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.

II. Covenantal Framework

A. Covenantal Implications in a Sacramental World

Broadly speaking we live in a sacramental world that is related to us by means of covenant (WCF 7.1). So if we do not understand Adam and Eve’s relationship as creatures to their Creator and his Creation, these two trees in the midst of the Garden of Eden will not make any sense.

1. Covenantal: divine, personal condescension

Covenant is a word that we use often in the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition. It is a biblical term and one that has been developed theologically for thousands of years. The Westminster Confession of Faith describes covenant as the expression of “voluntary condescension on God’s part” in which he reveals to us something of who he is, what he requires of us, and what the consequences are for obedience and disobedience.

Adam and Eve operated in a context of covenant. God said to Adam, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you do, you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17) God had condescended to Adam, explaining clearly the parameters of the covenant and clearly enunciating the penalty for
disobedience. What is promised implicitly but clearly here is that if Adam were to obey, he would receive the life promised to him in the tree first named, the tree of life.

I had said just a moment ago that “Broadly speaking we live in a sacramental world that is related to us by means of covenant.” I hope you see how the circumstances of how Adam and Eve were related to God were indeed covenantal. Now, I want to help you understand what I mean when I say that we live in a sacramental world.

2. Sacramental: physical means of a spiritual communication

As Protestants we believe that the scriptures teach us that there are only two sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist. A sacrament, according to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, is an outward or physical means, whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption.[1]

Now, I am not implying that all of creation communicates to us the benefits of redemption. What I am saying is that God uses physical or outward means to communicate spiritually to us. In psalm 19 we find evidence for this. God uses the heavens to communicate to us something of the spiritual reality of his glory.

B. The Sacramental Nature of the Trees

While all of nature tells us unspeakably much about the Creator, these two trees in the midst of the Garden of Eden were physical symbols being used by God in the context of covenant to communicate a spiritual reality. So in this broad sense of the term, the trees are sacramental.

C. Probation of Humanity in the Garden

Had Adam and Eve obeyed the prohibition God had given not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, there is reason to believe that the tree would have “played a role in a very different sort of transformation.” [2]

D. Destiny

To say that there would have been a “different sort of transformation” is to say that God did not create human beings for failure and fig leaves. Our destiny is not dark knowledge and cheap existence, but bright wisdom and thick life.

__________

[1] See WSC#88.

[2] William N. Wilder, “Illumination and Investiture: The Royal Significance of the Tree of Wisdom in Genesis 3,” The Westminster Theological Journal 68.1, no. Spring (2006): 52.

Two and a half years ago I was overwhelmed by the Sermon on the Mount. An elder at my church took a few of us aside on morning a week over pancakes and taught us. Like many of us, this elder had read the Sermon on the Mount and been disturbed. We surely don’t measure up to the standards of the Kingdom of God. Righteousness is something that we are shown to lack, and yet Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:20 that if we haven’t righteousness that abundantly surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will in no way ever enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The scribes and the Pharisees were regarded as the most righteous people Jesus’ original hearers would have known. How could anyone be counted righteous before God?

The act of God justifying a sinner is where we find those who haven’t righteousness being accepted as righteousness. My confession of faith, the Westminster Standards, expresses it this way:

Justification is an act of God’s free grace unto sinners, in which he pardons all their sins, accepts and accounts their persons righteous in his sight; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by faith alone.[1]

Jesus comes to us as the Incarnate Word of God and in his perfect obedience, both active and passive, he purchased a people for the Father. Humanity was created wonderful, as the image of God, to live out the likeness of God in fellowship with Him. However, what we find is that as the image of God we live out an unlikeness to God and consequently live in dislocation from Him:

…the transgression of the commandment [not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden] was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again.[2]

In the Incarnation we see both exaltation and humiliation. Christ comes and takes upon himself flesh. That God would become a human being most definitely exalts humanity immeasurably. Nevertheless, in becoming a human being (the image of God), Jesus lives out the perfect likeness of God, which was received by the Father a “full satisfaction” for the debt of sin of His people. The abundance of Jesus’ perfection and obedience, exposes our poverty, our unlikeness, bringing with it a balanced humiliation.

