More Hiding
In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve broke God’s word, realize their nakedness, and hide themselves because of shame, God comes to them and draws them out of hiding with grace, rather than driving them out with fear. God comes to sinners in their shame and, instead of driving them away with threats, he draws them out with mercy.
In our text this morning, 3:11-13, we see God continue to draw Adam and Eve out of hiding with questions. But unfortunately, God’s questions lead to more hiding on Adam and Eve’s part. This time it’s verbal hiding. Instead of directly answering God’s questions about their guilt, they run behind excuses to evade their responsibility and minimize their guilt.
Adam’s Sin is Our Sin
Before we examine the exchange of questions and answers between God and Adam and Eve, lets all collectively confess that we are no better than they. We do what they did all the time. Our lived experience of this is evidence that we all shared in the first sin. Adam, as the first man, stood in the position of the head of the whole human race, meaning that he acted as the representative for us all.
The Bible teaches this in the New Testament, but we also experience it because we do exactly what he did, following him in excuse-making rather than honest confession. So as we study this ancient exchange, we must see it as a mirror meant to show us ourselves, specifically how we typically respond to our guilt.
Our study this morning will follow the order of the exchange between God and Adam and Eve. We’ll look at God’s two questions to Adam (v. 11), Adam’s evasive response (v. 12), and then God’s question to Eve and her evasive response (v. 13). If you want a more catchy outline: God’s questions (v. 11), Adam’s answer (v. 12), God’s question and Eve’s answer (v. 13).
God’s Questions
In verse 11, God responds to Adam with two more questions. The fact that God comes and calls Adam and Eve at all is an act of grace. He could’ve destroyed them immediately. But it’s also an evidence of grace that Adam is able to hear God’s voice and respond, that though sin had so polluted his heart that he didn’t want to face God, he was nonetheless still able to hear his voice.
Adam’s response in verse 10 elicits two more questions from God. The first one is a bit strange, “Who told you that you were naked?” This is strange because nakedness is not a condition that we need to be made aware of! No one has to tell you if you’re naked – you know!
The question behind the question is, “Why are you ashamed of your nakedness?” It’s a rhetorical question meant to show Adam that no one is necessary to point out his shame because his guilt is what caused it. He didn’t need Eve or the serpent to point out his nakedness. It was his guilt, not stumbling across his reflection in a pool, that told him he was naked.
Sometimes we may be quick to assume that our feelings of shame are arising from someone or somewhere else, when they’re actually God’s way, through the means of our conscience, of speaking to us about our guilt. False guilt from friends is not cool. But true guilt from God is a gift that makes us ready for grace, because without guilt we’d never know there was a problem or see our need for grace.
There’s no commentary from God after he asks the first question. He follows it immediately with a second question, “Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” God gets right to the real issue. Like a good prosecutor, rather than charge the defendant with law-breaking, he allows him to acknowledge his own crime. With this question, God is urging confession, not condemnation.
With these back-to-back questions God is trying to show Adam that his shame is because of his sin. He’s trying to show him that his knowledge of his nakedness is a result of breaking God’s command.
The issue for God is clear. He wants Adam to see and own his guilt. He’s giving him opportunity to confess his sin and ask for forgiveness. He’s inviting Adam to give an honest assessment of what happened: “Did you break my command?”
Confessing Sin to God and Each Other
We don’t know what would’ve happened if Adam came clean and confessed his sin. But we do know what happens when we confess our sins to God: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:9). God will forgive and cleanse everyone who’s honest with him.
And we know what happens when we confess our sins to other Christians: “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (Js. 5:16). This is one of many “one another” commands in the New Testament telling us how members of the church are supposed to live together. This verse says that it should be normal for church members to be honest with other church members about their sins.
