Clothing in the Bible

There’s an enjoyable article by Nancy Guthrie, posted on the Crossway website – ‘10 Things You Should Know about the Garden of Eden’. It’s related to her forthcoming book, Even Better than Eden: Nine Ways the Bible’s Story Changes Everything about Your Story (Wheaton: Crossway, 2018), which looks like it will be a helpful run through of some lesser-worked biblical themes.

Back to the article, her fifth point on Eden is this: ‘Adam and Eve were naked, not yet robed in royal splendor.’

She comments:

‘When we read in Genesis 2 that Adam and Eve were naked in Eden, it may initially seem to us to be a good or neutral thing. But Moses’ original readers would have recognized that something was lacking. These were royal representatives of the great king. And royal representatives in Scripture are always dressed in royal robes (think of Joseph’s coat of many colors, Jonathan’s robe given to David, the robe and ring given to the prodigal son). The report of their nakedness indicated a need for royal clothing which would have been given to them had they faithfully exercised dominion. But instead of being further clothed, Adam and Eve lost the original glory that covered them. This is what made their nakedness before God so unbearable that they sought to cover themselves up with fig leaves.’

From what I understand, this is an unusual interpretation of the nakedness and subsequent clothing of our first parents, but it’s a view I’ve been increasingly persuaded by (largely through reading some of G.K. Beale’s works and and a 2006 Westminster Theological Journal article by William N. Wilder).

This is a reading of Genesis which says that the man and woman’s nakedness in Genesis 2 points to the need for clothing, which (it would be understood) would have been bestowed on them at some point in their fulfilling the role of filling and ruling and subduing to which they were called. It’s a view which recognises that, in an ancient Near Eastern context, clothing indicated an inheritance, a change in status – particularly associated with priests and kings, who were clothed as a sign of their new status of authority.

Adam and Eve, of course, grasp for reward in the wrong way at the wrong time. Then they ineptly try to provide clothing for themselves, but – even in declaring judgment on them – God graciously reclothes them to symbolise their future inheritance as rulers of the earth, a downpayment of a greater clothing to come – but garments of skin rather than garments of light (the Hebrew for ‘skin’ is almost indistinguishable from the word for ‘light’, suggesting to some a pun in the original text).

There’s much that follows in Scripture about the removing of old clothes and the putting on of new clothes – Joseph in Genesis 41, Eliakim in Isaiah 22, Daniel in Daniel 5, Joshua the High Priest in Zechariah 3, where it represents forgiveness of sin, several places in Isaiah (52:1-2; 61:3, 10) where the image describes the restoration of the people from exile. And, once again, all in a cultural context which understood a change from one set of clothes to a more glorious set of clothes as representing a change of relationship and status – which we see so beautifully expressed in Jesus’ parable of the lad who comes back home asking to be one of his father’s servants and is reinstated as a son.

And so we come to several passages in Paul which use the imagery of clothing – Romans 13, 1 Corinthians 15, Galatians 3, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3, and elsewhere too.

In these places, the point seems to be – echoing Genesis – that believers in Jesus have discarded the clothes of the old Adam and have been clothed with the attire of the new Adam. We have ‘put on the new self’, Paul explains in Colossians 3:10, ‘which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator’. As Christians, we are being remade in the image of Christ, restored under Christ’s Lordship to bring glory to Christ in all we do.

But then, having laid out what we might call our positional reality in Christ, our new status, Paul goes on to say in verse 12: ‘Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience’ – putting on those clothes which are appropriate for our new life in Christ.

And what of our final hope? We get a glimpse in Revelation 7:9, 13-17...

‘After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands...

‘Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes – who are they, and where did they come from?”

‘I answered, “Sir, you know.”

‘And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”’

Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (7/50) – The Fruit of Fruit-Eating

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the seventh of the fifty emails, written this week by Helen Parry.

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.
Genesis 3:8
 
Milton, in the opening lines of his magnificent epic poem Paradise Lost, announces his intention to proclaim:

‘…man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe.’

Paradise lost, indeed. Inexorably, the consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin unfold. First, the new sensations of shame and fear. Next, self-justification and mutual recrimination. Shame and fear towards God; recrimination towards each other. And thus, in a few masterful verses, the writer of Genesis records the breakdown of these two key relationships.

