6
The Choice
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden;
and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow
every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food;
the tree of life also in the midst of the garden,
and the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:8-9).
The story of the Bible begins and ends with a tree. In the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life
held the central place. After the expulsion of man from the garden, we don’t hear of the tree
again until the last book of the Bible. There, man is in a very different environment called, “The
paradise of God.” Once again the Tree of Life is central. But now there is not one tree of life, but
twelve. They are on both sides of the river of life and they bear twelve kinds of fruit. Moreover,
the leaves of the tree are for the healing of all people.
It is those who do God’s commandments
who have a right to the Tree of Life, and the permission to enter the City of God.
Everyone knows that the Tree of Life was in the Garden of Eden. It is also important to
know that the Garden of Eden was not everywhere. It was a little world of its own within the
larger world of the planet. It did not even encompass all of Eden, but was “eastward in Eden.”
The brief geography of Eden is unfamiliar, but this was a very long time ago and much has
changed since then. It was surely a beautiful garden. Every tree that was good for food and
pleasant to the eye was there; God made them grow out of the ground.
Then God created man out of the dust of the ground put him in this small world. For
reasons that will become apparent, it is important to know that God placed Adam and Eve in a
little world of their own. They were not exposed to the dangers of the whole world, but protected
in a garden of God’s making and design.
There are a few things we can say about this world. We know there were animals there,
but none of them were dangerous. We know that there was all the food anyone could ever desire.
There was work to do, because Adam was told to “dress and keep” the garden. We know the
climate was mild because there was no need for clothes. The man and his wife were naked, and
there was no shame in it.
There was no downside in Adam’s world. From what comes later, we know there were no
thorns or briars, and we can infer that there were no weeds or noxious plants. We can also infer
that there was no pain, no disease, and we know there was the potential of living forever. It was
an altogether perfect little world.
But there was a way out of this world into a larger, very different world, and that way was
in the form of a tree. Why would anyone want to leave a perfect world, a paradise like Eden? It’s
a good question, and the answer may be as simple as this: Adam and Eve were not prisoners.
They were not specimens for God to keep in his own private zoo. They were entirely human and
entitled therefore to freedom and dignity. So there had to be a way out. There had to be a choice
of worlds to live in. But at the first, Adam and Eve were completely unaware of this other world.
Their eyes were not opened to it.
Now about this other tree. It was called “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and
it was placed squarely in the center of the garden right alongside the tree of life.
And the Lord
told the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." (Genesis 3:3). Now
we know that God did not mean Adam would drop dead if he ate of the tree, but that he would
become subject to death from that day forward. Adam was human and physical and, without
access to the tree of life, his life was limited. He would grow old and die.
God told Adam and Eve plainly not to eat of the one tree. But if he didn’t want them to
eat of it, why was it there? Sure, it was a beautiful tree, but let’s not imagine that God could not
make the tree beautiful and safe at the same time. The answer seems obvious enough. The tree
was there because man had to have a choice. If paradise became stultifying to him, he could
leave. The tree was his way out, and it was not placed in some obscure corner of the garden. It
was right there in the center alongside the tree of life. It gave man a choice of worlds to live in.
We don’t know how long Adam and Eve were in the garden before the temptation by the
serpent. It was probably long enough for them to get bored. But when the encounter takes place,
we start filling in some blanks about this tree.
The serpent seems almost surprised to see the tree there and in such a prominent place, so
he asks the woman, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” (Genesis
3:1 ff.). And the woman affirmed that it was so: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the
garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not
eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”
The serpent’s reply is scornful: “Ye shall not surely die,” he said. “For God doth know
that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing
good and evil.” The serpent was wrong. They would not die immediately, but they would die.
The rest of what the serpent said turns out to be true. Their eyes were opened; they became aware
of things that heretofore they had not seen. Things that had before seemed insignificant now took
on new meaning to them.
We have to pause at this point to clarify a couple of things. First, the Hebrew word
translated “evil” does not denote malicious evil, but mere adversity. Properly, it is the tree of the
knowledge of “good and bad.” (In modern usage, evil means “morally reprehensible.” In the
Bible, evil means “adversity,” or the opposite of good.)
Second, the word “knowledge” means “to ascertain by seeing.” In other words, it implies
experiencing something, not merely knowing about it. Thus, “Adam knew his wife and she
conceived.” The knowledge of good and evil meant that man would see good and see adversity,
in the sense of experiencing it. Life would now have an upside and a downside. He would be
living in a very different world.
