Both Naked and Unashamed

This is a paper I wrote last semester in Genesis class. Thought I'd post it and just have it up and share revelation. Just like I promised :)



Both Naked and Unashamed







Eva Duong




The Beginning and the End of All Things
Mark Kazmier
College of Sacred Scripture, November 29, 2010

Before the universe was created, God was fully satisfied in fellowship with Himself, the Trinity. But sometime in eternity, He provoked Himself to create a kind of longing. Ephesians 1:9 says God, “…made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself.” And Ephesians 1:4 says, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.” From the beginning, the LORD God created yearning in Himself for a Bride who needed the blood sacrifice of His Son in order to be grafted into fellowship with Him forever.
Even a short passage in the first book of the Bible, one can see the cross and the process God took leading up to the cross. Genesis 2:18-20 is about God creating longing in His heart for a Bride. The very fact that He uses His covenant name, “LORD God” is evidence that He intended His Son to be torn for mankind. Another time, in verse 21, the Father calls Himself the LORD God. He is the LORD that desires covenant and God who is the Supreme Being over all creation. In verse 18, He begins by saying, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” From Genesis 1:3, one can find that when He speaks, He creates. The Father begins to make longing in Himself for a helper. In verse 19, God takes the dust that He has created and forms beasts and birds out of it. He knowingly created creatures unlike Himself to continue to grow in the yearning for beings in His own likeness. He brought them to Himself or the Second Adam, Jesus to give them names. One can imagine that with every name God spoke aloud for a bird or a beast or a creeping thing, a fresh realization came upon Him that these creatures were nothing like Him. God desired a race that could give and inevitably withhold love from Him. He desired a race of helpers, who would be voluntary lovers of God. In verse 20, Adam felt loneliness through the monotonous giving of names to all creatures. Creatures had to receive their name. God let Adam feel what He felt before mankind was created. Like Adam desired a helper in a woman, God desired a helper in His Bride, the Church.
After creating a zealous longing in Himself, He had to follow through with satisfying that longing.4 So He caused His Son to fall into a deep sleep. Jesus had to leave His glorified state and veiled His divine nature as a man in order to take on the sin of mankind. The sin that mankind could not pay for. In reading Genesis 2:21 with the story of Adam and Eve in mind, this sleep is sleep. But applying this passage to Jesus as the Second Adam is a little more difficult. The Son of Man felt a degree of separation from the Father as a human. For example, in Psalm 22:1, Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Also, the covenant God made with Abraham led to the crucifixion of Jesus on the cross . This degree of separation does not mean the Father forgot Jesus! He was not an orphan, as a baby in Mary’s womb up until His last breath on the cross. He always was the Father’s Son and always will be His Son forever. In Luke 2:49, Jesus said to Joseph and Mary, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” Even on the cross, Jesus knew where He was going.5 Also in Luke 3:22, God the Father says, “You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased,” after He got baptized by John the Baptist. Jesus’ ministry and life on the earth was like a deep sleep in a sense because He had to leave the glory He had with the Father to become a man. When He got put to “sleep,” He was still fully aware of His identity as the Holy Son. But He also knew that when He woke up or returned to the Father after the finished work on the cross, the degree of separation He felt on the earth would dissipate. God and the Son, together with the Holy Spirit would again enjoy the fellowship they had before the foundation of the world.6 The sleep also speaks of the trust Jesus had in the Father. The Father anointed His Son to walk by the Holy Spirit.
Continuing still in verse 21, God had to draw blood from Adam’s side to take out the rib. In the same way, Jesus had to spill His blood in order for His Bride to be clean, pure, and spotless.7 His Bride needed part of Him to be grafted into fellowship with the Godhead. The last part of that verse, the LORD closed up the flesh in its place. Similarly, after the work on the cross, Jesus rose from the dead. Every stripe that He suffered was healed and so was every iniquity wiped away from His Bride. The exhilaration of the union of God with His Bride inspired a divine song in verse 23. Finally, the yearning the LORD satisfied! To have a Church made from His own flesh and bone!
Therefore, it pleased the LORD to bruise His Son.8 Through His Son’s suffering, the LORD received His reward. The Son was stripped naked for His Bride and He was not ashamed. Because of the love of God, the Bride realized her hopeless estate without the Father. She was not ashamed to receive the gift from the Father and the love of the Son. For a short time, God risked the defilement of his perfect love and holiness to weak and broken beings. But the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End finished what He started.9 The Father received His sons and daughters and the Son received His Bride.




















Bibliography
Blue Letter Bible Board of Directors. Blue Letter Bible-Home Page. 1995. [online] Available from http://www.blueletterbible.org/. 24 November 2010.