The banishment of Adam and Eve from the garden now seems inevitable. Gone is the intimacy in which they could relate to the Creator. Worse still, perhaps, the prospect of their eating from the tree of life and thus living for ever is now unthinkable. The expulsion symbolises the gulf that from that moment onwards stood between humans and God – God who is the source of life. ‘The wages of sin is death.’

But the tragedy doesn’t stop with the humans. The whole created order was in some way implicated.

The pain of childbirth, male domination, inhospitable land and toilsome work – things that still dominate human experience here on earth – all of these, and many other ways in which the world has fallen from the perfection of its creation – all are presented here as the result of the humans’ initial rebellion. ‘All our woe’, wrote Milton, blind, twice widowed and politically disillusioned.

Thus we see in the Old Testament recurring cycles of disobedience and idolatry, hatred, pride and corruption; and in the wider world, to this very day, human history has been bedevilled by greed, ambition, cruelty, injustice, oppression, the misdirection of sexuality, the corruption of creativity and the destruction of the environment.

Easy as it is to bewail the state of the world, we must all acknowledge, too, that these destructive things run through every human heart – through yours and mine.

Our first legacy is the image of God. Superimposed upon it – but not obliterating it – is the legacy of sin. But, as Milton goes on to remind us, the victory of sin could continue only:

‘till one greater Man
Restore us and regain the blissful seat’.

Helen Parry

For further reflection and action:

1. ‘Inhospitable land and toilsome work’: do we often feel that this describes our daily experience? Can we try this week to replace such negative feelings with gratitude?

2. It’s easy to see the faults of others, or of our culture. How far do we allow the world to ‘squeeze us into its mould’? (Romans 12:2, J.B.Phillips’ paraphrase)

3. Try to encourage someone this week, who is struggling with a difficult situation at work, or a broken relationship.

Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (6/50) – How Could They?

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the sixth of the fifty emails, written this week by Helen Parry.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Genesis 3:6
 
However we interpret the first three chapters of Genesis, they teach profound theological truth which is fundamental to our understanding of our faith.

The core sin of Adam and Eve was, of course, their disobedience to God’s explicit command, ‘you must not eat from the tree’. It was both a transgression – the crossing of a forbidden frontier – and thus, inevitably, a revolt against God. The prohibition represented a limitation on the behaviour of people who were otherwise given extraordinary freedom to explore and exploit God’s creation; and an assertion, in the enjoyment of that freedom, of the ultimate authority of God.

There’s a widespread belief outside the church that Christianity is a very negative religion – human freedom being curtailed at every turn by ‘thou shalt not… thou shalt not’. But, perhaps surprisingly, negative commands give more freedom than positive ones. Thus, rather than giving Adam and Eve handbooks on pruning or sex (‘now this is exactly what to do’), God gave them the liberty to find out for themselves how to do things, and the joy of making their own discoveries.

This included, of course, the liberty to make mistakes. The transgression, however, was more than a mistake: they could hardly have turned to the Lord and said, ‘Oh, so sorry, we forgot’. They thought they knew better than God, and made a conscious choice.

It seems almost incredible that Adam and Eve, among the lavish gifts of the creation (yet to be explored), their wills not yet corrupted by sin, should have succumbed to the seductions of one of those very creatures over whom Adam had been given authority. But succumb they did.

And that ‘original sin’, committed by the parents of the human race, was passed on, like a hereditary disease, throughout that race. Humanity, as Psalm 51 reminds us, has borne its stain ever since: ‘I have been… sinful from the time my mother conceived me’.

But let us never forget that the great story of the Bible doesn’t begin with sin and end at the cross. It begins with a perfect creation and ends, by way of the resurrection, with a perfect new creation.

Helen Parry

For further reflection and action:

1. The serpent tempted Adam and Eve through their God-given faculties of taste, sight and aspiration. In what areas of your life are you most vulnerable to temptation?
 
2. Adam and Eve showed little understanding of the seriousness of their sin. How far have we  – in the permissiveness of our society – got used to living comfortably with our own besetting sins?
 
3. In speaking this week to others (whether or not professing Christians), let us try to express our understanding of the ‘glorious liberty’ that God planned for his people, rather than the negative attitudes that so often characterise our conversation.