I just read through Genesis 2 today and was reflecting on it in light of the Gospel.
This chapter contains beautiful things, like God demonstrating his goodness by giving Adam and Eve everything they need for life - proactively. For example, God doesn’t wait for Adam to complain about being alone, He creates Eve out of His goodness. This was a shadow of God’s grace. He bestowed unmerited favor on them.
But I have something better.
In Genesis 2 I see how God gives them free will. Was there anything special about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? I don’t know, but it does demonstrate the gift of free will. An opportunity to choose God’s way, or their own way. An opportunity to trust in God’s righteousness, or to try to create their own.
The final verse says they were naked and not ashamed. I’ve thought a lot about this one before, seeing nakedness as a metaphor for incomplete or missing something. But this time I also saw it as a metaphor for being transparent, being fully seen and known, hiding nothing, yet not being ashamed.
Still, I have something better. So. Much. Better.
I see what’s going on in Genesis 2 as a shadow of the Gospel that was to come.
What I mean is, I see Adam and Eve being given incomprehensible riches. But it depends on them not to ruin it. Every day they have to choose not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Every day the burden was on them to sustain their perfect relationship with God.
Whoa, but is that what I have to do, too? No, the Gospel is incomprehensibly better than what Adam and Eve experienced in the garden!
Because now, thanks to the work of Jesus Christ, I am given everything for life in godliness. Now, because I trusted in His righteousness just one time, I was spiritually born again into a new life, one that doesn’t depend on my behavior and actions to sustain. No, I was made, and I’m kept righteous, by His work, by His righteousness. I can’t ruin this, because it’s not about me, it’s about Him. He sustains me.
Once again I see God’s grace, His unmerited favor, being poured out onto His creation. God’s purpose in Jesus was to restore His creation into relationship with Him again. I can see why it had to be this way, too. And seeing this I can more clearly understand His great pleasure in His Only Son.
Sure, in this life, I still fail in many ways. But I don’t take my eyes off Jesus, because unlike Adam and Eve in the garden, Christ has made me holy, He has made me righteous, and this is for as long as He lives, so I can be in perfect relationship with Him forever.
I’m always walking in the cool of the day with Him now. I am naked and not ashamed.