Page 37 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

V. THE AFTERMATH—THE RESULTS OF SIN

GENESIS 3:7-24

We have indicated in previous studies that the Adversary, the Father of lies, rarely
tells a whole lie. An unmixed falsehood inclines to be clumsy and self-evident. He has
usually found it necessary to create a judicious admixture of truth and error, the
preponderance of the one or the other to be determined by the vigor of mentality and

quality of discernment of his would-be victims. In the flabby, superficial, gullible age
in which we live he is able to feed humanity on lies that are almost “straight” and that
contain at best only a trace of truth.

It was not ever thus. To our first parents it was almost half and half: “Your eyes
shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.” Only the middle
clause was a complete falsehood. The statement that their eyes would be opened and
that they would be able to distinguish between good and evil proved largely true.

Previously they had not known or experienced evil, so immediately they entered that
experience, conscience began to operate and to distinguish between the one and the
other. Their eyes were not opened to behold with the infinite vision of Deity as they
had hoped, but we are told that “the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew

that they were naked!” Sad, disillusioning, dismaying observation! Yet salutary, withal.
The conviction of nakedness must precede the application of the remedy.

Most of the posterity of these first parents have awakened at some period of their

earthly sojourn to the same jolting realization of their own spiritual nakedness. With
some the vision is transient and quickly mollified by the soothing opiates of the
adversary conveyed through the senses to the body and soul. With others the
conviction is haunting and persistent and not easily disposed of. We are persuaded that

there is a class, saturated in sin and calloused to righteousness, whose deathly slumber
is never interrupted by any disturbing consciousness of spiritual nakedness.

To our first parents, as to many of their descendants, the realization was poignant

and terrifying, and they felt that they must do something about it. Someone has said
that “Human nature is incurably religious.” This we believe to be eminently true. The
gnawing consciousness of spiritual nakedness and its disastrous results if unremedied,

gendered by the Spirit of God in the latent spirit of man, goads him into some course
of action which he believes will clothe his nakedness and avert the penalty which he
feels to be impending.
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