christ.

    That’s not the freedom of the gospel.

    James isn’t calling Christians to live terrified that salvation disappears every time we fail.

    And he’s certainly not teaching that Christians become perfect.

    Abraham wasn’t perfect.

    Rahab wasn’t perfect.

    Peter wasn’t perfect.

    Paul wasn’t perfect.

    We’re not going to be either.

    The question isn’t:

    “Have I finally become good enough?”

    You haven’t.

    Neither have I.

    That’s why we need Jesus.

    The better question is:

    “Is the faith I profess actually trust in Christ—or is it merely information I agree with?”

    Because those aren’t the same thing.

    Living things bear fruit

    Maybe the simplest way to understand James is to think about something alive.

    You don’t tape apples onto an apple tree to make the tree alive.

    A living tree produces fruit because it’s alive.

    The fruit doesn’t give the tree life.

    The life produces the fruit.

    That’s the relationship between faith and works.

    Our works don’t make us alive in Christ.

    But when Christ makes us alive, something begins growing.

    Sometimes slowly.

    Sometimes unevenly.

    Sometimes with seasons that look more fruitful than others.

    There will be pruning.

    There will be setbacks.

    There will be sin to confess and things God exposes that we’d rather He didn’t.

    There will be plenty of reminders that we still desperately need grace.

    But there will be life.

    And life eventually shows itself.

    So maybe James 2 isn’t primarily asking us:

    “Are you doing enough?”

    Maybe it’s asking something deeper:

    Do I simply believe things about Jesus—or am I trusting Him?

    Has what I believe begun affecting how I live?

    When I see someone in need, am I becoming more willing to move toward them?

    Is the Holy Spirit changing what I love, what I value, and what I’m willing to surrender?

    Not perfectly.

    Not to earn anything.

    But because faith isn’t simply knowing the right answers.

    Saving faith rests its weight on Jesus.

    And when we actually entrust ourselves to Him, eventually that trust finds its way into our hands, our feet, our relationships, our choices, and our lives.

    Faith is belief activated.