What does it mean that Adam and Eve were naked and not ashamed (Genesis 2:25)?

The primitive condition is described too. "They were both naked — the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." It was a state altogether different from that of man fallen; however suitable then, it was such as man as he is could never have conceived of with propriety. Yet we cannot but feel how suitable it was for innocence, in which condition God made man and woman. Could He have made them otherwise consistently with His own character? Could they so made have carried themselves otherwise than is here described? Man's present experience would have suggested neither; yet his heart and conscience, unless rebellious, feel how right and becoming all is in such a state of things — none other so good.

Finally, we see here the unshamed nakedness of the man and the woman — happy expression of innocent intimacy. No familiarity which such hearts could indulge would be rebuked, anal so will it be between the true pair in the heavenly garden; no fear of being hidden away, and no shame in drawing intimately near. Innocence was the security between Adam and Eve, and all the virtues of the new mind will be the necessary, instinctive, essential protection of the ways of the redeemed Bride of the Lamb, in company with the Lord, while indulging her heart in His nearest affection.

"Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become (be for) one flesh. And they were both of them naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed" (vers. 24, 25). The former verse contemplates circumstances wholly different from those of Adam who had neither father nor mother to leave; the latter presents the facts which attached to the primeval condition and neither were nor could be with propriety at any other time. Shame followed sin: the knowledge of good and evil led them consciously fallen to cover themselves.

In their innocent state it was perfectly normal for Adam and Eve to be naked. When by sin they acquired a conscience, however, God implanted within them a sense of shame in being naked. Animals do not have this, but even in the lowest type of human culture, conscience speaks.

How intimate the relationship. Taken out of man (Ish) she was called woman (Isha). Marriage is instituted for man and woman’s comfort and joy, and for the procreation of the human race. In Genesis 1 man and woman are exhorted to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, to subdue it, to have dominion over it, Adam being head over all. A man is to leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, one in affection and interest, each the complement of the other.

So the narrative ends with man and woman naked and unashamed, so pure and innocent were they.

The formation of the woman is highly typical. Adam is the figure of Him who was to come (Rom. 5:14), the last Adam. Here Christ and the Church are foreshadowed. The deep sleep into which Adam was put by Jehovah Elohim is typical of the death of the cross, the woman, built out of his side, is the type of the Church. As the helpmeet of Adam was bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh and also the bride of Adam, so is the church the body and the bride of Christ. The woman was brought to Adam and presented to him. But Christ will present the Church to Himself (Eph. 5:27). Marriage is indicated in verse 24 and quoted in Matt. 19:5, 1 Cor. 6:16, and Eph. 5:31. Both were naked, the suitable condition for innocence.

In their innocent state it was perfectly normal for Adam and Eve to be naked. When by sin they acquired a conscience, however, God implanted within them a sense of shame in being naked. Animals do not have this, but even in the lowest type of human culture, conscience speaks.

The last verse emphasizes how complete was the state of innocence in which they were created. Sin having come in, all is changed. Savages may still be found in a state of almost complete nudity but they are of the most degraded type. The tendency towards it, in lands where the light of the Gospel has been shining, presages a descent into apostasy.

Section 3 opens, "Now the serpent was more subtil …" He wormed his way into this fair scene of innocence. How much more easily will he deceive the silly creatures — men and women — who try to behave as though they were innocent when they possess fallen and lustful natures.

The man and his wife were now creatures fallen from their original estate, and the results of this fall begin to unroll themselves. First, in verse 7, we have the effect upon themselves. In innocence they had been happily free from self-consciousness, as we saw in the last verse of Genesis 2. Now they were very self-conscious and ashamed, and stirred to feeble and ineffectual attempts to hide their shame. We say feeble, because everyone who knows the shape of a fig leaf must admit that any apron sewed from such must have been elaborate patchwork and easily destroyed. We say ineffectual, because verse 10 shows that immediately Adam found himself in the presence of God he confessed himself as naked, just as though the fig leaf apron had never been made.

The key to the interpretation of the term "naked" in this and the following verse is found, we judge, in verse 21, where we read that "Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them." From his fall, his transgression, therefore, until he was clothed in a coat of skin, Adam was naked before God. The term "naked" will thus express his moral condition consequent upon his sin - his moral exposure, so to speak, before the all-searching eye of a holy God. While in a state of innocence he was happy, surrounded as he was with every token of the goodness of his Creator; but as soon as he had eaten of the forbidden fruit his eyes were opened (v. 7), and knowing now good and evil he obtained a conscience, and, alas! a condemning conscience. The result was that he knew he was naked, could not conceal his moral condition (v. 7), and forthwith - as many of his descendants have continued to do ever since - attempted to cover up his state by a human expedient. But the moment God drew near, Adam felt the vanity of his subterfuge, and sought to hide himself from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. He knew, we repeat, that as a sinner he was naked, and could not screen himself from the just judgment of God, of which he had been forewarned. (Chap. 2:16-17.) But grace wrought, and grace provided what Adam could not, by any efforts of his own, obtain: God clothed him in his nakedness, and clothed him with the skin of an animal upon which death had been brought. The meaning of the skin may perhaps be gathered from Leviticus 7:8, where it is said that the priest that offereth any man's burnt offering, even the priest shall have to himself the skin of the burnt offering which he hath offered." The coat of skin wherewith Adam was clothed was surely, therefore, a figure of the fact that only Christ can cover our moral nakedness before God.