Death And The Tree Of Life
Posted: June 13th, 2009, 12:21 am
HEALING SHELTER MINISTRIES #131aah Re-Written 13JUN09
Save Me Today—Part Sixty: Death And The Tree Of Life
by rev dave c
Genesis 3:22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life (NIV).
Under the ideal conditions of the Garden of Eden, the first man/the first Adam was unable to resist the temptation to defy God’s command to avoid the forbidden fruit and so he brought about the Fall of all humanity. Ever since, we have lived within the shadow of the curse of sin and death. Jesus, on the other hand, as the second man/the last Adam (1Co 15:45-47), was led into the wilderness, or desert, which is the opposite of what a garden represents in terms of protection and abundance—yet, as fully human, He remained faithful to the word and to the will of God the Father. As the atoning sacrifice for our sins, Christ established the means by which we may be forgiven and adopted into the eternal family of God.
I don’t pretend to understand the nature and the location of the Garden of Eden within time and space, but I accept the factual nature of its existence and the events contained within its borders as described in the Bible. Those who would relegate Chapters Two and Three of Genesis to the realm of allegory, myth, or morality play unavoidably disavow the authenticity of the remainder of both the Old and the New Testaments. Without God’s creation of the first man and woman, and without their subsequent fall from grace, I have no need for a Divine Savior. If we deny the reality of the first man/the first Adam and the consequences of his disobedience, then we are refuting the reality of the second man/the last Adam and the redemptive work of His perfect submission. Do I believe that ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ and ‘the tree of life’ were real trees? You betcha’. But that belief does not limit their poetic/allegorical/symbolic aspects throughout the rest of Scripture and throughout our lives. From the age of three or four onward, I had a pretty good idea of what constituted the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil (i.e., sinful disobedience)—and by the age of 30 I had begun to understand the nature and conditions of the tree of life (i.e., an acceptance of the reality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the necessity for change in my life).
In spite of common understanding in the world to the contrary, as well as some formal teaching from within the Church, the forbidden fruit of Genesis Two was the knowledge of good and evil (where “to know” denotes an intimate/experiential relationship through the senses)—not just knowledge or wisdom in general [sidebar: Ever wonder about “the bite out of an apple” logo for Mac computers? Hmmmmm.]. Good is willingly obeying God’s Word, and evil is willful disobedience. By directly disobeying the Lord in the eating of the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve were cut off from God’s presence as exemplified by the freedom to partake in the tree of life and live forever. Although mankind was designed to work from the very beginning, the Garden of Eden provided a setting that represented God’s abundance of ready provision within a protected environment. After the Fall and expulsion humanity was consigned through the Curse to sweat and toil for food, the natural and social environments required the wearing of clothes, Creation was filled with struggles, and childbirth became painful in the extreme.
Throughout The Bible, as the story unfolds of God’s relationship with His creature, and the creature’s relationship with God, we see the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life firstly symbolized in the Old Testament, then realized in the New Testament, and finally to be actualized in the glory of Christ’s Second Advent and our resurrection into New Jerusalem. Within the garden of Eden, the tree of life stood as a manifestation of God’s promise for those who would partake of its fruit to remain eternally within His presence. Crafted to resemble a flowering tree, the golden lamp stand within the Tabernacle/Temple, represented the Edenic tree of life by symbolizing the light of God’s protective immediacy as it shone upon the loaves of the bread of the Presence—to be provided one each from the 12 tribes of Israel (Ex 25:30-40).
We also witness a continuation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Law of the Old Covenant as instituted by God in Chapter 20 of Exodus. Paul tells us that The Law brought death just as did the tree within the Garden: I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin (Ro 7:10-14; NIV). In the same fashion that later commandments were intended to bring life, God gave to Adam a revelatory command regarding the rewards of obedience in the fruit from the tree of life, and the consequences of disobedience in the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Just as we are each permitted every moment of every day to decide from which tree we will eat, the Lord gave the first couple the privilege to choose life...or to choose death. They chose death. The question then remains, “Today, this very moment, from which tree shall we eat?”