Nearly everything that troubles us about God and about life depends on our understanding
this simple truth. Adam had a choice of two worlds. One where he would know nothing but
good, and the other where he would know good and bad.
Some have said the trees are symbolic of two ways of living. Others have thought that
man fell when he ate of the wrong tree and his nature was changed. But the trees seem rather to
symbolize two environments in which man might live. It wasn’t man’s nature that was changed
when he sinned. It was his environment. He went from an environment that offered nothing but
good things to an environment that offered both good and bad. Consider the consequences of the
choice. Here is what God said to Adam:
Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded
you, 'You must not eat of it,' Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful
toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles
for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will
eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust
you are and to dust you will return (Genesis 3:17-19).
It was not man who was cursed. It was the ground. God did not tell Adam, “You will be
different.” Rather he told him that his environment would be different. These are consequences
of his choice, rather than punishments for having made it. Adam was dirt and would have, in the
normal course of events returned to dirt. It would have been the tree of life that made it different
and he was now isolated from that tree. No longer could he eat of the fruit of the trees there. Now
he would eat the plants of the field.
This may explain the fate of the woman as well. To the woman, God said: “I will greatly
increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be
for your husband, and he will rule over you.” This certainly sounds like a change in the physical
nature of woman, but it may be only a figure of speech. It was certain that the woman would be
away from the tree of life. She would no longer have access to the healing leaves of that tree.
As a consequence of isolation from Eden, the health of the man and woman would
deteriorate and the labor and pain of childbirth would be much worse. It may have been more a
consequence of isolation than a curse from God. And, in the wild environment outside of Eden,
the superior strength of the man would become a telling difference between the two. Even their
relationship would change. And so it was that:
The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
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.’ So the LORD God banished him from the Garden
of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 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 (Genesis
3:21-24).
Why clothes? Because they would now face a hostile environment. They were banished
from the Garden. They and their children would face that flaming sword every time they thought
of returning to the garden.
There is one other thing in this passage that must not be overlooked. The serpent was
right when he said: “ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” For God himself said, “The
man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” Does God know evil? Of course
He does. He had long since had to deal with the Adversary, the one we know as Satan. At some
point in the history of the planet, there had been war between God and Satan, apparently more
than once.
The Garden of Eden was a little sanctuary in a dangerous world where adversity walked.
Adam was free and he made the choice of a free man to live in the world where God and the
Devil both lived and worked. Adam was free himself to do good or to do evil, for if a man is not
free to do evil, he is not free. If a man is not free to suffer the consequences of his actions, he is
not free. If a man is not free to hurt other men, he is not free.
One of the terrible things to come from Adam’s choice is that we are all now subject to
the consequences of the choices of others. Countless millions have died in useless wars because
some man wanted power over other men. Millions died in Hitler’s concentration camps, because
of the choices made by one demented man and his evil lieutenants.
But God did not choose evil for man. Man himself made that choice long ago. And the
sobering truth is, when we have been given the same choice, we have made the same decision. It
doesn’t really help to blame Adam for what we ourselves have done.
But are we forever stuck with that choice? Is there any way we can go back to that idyllic
world of Eden with access to a healing tree, to health, to safety? Is there no bridge to that world?
Well, yes and no. There is a bridge back across to that world, but it lies ahead of us.
I must now change the scene and the metaphor. Jesus is confronted by a crowd of
uncommitted followers. He had given all of them a free meal and they seem still to be
preoccupied with that. They had bread on the mind, so bread is the metaphor of choice. "Our
fathers did eat manna in the desert,” they said, “as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven
to eat” (John 6:31). They seem to be aware of the miraculous nature of the meal they had just
eaten and they were looking for an explanation.
“I will tell you the truth, then,” Jesus said. “Moses gave you not that bread from heaven;
but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh
down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.” First we were talking about a tree that gives
life, now it is bread that gives life.
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven,” Jesus continued, “if any man eat
of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for
the life of the world.” Adam and Eve might have eaten of the tree of life and lived forever. Now
Jesus says that his flesh is the bread which makes it possible to live forever: “Verily, verily, I say
unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the
last day" (John 6:53-54).
In a manner of speaking, Jesus is the bridge back to the world Adam and Eve left. He
gives us the choice again. As He told doubting Thomas: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
The way where? To the tree of life.
Recently, a friend asked me a question about the Tree of Life that I had not considered
before. He wondered if the Tree of Life was a one shot thing (eat of it and live forever), or if it
was something Adam had to continue to eat of in order to live. I hadn’t thought of it in those
terms, but perhaps it’s time we did.
The events in Eden do not suggest that eating of the Tree of Life would make Adam a
spirit being. What if the Tree of Life and the other trees in the Garden were the ongoing source of
life in the flesh? Consider Jesus’ ministry in the flesh. A woman with an issue of blood for 12
years comes up behind Jesus in a press of people. She touches the hem of his garment and is
made whole on the spot. What changed spiritually? The text has nothing to say about that. She
was already a woman of faith, a believer. She said that if she could just touch the hem of his
garment, she would be made whole. And after she touched him, “she felt in her body that she
was healed of that plague” (Mark 5:29). As far as we know, the woman lived on, grew old and
died. She wasn’t given eternal life. She was simply given life. What is the difference? Eternal
life doesn’t end; her life did.
Then there is the man Jesus encountered in the synagogue with a withered hand. Jesus
healed him instantly, but there isn’t a hint that anything else was changed. He healed a man born
blind, and another who had been lame from birth, two major birth defects. But what changed
spiritually? As far as we know, nothing. Even the most remarkable example in the New
Testament of the giving of life, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, only gave Lazarus temporal
life. The gift of eternal life in the spirit would require something more.
All this deepens the mystery. Why did healing figure so prominently in Jesus’ ministry if
it played no role in “spiritual” salvation? Part of the answer is found in the Last Supper. For our
purpose here, the best account is Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians regarding this most
important of Christian observances.
For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you,” Paul said,
“that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And
when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which
is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me (1 Corinthians 11:23-24).
Every Christian is familiar with these words, and especially with the words that follow:
“After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new
testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye
eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come.”
Now here was my problem. I grew up very familiar with the idea of the Jesus’ blood
sacrifice. The hymnals of every church I attended were replete with songs about the blood of
Jesus and its power over sin. I knew I had been forgiven by the shed blood of Christ. I had sung,
“There’s Power in the Blood,” and “There is a fountain filled with blood.” I observed
Communion with tears on my cheeks more than once as a young man. I knew I was a sinner and I
knew that Jesus shed his blood for me.
But year after year I ate the bread at the Lord’s Supper without a second thought. I never
asked why the bread was there. Why not the cup alone? It was a long time before the remainder
of Paul’s instructions came home to me.
Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord,
unworthily,” said Paul, “shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let
a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to
himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this cause many are weak and sickly
among you, and many sleep" (1 Corinthians 11:27-30).
I never thought of taking Communion unworthily, but I found a perfect description of
myself in the phrase, “not discerning the Lord's body.” Then I saw that Paul connects the idea of
ignoring the Lord’s body to weakness, sickness and death, three things that the flesh of Christ can
cure.
Why did Jesus heal so many sick people? “Because he could,” is not good enough.
Neither is compassion an explanation for why he did what he did. Jesus always had compassion,
but he did not always heal. On one occasion, he refused to heal a woman’s daughter at first and
only relented in the face of her great faith.
In the towns where he grew up, Jesus was not able to
do very many miracles in the face of the unbelief of the people.
Jesus seems to have answered this question in one of the more remarkable instances of
healing in his ministry. He was in his own city at the time, a place where relatively few believed
on him. While he was teaching in a house, some men brought a friend in the hopes he could be
healed. He was a paralytic and had to be carried on a bed. They couldn’t get to Jesus because of
the crush, so they went up on the roof, broke open a hole, and let their friend down on ropes in
front of Jesus. He, seeing their faith, said to the poor man before him, "Take heart, son; your sins
are forgiven" (Matthew 9:2 NIV).
Some of the sages, the law teachers, were sitting there and concluded without saying so
that Jesus was blasphemous. Only God could forgive sins. But Jesus knew what they were
thinking and addressed the issue: "Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is
easier: to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up and walk'? But so that you may know
that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. . . .” Then he said to the paralytic, “Get
up, take your mat and go home.”
Jesus, then, had the power to forgive sins. His healing of all manner of sickness and
disease was evidence of that power. And we can’t escape the realization that there is a connection
between the forgiveness of sins and healing of the body. Peter recognized this when he spoke of
Christ’s sacrifice of his body: "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that
we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed" (1 Peter
2:24).
He bore our sins in his body. We are healed by his stripes. There was more to the sacrifice
of Christ than shedding his blood. Peter draws these ideas from the prophet Isaiah who said of
the suffering Messiah:
Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted
him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our
transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that
made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed (Isaiah 53:4-5 NRSV).
Once again, the metaphor will change. The Tree of Life has become the Body of Christ.
Now, the Body of Christ will become the Tree of Life. Late in the book of Revelation, we find
John nearing the end of an incredible experience. He has seen vision after vision and heard words
it is not lawful for a man to utter. He is about to see something that still boggles the mind after
2,000 years. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth
were passed away; and there was no more sea” (Revelation 21:1).
We must not forget that John is in vision. What John is describing is not actual events,
but a vision representing things and events, some completely beyond our ability to see. What
John sees is physically impossible. It is surely spiritual, and symbolic, but that does not make it
any less real. John continues to describe what he saw. It is like a dream.
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of
heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice
out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will
dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them,
and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there
shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any
more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne
said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words
are true and faithful (Revelation 21:2-5).
“Behold, I make all things new.” Man is getting a clean slate. All the exposure to evil that
arose from the choice made by Adam and Eve is now reversed. Remember what God told Adam
as he left the garden: “cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days
of thy life.” Now there will be no more sorrow. And remember what God told Eve as she left: “I
will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.” Now
there will be no more pain. Even more important, there will be no more death.
The holy city, New Jerusalem, appears to be the Tabernacle of God, his dwelling place.
And now he will dwell among men. Now he identifies himself.
And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the
end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be
my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and
whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in
the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death
(Revelation 21:6-8).
God seems to think nothing of mixing his metaphors. We go from the Tree of Life, to the
Body of Christ, to the fountain of the water of life, and we still aren’t finished. Now an angel
comes to show John “the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” We must not forget that this is a vision and
heavy with symbolism. The angel carries John away to a great, high mountain and shows him the
city. It defies description, but John tries anyway. The gates are each one a pearl. All the
foundations are precious stones. And the city does not merely reflect light, it glistens with a light
of its own. One thing that reminds us that it is a dream is the size of the city. It lies 1500 miles on
a side and 1500 miles high. The space shuttle only goes up 200 miles. It is physically impossible,
but in a dream, anything can work.
The message that comes with the vision brings an unexpected image. This is after the
destruction of the old earth and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. And yet there is
and inside and an outside. Just as the Garden of Eden was not the whole world, neither is this
city.
And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the
temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in
it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the
nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the
earth do bring their glory and honour into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut
at all by day: for there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and
honour of the nations into it. And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that
defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which
are written in the Lamb's book of life (Revelation 21:22-27).
In the vision, there is movement into the city. There are qualifications for inclusion and
conditions for exclusion. Then the angel shows John something that brings the Bible full circle.
And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of
the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either
side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and
yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of
the nations (Revelation 22:1 ff.).
I recall the first time I read this. I wondered how a tree could be on both sides of a river.
Then I realized that the Tree of Life is not a single tree but a kind of tree. Here, there are twelve
varieties of the tree with twelve varieties of fruit. (What’s more, there is a moon, for without a
moon there are no months.)
I think it was the leaves of the tree that caused my friend to ask me if the Tree of Life in
the Garden of Eden was a one shot deal, eat it once and live forever, or if it was something one
had to eat again and again to maintain life, to restore life, to heal the decaying human body.
I don’t know that I can answer that question, but it does seem that the Bible begins and
ends with the Tree of Life. And that the Tree of Life is somehow linked to Christ. Then when
Johns says, “And there shall be no more curse,” it is once again to undo the damage of the choice
made in the Garden of Eden. For when Adam was expelled, God said, “Cursed is the ground
because of you.” The angel then began to close the message to John, saying:
Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. He that
is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and
he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy
still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man
according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the
end, the first and the last (Revelation 22:10-13).
It is perhaps not so strange that the Tree of Life was there at the beginning and the end of
the Bible story. Since the tree seems clearly to represent the eternal life that is in Christ. Man
started in the Garden of Eden with a choice. He ends in the City of God, once again with a
choice.
Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree
of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and
sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever
loveth and maketh a lie (Revelation 22:14-15).
Over the years I have been asked repeatedly about this verse, how there could be any of
these people left? Remember, this is a vision, and what it has done is to bring the Bible full
circle. We started with the Garden of Eden and two people. Now we have a city with an
innumerable multitude of people. We started with a safe place, a world with no downside, but
with a gate to the other world outside. We end with a safe place and twelve gates that are closed
to the world outside. We have the tree of life in twelve varieties. We have trees for the healing of
the races. Man has been restored to the world he once left. We no longer have to live with the
results of Adam’s choice.
What I here call, “the choice,” theologians have long called, “the fall.” There are more
questions about this event than I can answer, but it seems evident that, on that day, mankind lost
everything we today wish we had.
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