You’re either confessing or suppressing your sins. And only one of these strategies will actually help you. Psalm 32:3-4, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”
Keeping silent about your sin zaps your spiritual energy. Confessing your sin refreshes and recharges you in the Lord. Ray Ortlund explains:
“Confessing your sins to Jesus alone isn’t that hard, is it? It’s a good thing to do, don’t get me wrong. But does private confession to him alone free you all that much? Confessing your sins openly to brothers you respect – that’s different. It’s like dying. It destroys the false self you’ve been projecting. But when you start revealing the sin-sick man you really are, Jesus himself becomes more real. And you become more real. And brotherhood becomes more real. You exhale and relax, because you finally belong.”[1]
Walking in the light leads to life. Hiding in the darkness leads to despair and death. You have to choose whether you’re going to be impressive or be known, but you can’t be both.
Those who obey this command and find a brother or sister to confess sin to and pray with “will be healed.” Healing, not scolding, is what we need, and it’s what Jesus promises. Yes, James 5 is about literal, physical healing, but there’s no end to the kind of healing God can give. What if you started doing this and the healing came in the form of feeling forgiven by God, feeling clean inside like a kid again, getting excited about your future again, or quieting the shaming voice within telling you you’re worthless and hearing the Holy Spirit’s voice telling you you’re a child of God no matter what.
This is the kind of healing God can work in those who start living to be known rather than living to be impressive. This begs a simple question, who are you confessing your sins to?
Confessing our sins to another Christian is a marker of spiritual maturity. Immature Christians have a PhD in other people’s sins but are still in Middle School about their own. Mature Christians see and own and confess their sins to God and other Christians. Immature Christians are quick to assign labels to all the people they disagree with, but slow to assign labels to their sins. Mature Christians realize that we all stumble in many ways (Js. 3:2) and that they’re beset with weakness (Heb. 5:2), so they’re slow to condemn and quick to extend charity. Growing in the Lord results in less focus on other’s sin and more focus on our own.
God’s two questions aren’t a sign of his ignorance but are rather an invitation into his mercy. As the all-knowing detective, he’s prodding the criminals to come clean.
Adam’s Answer
Unfortunately, the graced arrow of God’s questions doesn’t elicit a simple and honest acknowledgment of guilt from Adam. Rather, verse 12 shows us that his answer is more of a deflection than a confession.
Adam’s answer isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s not right either. Instead of a simple, “Yes, I ate of the tree you told me not to eat,” he rehearses what happened as if God had forgotten.
What’s he doing here? He’s trying to excuse himself by blaming the woman and implying that God was also at fault because he’s the one who gave him the woman.
Adam’s answer reveals how quickly sin had corrupted his heart. Instead of a simple “yes,” he becomes devious and defensive. He says that the woman and God are the real instigators in what happened. The criminal paints himself as the victim. He plays up their part and plays down his, not mentioning his involvement until the end of the verse, “I ate.” Yes, he finally admits the truth, but he’s minimizing his part in what happened. His confession of sin is delayed by his attempts to wiggle around the truth.
The divisive effects of sin are on full display in his response. As soon as the heat was turned up, man turned on his dearest companion, “The woman whom you gave to me, she gave me fruit of the tree.” Adam suggests that Eve is the real offender. He goes from sheer ecstasy over Eve in 2:23 to throwing her under the bus. The man betrays the woman with cold and calculated words. Turns out that their sin didn’t unite them but divided them.
Adam’s words focus on the woman, but he blames God for providing the woman, “the woman whom you gave to be with me.” It’s as if he’s saying, “You put this dangerous creature by my side, I couldn’t help myself, this is your fault.” Adam implies that a better God wouldn’t have given him Eve. He’s becoming like Satan, who argued that a better God wouldn’t withhold anything from his people. Like the serpent, Adam says that God’s good gift is actually malicious. He’s minimizing and criticizing the goodness of God. He says that God’s good gift is the source of his trouble.
Men still do this all the time. When they’re caught in some impropriety, men will often say that it was the woman’s fault. We see this when men justify their lust as a result of the immodesty of women. Men say, “She caused me to lust because of what she was wearing.” But Jesus says, “No, your adulterous thoughts came from your heart” (Mt. 5:28).
Yes, though all-but-forgotten today, modesty is good and godly. Paul says that “women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control” (1 Tim. 2:9). But, men, what you do with the immodesty of women is your responsibility. Modesty is praiseworthy and men are responsible for their self-control and purity.
