And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
All Commentaries on Genesis 3:7 Go To Genesis 3
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
As soon as our first parents had disobeyed God’s commandment, they were immediately deprived of divine grace and were ashamed of their nakedness. They covered themselves with fig leaves, which perhaps were the first thing noticed by the troubled pair. The parts covered remained unchanged except that previously they occasioned no shame. They felt for the first time a movement of disobedience in their flesh, as though the punishment were meant to fit the crime of their own disobedience to God. The fact is that the soul, which had taken perverse delight in its own liberty and disdained the service of God, was now deprived of its original mastery over the body. Because it had deliberately deserted the Lord who was over it, it no longer bent to its will the servant below it, being unable to hold the flesh completely in subjection as would always have been the case, if only the soul had remained subject to God. From this moment on, then, the flesh began to lust against the spirit. With this rebellion we are born, just as we are doomed to die and because of the first sin to bear, in our members and vitiated nature, either the battle with or defeat by the flesh.
