Adam and Eve undid their beautiful relationship with God when they ate the forbidden fruit. Adam’s story? The woman made me do it. Eve said it was the serpent’s fault.

    Let’s not quibble and look for someone to take the rap. It happened and the effects on Adam and Eve were immediate. For the first time they felt stark naked before God and each other. And they hid. From themselves maybe? Maybe. But mostly they hid from God.

    One of the questions God asked them was, “What have you done?” God didn’t ask this question for his own benefit. He knew the answer. He asked it for Adam and Eve’s benefit—and for our benefit.

    “What have you done?” Now that’s a question that lays bare the past of everyone of us. Yes, what have we done that makes us the way we are? That makes us want to run and hide? What have we done that makes us fear the future? What have we done that makes us so ashamed—so naked?

“What have you done?”

    The next part of the story isn’t pleasant. God curses them. Man, woman, the serpent—the whole bunch. But maybe God isn’t being hateful and vindictive. Maybe he’s describing the logical consequences of their behavior. “Because of what you have done, this is what must happen: You will no longer have a close relationship with me.” It’s a sad story.

    But the last part of this sad story encourages us. God, with his own hands, makes clothing for them. No, they couldn’t go back. They couldn’t go back to the garden and be completely open again. It was too late for that. But they could go forward in a new way. Clothed by God.

    It would take thousands of years to completely understand that Christ would be the protective clothing God gives to people who are naked, ashamed and hiding because they see “what they have done.”

    “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Gal. 3:27). Clothed with Christ we have a new life. We are forgiven of “what we have done”—and we go forward. Not back to the garden, but forward to the garden.