Meditation on the Tree of Life

Copyright 2009 Gloria Fisher. All rights reserved.

In the beginning God created a garden on the earth in the image of Paradise. And He called the garden Eden. It wasn’t exactly like Paradise, but it was very similar. In the garden He placed man and two special trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told the man that he could eat the fruit of any of the trees freely, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God said, “...but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” (Gen. 2:16-17)

Therefore, in the Garden, there was the tree of life and the other tree, which might easily be called, the tree of death. God had set before man a choice, life or death. (Deut. 30:15) The first test, you might think.

It seems, from God’s behavior, that He is very much like a parent, a father. A father says don’t do this and don’t do that in order to discipline his children. Hardly ever does a father say do that! For instance, your father probably said, “Don’t play in the street. You’ll get hit by a car.” What he doesn’t say is “Go play in the yard. The grass feels great between your toes.” Or he might say, “Don’t touch that. You’ll get burned!” What he doesn’t say is, “Touch this! Doesn’t it feel wonderful?”

Sometimes what a parent says is negative in order to teach a lesson. What they don’t say would probably tempt you most of all, but somehow they never do that. In the Garden God acts like a parent--like a father. He says to the man, “Don’t go eat the fruit off that tree. If you do, you’ll die!” What he didn’t say was, “Go eat the fruit off that other tree. If you do, you’ll live forever!”

You would think the man would have gotten it, that he would not have eaten what his father said not to eat. But he didn’t. He did like we all do, he did the very thing his father told him not to do. Why would he do that?

Mostly, he did it to please the woman. He listened to her, instead of his father, God. What did she say that made him eat it? Evidently nothing. She simply handed it to him, and he took it. But he knew what she meant. He was there with her when she was tempted, and he said nothing. He simply went along.

The serpent, lying in wait on a branch in the tree of death, seduced the woman with lies, and she believed him. Why did he lie? It is his nature to lie. By now we all know that the serpent was evil. We know that the serpent was really Satan or the devil in disguise. He tempted the humans in order to kill them. Later in John 8:44 Jesus said, about the devil, “whenever he speaks a lie he speaks from his own nature; for he is a liar, and the father of lies.” So the serpent was lying because it was and is his nature to do so.

But why was he in that tree and not the other? Because the devil, by his nature, is a killer of human beings. According to Jesus, he “comes to steal, and kill, and destroy.”(John 10:10) Therefore, according to his nature, he was hanging around in the tree of death. It was his home. He could not have lived in the tree of life. It was not his territory.

If this event was a test, then man failed it miserably. Given the choice between life and death, man chose death. He ate the fruit of the tree of death. With that choice came a multitude of negative consequences. But because God is the loving father He is, He devised a plan to fix the problem.

His plan was to redeem man from his disastrous choices. How could God do that? Would we choose better the second time around? And perhaps, the most important question of all, would we remember how we had chosen wrong the first time in order not to make the same mistake again? Would we remember the two trees? Would we even recognize the true tree of life, if we saw it?

God’s plan consisted of many facets. First of all, He would come down Himself in the form of his Son in order to make a point. He would walk among man and tell man who He is, just as He had done in the Garden–walking in the cool of the day. (Gen. 3:8)

Another facet and necessary part of the plan, in order to redeem man back from sin and death, was that He would die on a cross, a cross made of wood cut from a tree. Maybe if man saw Him hanging on a tree, man would finally understand! His plan was to hang there in open view, our Creator, our Father, and say to each of us, “Here I am. Choose me! I am the tree of life.”

Paul says in I Corinthians, “For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive...”

Over and over again in Holy Scripture, Jesus said openly and emphatically that He is the life. He said, “I am the bread of life...” “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life... And “I am the resurrection and the life...” (John 6:35, John 14:6, John 11:25) He also said, “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes.” (John 5:21)

Yes, God has set before us life and death. And we must choose. The first time man made a grave error in the Garden by choosing death. Let us remember the two trees in the Garden, and this time choose the true Tree of Life...Jesus Christ, the Son.