As we continue to consider the beginnings of God’s marvelous plan for His creation in the book of Genesis, we see the matter of the Tree of Life, which God uses as a picture to portray the Life which was to come in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Adam and Eve were placed by God in the midst of a particular place on earth described as the Garden of Eden as God’s testimony to all the created beings and with the expectation that they would recover the obedience of creation to be presented back to God. This garden can be considered as a foreshadowing of the condition of the earth in its restored condition when the Lord Jesus returns to earth to establish His kingdom in that the destructive ravages of sin are not fully manifested as the curse and defilement it became when man in the person of Adam surrendered his sovereignty and representation as a testimony of God by becoming obedient to God’s enemy in the person of the Old Serpent Satan. We can see that the Tree of Life still remains on earth as a testimony that Life has not been fully overcome, but the access to the fruit of this tree is barred by angelic Cherubim with the flaming sword. God closed the way to the tree of life by means of three items: the cherubim, the flame, and the sword. Cherubim signify God’s glory (cf. Ezek. 9:3; 10:4; Heb. 9:5), the flame signifies God’s holiness (Deut. 4:24; 9:3; Heb. 12:29), and the sword for killing indicates God’s righteousness (cf. Lam. 3:42-43; Rom. 2:5). These attributes of God placed requirements on sinful man. Since sinful man was unable to meet these requirements (Rom. 3:10-18, 23), he was not permitted to contact God as the tree of life, until Christ fulfilled the requirements of God’s glory, holiness, and righteousness by His all-inclusive death on the cross to open a new and living way for us to enter the Holy of Holies and partake of the tree of life (Heb. 10:19-20).

During this time of the garden before the fall, the Tree of Life was available to man. It was God’s intention for man to partake of the fruit of this tree, which typifies the uncreated and indestructible Life, which is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. For although the man, in Adam, had a human spirit it was in a dormant state, lacking its complement, the divine Life, and therefore in such a condition was incapable of functioning as God had designed in order that man would become a partaker of the divine nature, thus becoming God in life and nature, but not in the Godhead, and bringing the whole universe into subjection to God’s purpose.

Up to now we really cannot fully understand what it will mean for God to have the whole universe in subjection to Him as it was prior to the time of the rebellion of Satan. It has not yet been made to appear what this glorious expression will be like when the whole creation will be redeemed from under the curse of sin. What a great matter it was, then, that Adam, as the head of the whole created human race, in which God had placed such a great hope of recovering the universe to God’s original purpose, willfully disobeyed God, and in obedience to Satan partook of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In doing so the usurping authority of Satan remained unchallenged, and the world became systematized by God’s enemy becoming known as the World, kosmos in Greek, signifying an ordered system over which Satan was the God.

So we see that Life had made an appearance on the earth in the symbolic representation of the Tree of Life, although somewhat brief and insubstantial, as the testimony of the reality and manifestation of the reality of Life which eventually would come to earth in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. However, since man in Adam failed to choose to obey God, a curse of unimaginable proportions, reaching to the whole of Creation overtook God’s creation and has become the common portion of all human beings descended from Adam and Eve. But since this was not God’s intention for His creation He made a marvelous provision for redemption from this curse, but not only redemption, rather a full recovery of Man to God’s original purpose, by the provision of the power and manifestation of Life.