Tree of Life

Genesis 2:16-17

And Hashem Elohim commanded the Adam, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may eat freely: but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil do not eat of it: for in the day you eat of it in dying you will end in death.

God's Statement About Death

God’s statement concerning the death that would come should Adam eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil… was it a sentence of legal judgment, or was it not the sentence of a judge at all? Was it instead just a warning of fact, the fact that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would act as a poison to Adam?

The answer is that It was a judicial sentence of death. What is the significance of this?

Exiled From The Garden

The exile from the Garden of Eden indicates how that the fruit of the Tree of Immortal Life was already a part of the provision for Adam. When the Scripture states that God planted a garden for Adam, it says that He planted at its center a Tree of Life. When it says this, it adds that He also planted a Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Had they, Adam, the man and the woman, not sinned we are meant to understand that the fruit of the Tree of Immortal Life would have been ready for them to eat and they would have been ready to eat it. However, the judicial sentence of death by God prevented this. Scripture says that this occurred by their being driven out of the garden and prevented from returning to it.

Simply put, Scripture teaches us that Adam was created in an order of creation where they were capable of dying and by nature eventually would die. Being mortal meant that they were born dying. If they were to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life, however, they would be able to live forever. When they sinned, God separated them from the Tree of Life and blocked their way from returning to it. Therefore it came about just as God decreed. On the day that they ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in dying they would die. On that day it was set that they would end in death. On that day death began to rule over them.

Had they not sinned, the fruit of the Tree of Immortal Life would have ripened on the tree for them and, as it was a fruit of a tree of the garden that God had planted for them, they would have been free to eat of it. What was this? Would it have caused a new creation for Adam to eat this fruit of the Tree of Immortal Life? There is no statement given in Scripture that would tell us that Adam's eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life would have itself caused a new creation. How then could have the fruit brought immortal life to Adam, since the physics of this first order of creation cannot sustain immortal life?

We cannot immediately answer this. The answer is something that cannot be found in the world. It can only be found through the special revelation given in God's Book. Lack of information about how the fruit of the Tree of Life would have brought immortality to Adam is itself clearly an aspect of our exile from the garden.

What Is The Judgment of God Actually Against?

Since death was not a direct automatic result of the chemistry of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but was instead the result of the word of God, the judicial sentence of God, for disobedience to the commandment, what is this judgment? We see that this judgment is first and foremost a judgment against failure to obey and eat of the fruit which God provided. It was not first and foremost, but only consequently also a judgment against eating that fruit which was not provided.

"And Hashem Elohim commanded the Adam, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may eat freely..."

This was the first part, the positive part, of the commandment. Had Adam obeyed this positive commandment entirely first, they never would have sinned by disobeying the negative part of the commandment, which was not to eat of the fruit of the one tree that was not provided for them to eat from it.

In other words, Adam was to understand from God's words that the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil was not to be counted as a tree that God had planted in the garden for Adam. It was a tree that had grown by other means, and therefore Adam was not commanded to eat from it, but was commanded not to eat from it. Had they eaten freely instead of all the trees of the garden which God had planted for them and commanded them to freely eat from, this would have included the fruit of the Tree of Immortal Life, which was a tree of the garden planted for them. In that case they would have no longer been in danger of ending in death. The temptation to sin, which threatened to cause them to end in death, would have been overcome through their obedience to the positive commandment of God.

The Fruit of The Tree of Life

We can ask, why would have Adam not immediately eaten of the fruit of the tree of life. Again, to the natural understanding available to us in this world, the answer is not apparent. Lack of information about all of these matters is an aspect of our exile from the Garden and from our own access to that tree. Some have speculated that they did eat of it but that it required that they should eat of it in an ongoing manner if it were to sustain them endlessly. This idea can be shown to be inconsistent with the statements of Scripture.

It is also possible, as I suggested earlier, to suppose that the fruit of the Tree of Life had not come into season, so to speak. Indeed, in the Book of the Revelation of Yehoshua HaMashiach the fruit of the Tree of Life is described as being seasonal, uniquely seasonal, but seasonal.

What does Scripture rule out concerning the nature of the fruit of the Tree of Life? It is not the idea that the fruit of the Tree of Life was made to be eaten on a continuing bases that is ruled out by Scripture. It is not necessarily that the eating of it was to be a one time act. What is ruled out by what Scripture says is that it was to be a part of the practical nature of this order of creation, so that Adam would have naturally eaten of it. This is what is ruled out. Immortality is not a natural part of this creation. So we see that Scripture invites us to seek more deeply to discover how the nature of creation itself was designed to change in order to accommodate Adam's immortal life, should they eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life.

The Nature of Creation

The nature of this creation was to be a balance scale to tip either one direction or the other. Either Adam would go toward eternal life or toward eternal death. If through obedience, eternal life. If by disobedience, eternal death. The first Adam had this power and no more than this power. The very nature of this first order of creation was balanced between the two trees, was balanced upon Adam's will. Should they incline toward obedience to the word of God, the nature of creation was inclined toward life. Should they incline toward disobedience to the word of God, the nature of creation was inclined toward death.

