This is the first installment in our series, From Eden to Easter: Life and Death in the Garden. Each day throughout Holy Week, we will take a special look at the gardens and wildernesses of Scripture, and in particular, these scenes' connections to Christ's redemption won for us on the cross.
Genesis 2 is not the pilot episode of “Naked and Afraid.” In that reality TV show, it’s not long before the man and woman look like they’ve been kissing dirt piles, their backs are flushed from mosquito-feeding frenzies, and they’re already annoying the living daylights out of each other.
More like “Naked and Miserable.”
In Genesis 2? Not at all. Man #1 and Woman #1 are naked as a blue jay and happy as a lark. Why wouldn’t they be? After all, unlike every other creature, they were the living icons of God on earth, crafted in his image and likeness, to mirror him in this world (Gen. 1:26-27).
Everything the Lord made was very good (Gen. 1:31). No blood-sucking mosquitos; no cancer or common colds; no bombs or fentanyl or stillbirths or irritating in-laws or backstabbing friends. Nothing ungood in this good and godly world.
There is Adam the DirtMan, named after the raw material (adamah) from which God made him. And there is his wife, who is not yet called Eve (that won’t happen until after their rebellion; Gen. 3:20) but simply “the woman.” Her Hebrew name, ishshah, means “from the man [ish]” (Gen. 2:23).
Their mailing address and zip code were:
Mr. and Mrs. Ish and Ishsha
101 Paradise Lane
Gan, Eden 11111
Well, sort of. “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Gen. 2:8). In Hebrew, “garden” is gan. In Greek, it’s paradeisos, where we get “paradise.” This Gan, this garden community, was located within the broader area called Eden.
Eden was not an all-inclusive resort with nothing to do but sip margaritas and work on your tan poolside. It was a place for being and doing. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work [avad] it and keep [shamar] it” (Gen. 2:15). Those two Hebrew verbs, avad and shamar, are many-sided in meaning. Depending on the context, avad can mean work, serve, till, minister, and/or worship. Similarly, shamar means to guard, keep, watch over.
Because avad and shamar later describe the function of Levites and priests in the tabernacle and temple, Adam and Eve are best thought of as two worshipers, two priests, two holy creatures, king and queen of creation, where the Garden in Eden was both home and church.
Their mission from God was to make love, make babies, and make Eden bigger. Not a bad calling, eh? “Be fruitful and multiply,” the Lord told them, and “fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” over everything else (Gen. 1:28).
This is the foundational Great Commission of humanity. Make more humans. And make the rest of creation like Eden by “subduing [kâbash]” it, that is, rule over it by making it a place fit for human habitation. Clear trees. Plow fields. Build homes. Basically, Edenize the world.
But we all know what transpired next. Turn the page to Genesis 3 and the whole thing implodes.
- The two priests allow a vile, lie-speaking, God-hater to slither into the holy garden
- God’s clear word of “No” is hellishly reshaped into an “Oh, why not?”
- The bighearted, all-loving, all-giving God is defamed as a small, tightfisted Miser
- Eve, followed by Adam, decided they knew better than the Lord what was good for them
Rather than Edenizing the world, the man and woman Evilized it. Now they were Naked and Afraid and Shamed. And worse. Their happy marriage is now a finger-pointing blame game. Their labor laborious. Humanity had died a living death.
All for what? For the chance to play God.
Now, given these grim circumstances, when a man and woman are at their wits’ end, slouching into an alive-but-dead existence, who should come strolling into their presence? Who else but the Redeemer who never met a sinner he didn’t want to save? Who else but the Shepherd who laughs and dances his way home with a once-lost lamb on his shoulders? Who else but the Son of the Father?
Jesus comes walking through the garden in the cool of the day, finds these two hiding sinners, questions them, and gives them some hard-hitting law. But does he stop there? Of course not! This is the Son of God, who is “the LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…” (Exod. 34:6). And he gives those first two sinners—and all of us—an unforgettable display of what his mercy, grace, longsuffering love looks like.
Turning to the serpent-masquerading Satan, Jesus steps into the pulpit to preach the first Gospel sermon ever uttered:
“I will put hostility between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel” (Gen. 3:15).
What was lost in a garden would be regained, and even surpassed, in a garden where death would be reversed and subdued in the resurrection of the last Adam.
I like to imagine that, when Jesus spoke these words to Satan, he did a little side-eye glance at Adam and Eve, furtively pointing to himself as he spoke the “He” and “His” in those last two lines. His stern face, ever so slightly softening, just for an instant, as he winked at those two humans to signal that he would get the job done himself.
In time, there would be a man who did not play God but in fact was God. And still is God. The same one who spoke the first gospel promise to our parents would become that gospel promise: good news in the flesh. He would strike the head of the serpent even as that serpent's fangs struck his heel. Death would be destroyed by death.
What was lost in a garden would be regained, and even surpassed, in a garden where death would be reversed and subdued in the resurrection of the last Adam, whose body is the last Eve, his bride, the church, of which we and all believers are members.
So the church sings during the Easter vigil, “O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!” O happy fault? Yes, indeed, because two sinners, partaking of forbidden fruit, led to all of us redeemed sinners partaking of the divine nature that is one with the human nature of Jesus, Son of Mary and Son of God.
In Jesus, we are “Clothed and Unafraid,” robed in his righteousness and secure in his grace.
