Genesis 3:11

And (God) said: ‘who told you that you were naked?”
Those fig leaves really don’t cover up much.  It must have felt pretty ridiculous to be hiding in the bushes while God walked in the cool of  the day in the Garden looking for Adam and Eve.

Hide our nakedness from the Creator who formed and designed the body parts we are trying futilely to cover?  Hide our thoughts and deeds from the God who knows our hearts and minds better than we ourselves do?  We are still naked in every aspect of our beings, completely and utterly uncovered and transparent, especially when it comes to our sin.

So who told us we were naked?  Who instilled shame in our bodies, when we are designed in the image, in the likeness of God who loved us enough to walk with us in the Garden?

It was not God who did this.  He was not ashamed of what He had made.

In our fall, in our terrible disobedience, we could no longer bear (or bare) to stand naked before God.   So in our place,  God, in His ultimate love for us, became our  Savior hanging naked, exposed, and humiliated instead.

“The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself  for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.  Man claims prerogatives that belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.”   John Stott