Save Me Today—Part Sixty: Death And The Tree Of Life
by rev dave c
Genesis 3:22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life (NIV).
Under the ideal conditions of the Garden of Eden, the first man/the first Adam was unable to resist the temptation to defy God’s command to avoid the forbidden fruit and so he brought about the Fall of all humanity. Ever since, we have lived within the shadow of the curse of sin and death. Jesus, on the other hand, as the second man/the last Adam (1Co 15:45-47), was led into the wilderness, or desert, which is the opposite of what a garden represents in terms of protection and abundance—yet, as fully human, He remained faithful to the word and to the will of God the Father. As the atoning sacrifice for our sins, Christ established the means by which we may be forgiven and adopted into the eternal family of God.
I don’t pretend to understand the nature and the location of the Garden of Eden within time and space, but I accept the factual nature of its existence and the events contained within its borders as described in the Bible. Those who would relegate Chapters Two and Three of Genesis to the realm of allegory, myth, or morality play unavoidably disavow the authenticity of the remainder of both the Old and the New Testaments. Without God’s creation of the first man and woman, and without their subsequent fall from grace, I have no need for a Divine Savior. If we deny the reality of the first man/the first Adam and the consequences of his disobedience, then we are refuting the reality of the second man/the last Adam and the redemptive work of His perfect submission. Do I believe that ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ and ‘the tree of life’ were real trees? You betcha’. But that belief does not limit their poetic/allegorical/symbolic aspects throughout the rest of Scripture and throughout our lives. From the age of three or four onward, I had a pretty good idea of what constituted the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil (i.e., sinful disobedience)—and by the age of 30 I had begun to understand the nature and conditions of the tree of life (i.e., an acceptance of the reality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the necessity for change in my life).
In spite of common understanding in the world to the contrary, as well as some formal teaching from within the Church, the forbidden fruit of Genesis Two was the knowledge of good and evil (where “to know” denotes an intimate/experiential relationship through the senses)—not just knowledge or wisdom in general [sidebar: Ever wonder about “the bite out of an apple” logo for Mac computers? Hmmmmm.]. Good is willingly obeying God’s Word, and evil is willful disobedience. By directly disobeying the Lord in the eating of the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve were cut off from God’s presence as exemplified by the freedom to partake in the tree of life and live forever. Although mankind was designed to work from the very beginning, the Garden of Eden provided a setting that represented God’s abundance of ready provision within a protected environment. After the Fall and expulsion humanity was consigned through the Curse to sweat and toil for food, the natural and social environments required the wearing of clothes, Creation was filled with struggles, and childbirth became painful in the extreme.
Throughout The Bible, as the story unfolds of God’s relationship with His creature, and the creature’s relationship with God, we see the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life firstly symbolized in the Old Testament, then realized in the New Testament, and finally to be actualized in the glory of Christ’s Second Advent and our resurrection into New Jerusalem. Within the garden of Eden, the tree of life stood as a manifestation of God’s promise for those who would partake of its fruit to remain eternally within His presence. Crafted to resemble a flowering tree, the golden lamp stand within the Tabernacle/Temple, represented the Edenic tree of life by symbolizing the light of God’s protective immediacy as it shone upon the loaves of the bread of the Presence—to be provided one each from the 12 tribes of Israel (Ex 25:30-40).
We also witness a continuation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Law of the Old Covenant as instituted by God in Chapter 20 of Exodus. Paul tells us that The Law brought death just as did the tree within the Garden: I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin (Ro 7:10-14; NIV). In the same fashion that later commandments were intended to bring life, God gave to Adam a revelatory command regarding the rewards of obedience in the fruit from the tree of life, and the consequences of disobedience in the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Just as we are each permitted every moment of every day to decide from which tree we will eat, the Lord gave the first couple the privilege to choose life...or to choose death. They chose death. The question then remains, “Today, this very moment, from which tree shall we eat?”