Christ in the first stage came to reveal the Father, in the second stage He came to

redeem the church. But more, the goal before God is a Unity, expressed with such

overwhelming fullness in the language of John 17: 23.

On one occasion Paul wrote: "Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of

the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be

faithful", and when the Apostle's judgment was given he concluded by saying:

We have no Apostolic gift, but we too have obtained mercy to be faithful, and venture

to express the opinion that follows, fully recognizing that for this we have no

"commandment". With this understanding the reader is invited to ponder what is "my

judgment" of a most wonderful subject, reserving the right to reject it or to modify it as

light is given. Let us turn to the opening chapters of Genesis. The last verse of Gen. 2:

says of Adam and his wife, that they were both naked but "not ashamed". No one so

created by God and innocent of sin would have any sense of shame, this could only come

as an accompaniment of guilt, and is written to prepare us for what follows in Gen. 3:

The word "naked" is the translation of the Hebrew word arom, and the word "subtil"

which immediately follows in Gen. 3: 1 is the Hebrew arum. The first meaning that

Gesenius gives to arum is "to be naked", the second meaning "to be crafty". The reader

should know that the only way of distinguishing the vowel "o" from the vowel "u" in the

Hebrew is the position of a dot like a full-stop. If it be half-way up the sign for vav, the

vowel is pronounced "u", if it stands at the top of the vav it is pronounced "o". Mark, it

is a matter of pronunciation, not meaning that is here intended. Shorn of the vowel

points, that were added later, the words "naked" of Gen. 2: 25 and "subtil" of 3: 1 are

identical.  It is not possible to know this, or to read the original Hebrew without

immediately making a mental connexion between the two verses. Now whatever the

actual transgression of Adam and his wife may have been, and however we interpret the

"tree of knowledge of good and evil", one thing stands out prominent in the record, the

immediate consequence was a sense of shame, not so much a sense of guilt, but a sense

of shame connected with their nakedness.

When challenged by the Lord, Adam's immediate reply was: "I was afraid, because I

was naked; and I hid myself" (Gen. 3: 7 and 10). When the doom was pronounced upon

the man and his wife, a most unexpected turn is taken. Instead of receiving the death

sentence, as Gen. 2: 17 would lead us to expect, child birth is referred to. First in the

form of a prophetic promise:

Secondly, in the form of a chastisement and continual reminder: