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Talking about God |
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The Choice
The story of the Bible begins and ends with a tree. In the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life held a 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.1 There, man is in a very different environment called, "The paradise of God."2 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.3 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.4 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 note from the outset 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 lived 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.5 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 world. But there was a kind of gateway out of this world into a larger, very different world, and that gateway was in the form of a tree. Why would anyone want to leave a perfect world, a paradise like Eden? That’s a good question, but the answer is simple. 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 to freedom. 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.6 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." 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? If God did not want Adam to eat of the tree, why put it in the garden at all? Sure, it was a beautiful tree, but don’t tell me God couldn’t 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?" 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, knowledge means "ascertaining by seeing," i.e. 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. And nearly everything that troubles us about God and 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. And 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:
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, "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.7 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 for himself 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."8 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"9 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."10 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. 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."11 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 it’s 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."12 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.13 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.14 Jesus seems to have answered this question in one of the more remarkable instances of healing in his minstry. 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. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the poor man before him, "Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven."15 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."16 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 hath borne our [sickness], and carried our [pain]:17 yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."18 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.
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.
"Behold, I make all things new." Man is getting a clean slate. All the exposure to evil that came of the choice Adam and Eve made 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."20 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.
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 it’s 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.21 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.
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.
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 for your sake." The angel then began to close the message to John, saying:
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.
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. 1. Although the concept is used in metaphor in the book of
Proverbs.
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