Eating of Fruit from the Tree of Life

We have all heard the story…

God created Adam & Eve. He told them they could eat anything in the Garden of Eden, except for fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The serpent convinced Eve to eat the fruit. She in turned convinced Adam. Then the two were punished and banished from the Garden. Guards were even posted at the entrance of the Garden to keep them out.

Now perhaps this is not how you heard the story growing up….it is how I heard it. I’ve surveyed many people to discover that is also how they learned it in Sunday School. I however, did not grow up in the church and came to Christ in my adult life. As such, and having studied religion in college, I dived into the text and spent years trying to understand this story to help me understand where I should be headed as a Christian.

I don’t write this to judge or convict anyone.  I write this for myself and with the hope that others will help me understand this message.  With that being said, let me start with the story itself.

Genesis 3:21 reads:

 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 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^[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

When my attention was called to the actual words of this text, I was amazed.  I was taught, and I taught my children, that Adam and Eve were banished as punishment for eating the fruit from the Garden and Eve.  However, in God’s Word it states “He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever”.  He did not want them to eat from the Tree of Life at the point and “live forever”.  Now if we look at the text where instructions were given on what they could eat we see the following in Genesis 2:8:

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ⁹ The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The key point I note is that it was not a vast orchard of simple orange trees with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Center.  There were two important trees that were named.  One was the Tree of Life.  As stated in Genesis 3, when you eat from the Tree of Life…you life forever.  The only tree they were not to eat from was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as stated in Genesis 2:10:

            The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. ¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Most Christians will tell you that Jesus himself is the Tree of Life. I think this is a well founded interpretation of God’s Word. John 14:6 reads “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” He called himself the “life”. He is the key to eternity and as such, if you eat of His fruit….you will live forever.

So imagine Adam and Eve frolicking through the Garden, probably running right past Jesus. They began to yearn for the tree they were denied. They may have leaned against Jesus while they stared at the sin they desired. This speaks volumes to me….as I can picture myself leaning on Jesus to want for sin.

Now let’s get to the sin. They ate the wrong fruit! Suddenly they had knowledge of good and evil. The Lord did not want them to eat from the Tree of Life and live forever now that they had eaten the sinful fruit. Could it be that he was protecting us? Think about living forever in a sinful state. We say that being saved means we were washed clean of our sins and accepted Jesus into our hearts. We must be cleansed before we accept Jesus’ fruit…otherwise we live eternally in our sinful state. We are instructed to die daily and be reborn (we can talk more about this in another hub). This is why He kept Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life. He did not want to give them the gift of eternal life in the state they were in.

With all this being said….I look around at people and myself and wonder.  Again, I am not judging….I am just questioning.  Is the problem today that we are consistently trying to eat the fruit from the Tree of Life in the wrong state?  Could it be that we have not been cleansed of our sins.  I ask myself often if although I believe I am saved…am I ready to accept eternal life in the state I am in?  Yes I know we are all sinners, but I believe there comes a point when we are truly cleansed…we eat of the fruit….and we live forever.  The mere fact that I am questioning whether or not I am there yet…proves that I am not.

I am done with my knowledge of good and evil…I know enough of it as far as I am concerned.  I would like to say that I am ready to give up that knowledge to eat from the Tree of Life.  But am I?  Are you?  Are most people?  When we talk about “lukewarm Churches”, is this what we are talking about?  People who believed they were saved because they ate the fruit from the Tree of Life in the wrong state?

This is all just theology and we could argue it all day long and I have had people become so irritated with me questioning whether or not we are truly saved by simply saying we are.  I have a relationship with Jesus, I speak to Him everyday.  I love Him.  My question really is whether or not my relationship has developed while I have been leaning on him to desire sin.  Only I can answer this for myself…so I ask, can you take a look at yourself and wonder the same thing?