I recently joined Bible Study Fellowship on Wednesday mornings. We are studying Genesis and have recently discussed the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. I have been two weeks in a row and have seen a few awesome blessings since then.
- met a great group of women I hope to get to know through out the future
- getting the kick in the pants I need to study the Word of God daily
- getting out of the house :P
- reconnected with some awesome friends I haven't seen in a while
- making connections with other Godly women
- Having my eyes opened to new truths in parts of the Bible I have studied extensively already.
That last one is sort of the point of this blog post. I would like to relate to you the day I have my mind ... blown. Now you may read this and have to take a breather from the profoundness :P or you may think I've lost my marbles.
That's cool. Either way.
Last Wednesday, I was sitting in the lecture on Genesis chapter 3, the fall of man. Just a recap, in case it has been a while for you:
"Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” (Genesis 3:1-3)
But as we all know, she and Adam fall to temptation and eat of the fruit. God dishes out the consequences. One of them being to leave the Garden of Eden:
"Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken." (3:22-23)
As the speaker talked about the two trees in the middle of the Garden, and why Adam and Eve couldn't have eaten of one rather than the other, all of a sudden, a new thought hit me. What if Adam and Eve had already eaten of the tree of life? Before they fell.
We know that God's punishment for eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil was death. Even in later parts of the Bible, this truth is mentioned:
Genesis 3:19 - "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
Romans 6:23 - "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 5:19 - "For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous."
So, from these verses we can logically assume that before Adam and Eve sinned, there was no death. Life without death is eternal. Adam and Eve already had eternal life.
What happens if you take an antidote for a poison you haven't been given? Nothing.
So it is very possible that Adam and Eve could have eaten from the tree of life every day before they sinned. We don't know that they did, but it is possible. it would have had no effect on them, because they already had eternal life, without sin.
Another subtle bit of evidence that this may be true is when God decides that they must leave the Garden. He says, "NOW, lest they reach" for the tree of life. This word choice could imply that they already had, or that if they had before it would have made no difference.
For those of you who don't have never heard of Schrödinger's cat, (or who don't watch Big Bang Theory), then you probably don't understand the title. The idea of the cat experiment was that if you put a cat in a sealed box with a vial of poison that ill break open at an unknown time, until you open the box, the cat can be thought of as both alive AND dead.
As I pondered the idea that, before the fall, the tree of live was both necessary and insignificant, Schrödinger's cat came to mind. Until God created man and set him loose in Garden with his free will, man could be considered both alive and dead.
On the one hand, they could have obeyed God, never sinned, and never required the redemption of the tree of life. (Revelations 2:7, 22:2) In this case, the tree of life would have always been just another tree. After all, God did not command them from the beginning not to eat of it. On the other hand, man did fall and we are in need of that redemption.
Despite the way we understand the story, the miracle in it is always the same. God created a way for us to have a right-standing relationship with him, REGARDLESS of our own actions. His number one priority was not to have right and perfect human beings, forced to worship him. He already had that in the angels. He knew we would be messy, and he created us anyway. He made a way to bring us back to him.
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| The Tree of Life |
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