However, the actual power of creation, of the balance of creation, of the first order or a new order of creation, was not in Adam, nor in their will. The actual power of creation was in the word of God and in the commandment given to Adam. It could only be through obedience to the commandment, through eating freely of the fruit of the garden, through eating freely of the fruit of the Tree of Life, that Adam could become one with the word of God.

The Second Adam

Later Scripture would reveal the second Adam, the Son of Adam, the Heir of the World, the word of God made flesh, who would have a greater power, even a power to redeem Adam from having inclined in their will toward disobedience to the word of God and from having fallen toward eternal death. It will be seen that had the first Adam chosen to obey God this could have led to eternal life only through a good form of dying. In dying Adam would not have died - would not have ended in death - but in dying would have lived - would have been changed in the physics and spirit of their nature and would have entered eternal life, being united with the word of God which commanded and sustained the existence of all creation.

This good form of dying, of death for Adam, which would have come as the reward of obedience, would have been the death of the old order, the first order of creation. Through obedience, the first Adam, the man and the woman, would have met the Word of God. Rather, through their obedience, as the reward of their obedience, he would have met them. They would have met their heir, the word of God made flesh. This meeting would have taken the form of the present creation being transformed into a new form of creation. Creation would have become incorruptible.

It was God’s purpose that through Adam’s obedience all the harmonics of creation might be perfectly tuned, we might say, in and through the one who would be the heir of Adam, the heir of the world. Redemption, the remedy for sin, can ultimately be based upon nothing else than upon the restoration of this potential of Adam's obedience. This is the promise of the Torah of God and the claim of Israel’s Good News.

Twelve Manner of Fruits

What was the relationship of the fruit of the Tree of Life to this potential? It might be that we see the plan of this potential revealed in the Book of The Revelation of Yehoshua HaMashiach. In the redeemed creation, the new creation we see that the Tree of Life is said to have twelve manner of fruits, one fruit appearing in twelve forms, one for each of twelve months. It is possible to think that this was the nature also of the Tree of Life in the beginning. Adam did not yet eat of the fruit because its fruit for the first month had not yet appeared.

Another possibility is one that we can discover by pursuing the question of where the Tree of Life was in the Garden. Scripture speaks of it as being at the center of the Garden, just as it seems to of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. One line of rabbinic thought is that these two trees grew together almost as one, entwined with one another.

A certain narrative can even be found that suggests that Adam would later have been allowed to eat of the fruit of the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil, upon their maturity in obedience. So long as such knowledge did not move Adam away from faith in, and reliance upon, God alone, it may have been something God would supply to Adam at a later time, for the sake of a more mature service. This thought is very suggestive.

In order to refine this thought , we might imagine that the two trees were actually entwined genetically. In the first month the two trees, which were two in the beginning but one in the end, would bring forth fruit that possessed the essence of the knowledge of good and evil — if eaten by Adam' in a state wherein God prohibited it to Adam. But should Adam obey and not eat of it, they would be rewarded to find that the two trees, (which were at root one), would the next month bring forth a fruit of another kind for them, a fruit permitted to them, a fruit of the tree of life, removing from them a whole level of mortality.

And so it would go for twelve months. Every other month the tree would be the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and would be prohibited to them; and every other month the tree would be The Tree of Life to them and as such one that they were commanded to eat from.

At the end of twelve months they would have arrived, through obedience, at a level of immortality that would require a transfiguration of all creation to match the transfiguration that they had themselves arrived at. They would have come through obedience to the commandment to the place of oneness with the word of God. The Word of God would meet them in that place. Again, all of these matters are a mystery to the natural Adam exiled and banned from the Garden of Eden. However, to those who have met the Word of God by faith there is a revelation of eternal life. And these matters can be spoken about in certain ways and understood, if interpreted correctly.

In Conclusion

Since Adam failed to obey the commandment in the very first season of the one tree that was two trees, they were driven out of the Garden, and were never allowed to even see the fruit that would lead to immortality. Only in this way, the way of exile, would it be possible for them to be redeemed by the obedience of another, by the Son of Adam, so that they could be returned to the Garden and correct their actions.

For no longer would it be by their personal obedience that they would come to the new creation, but by the action of the Seed of the Woman, the Word made flesh, the corporate Son of Adam. Now when they would come again into the garden they would already be in The World To Come. Nevertheless, the gift of their redemption would be the restoration of their potential. They would be able to eat of the twelve manner of fruits of the Tree of Life in accordance with obedience to God's word for each fruit. God's gift would be for their salvation to be fully realized in their empowerment to learn now that they were in the heavenly Jerusalem, in the new creation, how to make the right choices and thereby to learn the stages of merit leading to life eternal — that life they had lost but that had been found for them again. In this way they would become who they were meant to be and much more, for they would not only be filled with thankfulness for the experience of salvation but would be filled with thankfulness with perfect understanding.