The Two Trees
by Danny C. Wash
“God planted a garden in Eden...and caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, as well as the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Genesis 2: 8-9
The garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and the two trees were all real in time and place but they also had spiritual significance for us in many ways. Spiritually, the tree of life represents spiritual eternal life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents spiritual death (which we will call the “tree of death”).1 God set Adam in the Garden with the tree of life and the tree of death as a test and in order for Adam and Eve to have free will. God was giving them the choice to choose to eat of the tree of life, which would mean eternal life in dependence on God in a love relationship with Him forever. However, the tree of death would mean that man would exercise his free will to choose independence from God to make his own choices about good and evil, which would result in death controlling his spiritual and physical life.2 Also, since Adam and Eve chose to believe and obey the devil over God, it meant that the devil was able to inject his evil into mankind through Adam’s sin and a curse fell over the whole Earth. The devil’s evil sin principle entered into man, so that man not only committed sins but became a sinner by nature.
When God created Adam, he gave him three parts– his body, soul, and spirit; just as the Godhead has three parts– the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.3 Man’s spirit is where he is born-again, in that when he puts His faith in Jesus through what He did in His death on the cross and resurrection, the Holy Spirit enters man’s spirit reviving it, so that he can communicate with God through the Holy Spirit. Also, the old evil part of man, with its sin principle, spiritually dies and the Holy Spirit causes the man’s deadened spirit to come alive (born again) in union with Christ through the resurrection of Christ. However, in man’s soul and body, still dwells what the Bible calls the “flesh,’ which was not immediately dealt with by the cross, as was the old man and the sin principle. The flesh is not our actual physical flesh, but the natural instincts of our physical flesh, corrupted by the fall and the devil, creating the lusts and sinful desires of our flesh, along with our independent (from God) selfish and self-centered lives.
The cross was an instrument of death. Christ’s death on the cross included each of us in Him by the act of God and in His reckoning in order to cause the death of the old evil part of us (referred to by God as our “old man”) in Christ’s work on the cross. (see Romans 6:3-7).4 The principle of the cross, made possible by Christ’s actual death on the cross, as an instrument of death, is still spiritually at work today in the life of every believer in order to put to death the flesh. That death principle of the cross works as we allow it by faith to do so in our inner person (our soul and body).5 Jesus told us to take up our cross daily and follow Him. Luke 9:23-24 (“let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his soul-life shall lose it; but whoever loses his soul-life for My sake, this one shall save it.”). This is talking about allowing this death principle of the cross, to work in us by faith daily, to bring this about. This principle of the cross is powerful to bring death to our flesh, if we take it up daily by faith. Then the mystery of our resurrection with Christ works to produce Christ’s resurrection life in our souls to replace the flesh and its rule over us.6 The Holy Spirit causes the flesh to be replaced by the image of Jesus and His life, instead of the death principle which before reigned in our soul. As Paul says in II Corinthians 4: 10-12, “always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you.” However, the flesh is never completely eradicated but is being crowded out by the life and image of Christ produced by the Holy Spirit, as room is made in our soul by the death principle of the cross.
The principle of the two trees, the tree of life and the tree of death, continues to be before us daily in our soul. That is what we are faced with choosing, in almost every decision of our life. Shall we choose life or death? Just as in Eden, God has given us the freedom of choice. God wants us to eat daily of the tree of life and its fruit. The tree of life is representative of Jesus Christ and we can choose. However, the tree of life can only come to us from Jesus through our spirit as we, in faith, allow the Holy Spirit to guide and feed us spiritually (see Romans 8:1-2 revealing “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.” ). This can come through various means, such as God’s word through the Bible, prayer, or in other ways through other believers. If we choose to eat from the tree of death, we will receive death (the absence of life) and our soul will shrivel and become a place for evil to propagate in our mind, will, and emotions.
Just as the tree of life was present in the beginning, it is also present at the end. In Revelation 22:1-2, the Lord says that beside the river of the water of life is the tree of life producing twelve fruits and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. These are expressions of resurrection life from Jesus Christ, as we daily spiritually eat the fruit of the tree of life and drink from the water of the river of life.7 At the end as in the beginning, these representative symbols always point us to our union with Christ in spirit by faith and our relationship with and in Christ. This produces death daily by the principle of the cross to our flesh and independent soul-life. Thereafter, this resurrection life produces the life and image of Christ in our soul resulting in dependence on Christ and the love of Christ permeating us and then out to the world we encounter.
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1 “God has said, ‘you shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die’ [man’s spirit would become deadened to God by sin so that it would be impossible to have a relationship with God and physically, death will have power over his human life so that it will end.]” Genesis 3:3
2 “...Behold the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” Genesis 3: 22
3 See I Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12
4 “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through [spiritual] baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also [be united] in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him, that our body of sin, might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin for he who has died is freed from sin.” Romans 6: 3-7
5 Our spirit is that inner-most part of us that comprises our conscience, intuition, and fellowship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Our soul is our mind, will, and emotion. God’s original plan for Adam and those that followed, but for the fall, was for the spirit to be dominant and allow God to fellowship with us through our spirit and then to our soul, and finally to our body. However, the fall corrupted that plan allowing the soul to be dominant through the knowledge of good and evil resulting in our spirit being deadened to God but not to evil.
6 “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.” Gal. 2:20
7 The fruit of the tree of life is symbolic of Christ’s resurrection life being supplied to us to consume and enjoy. The water of the river of life is symbolic of the Holy Spirit communicating Christ’s resurrection life to us and receiving it by drinking it in spiritually in our spirit to ultimately flow into our soul to become a cleansing of the areas deadened by the principle of the death of the cross and resulting in Christ’s image in those areas.
