Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?””
Genesis 3:11

The snake said nothing to them of nakedness. Neither did the devil. Not physical nakedness. Not spiritual nakedness. They were informed by their own consciences that they were naked. They knew from inside their own selves how badly they had messed up. They knew they were physically naked, so they had taken steps to cover themselves. They knew they were spiritually naked, so they had hidden when God came to meet them. This was the harvest of the fruit they ate from. Every human being has it. We know deep inside when we do wrong. We don’t have to be believers. We KNOW when we do wrong (Romans 2:15). Whenever a human does wrong, their conscience is violated and then guilt and shame arise.

This is yet ANOTHER opportunity to repent. God was repeating His command. He was challenging them to honesty. He was providing an opportunity to speak the TRUTH and to let the TRUTH get them onto the right path. They had stepped away from God’s will in disobedience. This was the time to step back into obedience to God.

God spoke to them in love. He was not nasty. He was not demanding. He was calm and He was presenting to them what they needed to do. He was pointing to what their sin really was (not the physical eating, but the disobedience) and bringing to their attention what was at stake. As the sage Kitzur Ba’al HaTurim writes: ‘”Which I commanded you not to eat from it” – In this context, it refers to the sin of listening to the advice of a slanderer, as opposed to the direct commandment from God not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.’