Adam says that the Lord “gave” him the woman who then “gave” him the fruit, implying that God is ultimately responsible for what happened. He tries to subtly place the guilt on God. He’s trying to exonerate himself by pointing away from himself to the woman and to God.
Is God Guilty?
Is God guilty for what happened here? The Bible is not slow to assign divine responsibility to all kinds of human affliction. For example, Lamentations 3:38, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?” Amos 3:6, “Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?”
But nowhere does the Bible say that God is responsible for what happened here, or for human sin in general. The key text is James 1:13, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” Sin was, and is, the deliberate choice of men and women.
In Genesis 3, man hopes to evade responsibility for his autonomous actions by shifting blame to the woman and to God. But God, or the woman, is not responsible for what Adam did. Many speculate why God would allow the serpent to do what he did. This narrative doesn’t address that question, but it does state clearly that man, not God, was responsible for what happened.
Adam’s Excuse Backfires
Adam’s excuse-making backfires on him. God tells him that his excuse is actually the reason everything went sideways (3:17). Adam says he sinned because he listened to the woman. God says, “Exactly.” What Adam uses as an excuse God uses as an indictment. His excuse is the ground of his condemnation. Because he didn’t lead and protect his wife, choosing rather to follow her in passivity, the relational order God established was inverted and the fallout was catastrophic and irreversible.
Adam’s response to God’s questions are his continued attempts to hide from God. This time it’s verbal hiding. Instead of a simple, “Yes, I did what you said not to do,” he paints the woman and God as the real problems before he finally gets around to confessing his sin. These are the words of a man who is spiritually dead.
God’s Question and Eve’s Answer
In verse 13, God turns his attention to Eve. God’s question to Eve carries the force of “What in the world have you done?!” Her explanation, like Adam’s, is factually correct, but it doesn’t excuse her disobedience. She does confess her sin, “I ate,” but only after bringing up what the serpent did.
Eve’s answer is similar to Adam’s. Both are quick to explain the circumstances of their sin. But neither are showing any signs of contrition.
Eve’s answer, however, does lack some of the more devious aspects of Adam’s answer. She’s still subtly defending herself, but she’s not blaming God or Adam. And she admits that she was deceived, or tricked, that the serpent fed her a line, and she gullibly took it.
Like Adam, she shifts blame. Unlike Adam, she can rightly claim to be the victim of deception. More importantly, she doesn’t attribute what happened to God. She’s humble enough to admit that she’d been fooled, kind enough to not throw Adam under the bus, and wise enough not to impugn God’s character.
Nonetheless, verses 12-13 show us that both of them try to shift blame onto someone else. They show us just how much the serpent has influenced them, as they’re both distorting the truth and accusing one another and God and the serpent.
Ways We Evade Responsibility
As I’ve said, their behavior here is what we all do. We all make excuses for our sin. When confronted with our guilt, we’ll run through any loophole we can find as fast as we can. Wiggling out of responsibility for our actions is endemic to the human race.
We do this in more ways than you may realize. Cornelius Plantinga, in his book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, describes several ways we try to evade our responsibility.[2] He talks about conforming to our peer groups, where we’re pressured to act, or not act, in ways that the group expects us to act. For example, when a family chooses to not challenge abusive behaviors because that would disrupt the peace and stability of the family, the family is shirking its responsibility to do what’s right by conforming to their own standards.
When we shut our eyes to an injustice, look the other way, and pretend to be ignorant of evil, we could be conforming, but Plantinga also says that this is a form of conniving. Connivance isn’t always active conspiracy. It can also be simply looking the other way when other employees or leaders or pastors or Presidents or anyone is obviously doing something that’s wrong.
Sometimes we neglect our responsibility by “leaving town,” or by literally leaving a situation we’re called to stay and face.
We also use our specializations to deny our responsibility. We’ll say things like, “I’m just here to do my job.” Or we’ll use our specializations to justify the wrong we do, like when an attorney manipulates the technicalities of the law while avoiding questions about the guilt or innocence of their clients. Jesus indicted the Pharisees for being specialists in certain aspects of the law while neglecting the more important matters of justice, mercy, and faithfulness (Matt. 23:23).
