Nielsen’s Nook

IV.Nakedness and Investiture

A. The Inherent Progression

Genesis 2:25 tells us that prior to the Fall, Adam and Eve were naked and without shame. One scholar suggests that vestment was not “an antidote for shame” but that clothing was intended to be a means of “royal honor”.[3] Kings are clothed with garments of honor. Priests are vested with garments that direct us to the transcendent. Prophets have typically been robed with anti-clothing, directing us to the fact that the People of God were in ill standing with the Lord.

B. Illumination and Investiture

Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened after they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They saw their nakedness (illumination) and they clothed themselves with fig leaves (clothing).[4]They sought wisdom on their own terms and made their own vestments. God had created the world and said it was good. Like Adam and Eve we take hold of a good thing, seeking to subdue it to our own wills apart from God and we inevitably pervert the thing. Just as a hammer can be used to build great palaces and shelters for the poor, hammers have also been the instruments of brutal murders. In this way king David functions as an anti-type. Where Saul had been made king according to the will of the people as they strayed from God, David was appointed king by God himself. Twice David had opportunity to take Saul’s life and end his own suffering, to exalt himself to the throne on his own terms. Twice David refused to strike the Lord’s anointed, Saul. David was content to be king according to God’s will not his own.

C. Vestments and the Image of God

1. Isaiah 44:9,21

⁹All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. (Isaiah 44:9, ESV) ²¹Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you; you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me. (Isaiah 44:21, ESV)

a) Idols

Idols are the manmade images of false gods. In the ancient Near East they were fashioned out of metal and wood and would be adorned with clothing appropriate for a god.

b) Human beings

Isaiah draws clear parallel between idols of false gods and human beings who are the God-made images of the true and living God.

c) Yatsar (יָצַר) – to form, or fashion

This contrast is seen in the fact that the same Hebrew verb is used to describe how idols are fashioned and how God forms us as the image of himself. It is the same word used at the end of Genesis 2:8, speaking of the man that God formed. God had formed humanity in his image and likeness (Gen 1:27). He breathed life into us (Gen 2:7), expressing something “warmly personal.”[5] This is a deliberate and not an accidental creation.”[6]

2. Ancient Near Eastern Context

In the ancient Near Eastern context both kings and idols were thought to represent God and as such were “expected to be clothed as a sign of their royal authority.”[7] If we transpose our understanding of Isaiah 44 to Adam and Eve, we see that the clothing intended for them was far more than the grand vestments of those representing false gods and certainly immeasurably distant from fig leaf loincloths .

D. The NT and Investiture

1. 1 Corinthians 15:49

In speaking about the parousia, the time when the Lord returns to finally set the world aright, Paul tells us:

“And just as we have worn the image of the man of dust, we also will wear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Cor 15:49 – my translation)[8]

2. Galatians 3:26-29

²⁶for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. ²⁷For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. ²⁸There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:26-29, ESV)

V. Conclusion

So what do Adam and Eve, the nation of Israel, Moses, and the apostle Paul have in common? They all failed to live up to their created purpose. The all fell short of the glory of God that was to be their vestment, their clothing. Just like God does not lay us bear in our sin, but comes to us, taking the tattered fig leaves away that he might clothe us with robes of grace, with vestments of the very righteousness of God, Jesus Christ, who obtained the glorious raiment by means of a very different tree.

_____________

[3] Wilder: 58-59.

[4] Wilder: 56.

[5] Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, ed. D. J. Wiseman, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1967), 60.

[6] Bruce K. Waltke and Cathi J. Fredricks, Genesis : A Commentary (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2001), 85.

[7] Wilder: 63.

[8] Wilder turned me on to the use of φορέω here.