Before continuing on to question 24 pertaining to sin, it seems best if we pause to define some important ideas. Let us go for a bit down this by pass meadow and consider some important ideas before resuming our course through the confession of faith.
We haven’t spent any time considering the effects of sin and so we do that now. One of the first effects is that we see Adam and Eve attempt to cover their own nakedness with fig leaves. Related to this, they also attempted to hide from God. “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” (Genesis 3:7–8)
Adam and Eve were ashamed of their nakedness in that they tried to hide it from God. Shame arises from guilt for violating the command of God. The relationship between guilt and shame is important and we often are tempted to use these interchangeably but they are not interchangeable. Guilt is a verdict/judgment concerning a violation of law. Shame is the correct emotive consequence of a just finding of guilt. It is good that Adam and Eve felt shame and wanted to hide from the Lawgiver because they were in fact (as a matter of law) guilty of breaking God’s command.
Instead of God, the Lawgiver, leaving them in their self fashioned misery of fig leaf nakedness we read the compassion He has on them. “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” Genesis 3:21
Adam and Eve’s nakedness, an internal awareness – eyes being opened, is rightly connected to their outward condition. Their body was naked and it directed them to know something about their soul. Jesus says of the eye, “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22–23) For Adam and Eve, the opening of their eyes was to behold the darkness that had overtaken their soul. This may seem a bit upside down and you’d be right. Sin turns everything upside down, inside out and leaves nothing as it should be.
The pervading darkness, the nakedness, the attempt to hide and remedy their own shame and guilt brings on this assessment of God. “Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.” Genesis 3:22–24
And so it happens that Adam and Eve are expelled from the presence of God. The unity of their being, body and soul, has suffered catastrophic judgment under the curse of God, which begins a life of dying towards death. The situation, as dire as could be, was not without hope though. God pronounced his plan in the form of a promise. That promise looked forward to One that would tend to the souls of their (Adam/Eve) progeny as a shepherd to His flock.
Calvin comments on the soul shepherd.
“Peter… calling Christ the Shepherd and Bishop of souls, would have spoken absurdly if there were no souls towards which he might discharge such an office.“
We are truly the blessed of Adam’s line if we find that our souls have been taken into His flock and Jesus is the Shepherd and Redeemer of our souls, making us His sheep and removing us from the cursed flock of Adam.
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