Apart from Christ, we are slaves to the unlikeness of God. It is like a great Egyptian taskmaster that takes away the straw, while cracking the whip across our backs to build more bricks (c.f. Exodus 5). Where we cowed to the whip in our weakness, Christ lay hold of the Egyptian taskmaster and threw him down, beating him with his own whip.

[Jesus] has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled, and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be.[3]

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Herod the Great decreed that all the male children two years of age and under in the region where Jesus had been born. Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt, having been warned in a dream (Matthew 2:19-23). Jesus comes out of Egypt, through water (Matthew 3) and then into the wilderness (Matthew 4) before he ascends the Mount from which he might bring a New Covenant with its blessing for obedience and curse for disobedience.[4]

And so Jesus presents to us that declaration of the New Covenant:
³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
⁴ “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
⁵ “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
⁶ “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
⁷ “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
⁸ “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
⁹ “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
¹⁰ “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
¹¹ “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.[5]

While the Incarnation humiliates us, showing to us our utter poverty, we find that the motive of the Incarnation was not spite but love. For God, made himself lowly, poor in spirit, emptying himself of his divine rights and became a man. He came to his own and his own rejected him. Jesus wept. And is there any doubt that our Lord was meek? That he was one who was absolutely submitted to another? Had he not come to do his own will but that of the Father? While we hunger and thirst for righteousness that we do not have, He hungers and thirsts for the righteousness of his Father. It is our Lord who has been merciful to us. It is Jesus who is alone ceremonially pure, who has seen the Father. It is Jesus who is alone the peacemaker who restored the fellowship of his people with God through the blood of his Cross. The one who is himself Righteousness, was crowned not with gold and gems but persecuted with the thorns that cursed the ground that Adam walked.

It is this one, the Righteous One, who has humbled himself and in becoming a man he proclaims to us the New Covenant. It is in this proclamation of the New Covenant that the one who made himself poor, declares to those enslaved to the unlikeness of God, that there is blessing for the poor, for those who mourn, for the meek, and the hungry. Indeed, we find that the Incarnate God has made a way for the captives to be free. That way is by grace alone in Christ alone through faith alone. For paupers have nothing else by which to lay hold of the Incarnate God who came near to save a people for himself.

[1] Westminster Larger Catechism, Question 70. I took the liberty to modernize the language a little bit here.

[2] St. Athanasius. On the Incarnation : The Treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, trans. A Religious of C.S.M.V. (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 29-30.

[3] St. Athanasius. On the Incarnation : The Treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, trans. A Religious of C.S.M.V. (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 35.

[4] N. T. Wright. Matthew for Everyone. 2 vols. 2nd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004) v1, 37.

[5] Matthew 5:3-12 (ESV)

You know I am a little simpled out, but when the pressure is on to get concise simplified answers out of my little brain, I come up with strange mnemonic devices. On Saturday, February 4, at my oral exam before presbytery (the regional governing body of the PCA), I will be most certainly asked, “What are the basic differences, briefly stated, between dispensational and covenant theologies?” Part of the problem for me is that simple answers have never really helped draw people together. Simple answers tend to be the pat things to say to keep people who don’t belong to your group on the outside and actually ignorant of what it is that your group may believe. That being said, my answer to the inevitable question will have to be: P.P.I.M.P.. But could you imagine if I just gave the acronym and did not explain!?

Dispensational Theology

People: God has two peoples.
Promise: God’s covenant promise to Israel was unconditional.
Israel: The nation Israel was a type of the church but is always separate from the church.
Millennium: Christ came to establish an earthly Millennium.
Parenthesis: Israel’s rejection of Messiah caused God to postpone the Millennium.

Covenant Theology

People: God has one people only.
Promise: God’s covenant with Israel was conditional.
Israel: While Israel was a type of the Church, the Church supersedes it.
Millennium: Christ came to establish a Spiritual Millennium.
Parenthesis: God’s plan was not thwarted, there is no parethesis in which the Church emerges.

Perhaps simple answers, if used well, can spur on constructive conversation between brothers and sisters in the one Body of Christ. May God help us.