Another way we evade responsibility is through what Plantinga calls “cocooning.” We retreat into the small world of our family, a few friends, our work and church and busy ourselves with things that are part of that small circle. Plantinga describes several ways we do this:
“We do not welcome strangers into our lives or homes, and we do not go out to meet them. We do not inform ourselves of events abroad and cannot locate them on maps or in context. We dismiss the needs of future generations. We have never dealt seriously with a homeless person. We do not grieve over news stories of poverty or starvation, and we make only token efforts to relieve such suffering by our charity. Claiming allegiance to the Christ who speaks in active imperatives (Go! Tell! Witness! Declare! Proclaim!), we Christians nonetheless prefer to keep the bread of life in our own cupboard and to speak of it only to those who already have it. Do we subconsciously suppose that in such inbred silence we can keep our dignity, and unbelievers can go to hell where they belong?”[3]
Plantinga then talks about how we use amusement to evade our responsibility. He says that, while it’s good to take a break from work and laugh a bit, our culture is obsessed with amusement. Just look at what entertainers and athletes make compared to everyone else. It’s clear that amusement has become, for many, an evasion of the main business of life. He says, “When people begin to focus their lives more on amusement than on doing their work well, raising their children securely, gaining an education, and helping those in need, they begin to evade responsibility.”[4] When we know more about the performers in the Super Bowl halftime show than we do about our neighbors, something’s off.
Taking Responsibility Doesn’t Mean Ignoring Our Past
Wiggling out of responsibility for our actions is endemic to the human race. We all do this. We learned it from Adam and we’re good at it. Rather than take responsibility for our actions, we’re prone to find a circumstance, a person, a mood, or even God to blame.
A caveat is in order here. This doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to dig into the reasons for our actions. Being honest about our stories, diving into them with the courage and humility to name what’s true is not the same as finding excuses for sin. Understanding why we’re prone to sin in particular ways helps us know where we need Jesus’ particular help and healing. But it doesn’t remove our responsibility for our actions.
For example, I struggle with anger at home. I’ve confessed this and continue to confess this to a few close brothers and my wife, and healing has come, albeit slower than I’d like. It’s tempting to justify my anger as a result of the home I grew up in. But I’m called to own it as my own. Yes, I need to and have taken the time to sit with professional counselors, brothers in Christ, and Suzy to consider how my past is shaping my present. But processing my past doesn’t exonerate my present. Explaining the context of sin is not the same as denying guilt. It’s possible for me to say at the same time that I grew up in an angry and abusive home and that in my anger I have sinned. The former helps me understand how I arrived where I am. The latter helps me move forward through confession, repentance, and healing in Jesus’ name.
What part of your past are you ignoring that may be shaping your present? Where do you need to own your guilt? Where do you need to start taking responsibility?
Jesus Took the Blame
The good news for sinners and strugglers like us is that God comes to us, like he came to Adam and Eve, to draw us in with mercy, not drive us away with threats. God’s invitation for confession is not to shame us, but to free us. Not to condemn us, but to heal us. Not to embarrass us, but to change us.
The ground for God’s posture toward us is the cross of Jesus Christ. On the cross, Jesus took the blame for people who don’t take the blame. Jesus is the one person in history who didn’t try to pass the buck to someone else. The sinless God-Man stood before Pilate and hung before the crowds like a man, taking all the blame for things he never did. He said, “Give me the blame for my children. I know what they’ve done, and I know what they’ve done to cover up what they’ve done. But I love them so much that I’m going to take the blame for them so they’ll be free.”
Our guilt for our sin is ours alone. But we don’t have to carry it. We can pass it on to Jesus by trusting in him to take it. Because of the cross, he can take the blame for you so that you can be free from trying to impress God and man, free to live in open and honest relationships, and set on a new path of healing in his name.
The cross shows us that Jesus wants to take the blame for everyone who comes out of verbal hiding and comes clean before him.
[1]Ray Ortlund, The Death of Porn: Men of Integrity Building a World of Nobility (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 90.
[2]Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 180-93.
[3]Ibid., 189.
[4]Ibid., 191.