1.      Tree of the knowledge of good and evil; what does it represent?

 Scriptures:

Gen. 2:17—Death comes from eating of this tree’s fruit.

Gen. 3:4-5—Satan promised we wouldn’t die from eating the fruit, but live forever (being like God).  Instead, through knowing something good (the holy law), sin came up and killed us.

Rom. 7:8-12—Living according to the system of Old Covenant Law (which included also the ten words) also promised to bring life, but brought death instead.  Through something good (holy law) sin came up and killed us.

Rom. 6:23—Wages of sin is death. Notice, not just sin is on the plate here.  Sin that leads to death is part of a performance-driven system where the result of sin (death) is called “wages”, something that is “earned”.

Rom. 6:14—Sin only has dominion over a person who lives under a performance-driven system of law-keeping.

Comment:

There is something written into the heart of human beings that hurts us if we choose to "define" God's value for us (and by extension, our own sense of self-value) on knowledge of right and wrong and how perfectly we implement that information.  Such performance-based methods of justifying our value will actually start us out with distorted self-perceptions through the vehicle of unhealthy shame, and will, if undetected and unchecked, enslave us to distorted desires called lusts.  These perceptions and desires in turn lead to the destructive behavior God calls "sin".  We become "sold in sin", or "slaves to sin", as Paul says.  And ironically, any further attempt to rein in these behaviors through enforcement of written laws will have limited results, because these laws do not address the root cause.  These laws can only define or try to externally control the sinful behaviors themselves.

Conclusion:

 The tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents a faulty system of knowledge and performance from which to derive value and worth for one’s existence. It is deceptively counterproductive. The fruit of this system is sin, and ultimately death.

2.      How does this approach of knowing and performing as a basis for our justification (value, worth, love-ability, etc.) lead to lustful desires and sin?

Scriptures:

Gen. 2:25—Before eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve were naked, but not ashamed.

Gen. 3:7—After eating, they were ashamed of their nakedness.  But even though they covered themselves from each other, our first parents were still afraid God could see their nakedness.  So they tried to hide from Him altogether.  Their nakedness and their shame were about how they saw themselves internally, not externally.

Gen. 3:11—God did not see their (internal) nakedness as a problem or something to be ashamed of.  It was strictly a perception about themselves they came to have after eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Comment:

In terms of perfect moral behavior, Adam and Eve were expectedly imperfect in their newly created childlike state.  However, like children, they were open, honest, sincere, and transparent with their Father and with themselves.  Under the system of their Father’s divine Parental grace, the children had faith enough to continue in their “nakedness”.  However, once the new system of knowledge/performance was injected and had taken root in their hearts, they began to fear God as they felt shame for their moral imperfection (which wasn’t really imperfection to the Creator).  It is this shame that is the condition of the heart, prompted by the performance system, that opens wide the door to the distorted desires God calls lust—followed by behavior He calls sin.  See how it works:

Scriptures:

2 Cor. 4:1-4—After calling the law of Moses a ministry of condemnation in 2 Cor. 3:7-15, Paul then refers to it as “these things of shame…”

Gal. 5:1-4—Paul says that the law system is a yoke that keeps a person in bondage to sin.

Comment:

When a person (wrongfully) feels shame for their true heart as was created by God, they also stop living from the uniquely implanted desires of that heart.  We try to become someone else “more acceptable” and deny those God-given desires to be the unique someone we were created to be.  Yet, those desires never really go away as we live from within our false selves, but resurface in unhealthy ways as we attempt to grasp at substitutes.  We’ve exchanged the glory of God’s transcendent purpose for our lives, for our own smaller stories we choose to live in instead.  We become self-absorbed children (in adult bodies), demanding love and acceptance from others that we can’t even give to ourselves.  In our insecurity we become jealous, covetous, envious, gossipers, hateful, spiteful, angry, depressed, adulterous, and more.  All sorts of addictive behaviors and even wars come from this wounded, broken, and distorted place in our hearts.

Scriptures:

Rom. 7:21-24—This performance-based, shame-driven system becomes so ingrained in our hearts that it works without our having to consciously make it.  Paul calls it the “law of sin which is in my members.”

Conclusion:

The knowledge/performance system brings inappropriate shame to our sense of being as God created us, and leads us directly into lust and sinful behaviors.

3.      God called a nation into existence through whom He would show the world what had gone wrong with humanity as a whole, and through whom He would provide the way out.

Scriptures:

Gen. 12:1-3—God promised to make a great nation out of Abraham.

Gen. 17:7,8; 26:1-5; 28:13-14—God promised the land of Cannan to Abraham, Issac, Jacob, and their descendants, as an everlasting possession.

Deut. 7—As part of God’s plan to fulfill those promises to the fathers, He brought their descendants out of slavery in Egypt to the land of Canaan—the promised land.  He gave them moral laws, statutes, and judgments upon which to base their (His) nation.

Acts 15:10; Gal. 5:1-4—But the people of Israel could not effectively keep that law.  It was a yoke of bondage through which sin continued to have dominion over them.

Gal. 3:19-4:7—The law was only in effect as a tutor until Christ exemplified and established the way of grace which became accessible through faith.  We went from tutor to Christ, law to grace, and slave to son.  If we accept the new system/approach of grace/faith, and reject the old system of knowledge/performance, we receive the Spirit of God whereby we cry, Abba (Daddy), Father.

Gal. 3:29—If we are Christ’s we are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.

Rom. 9—As a called out nation, Israel was not able to attain to the law of righteousness because they sought it as if it were by works of the law.  But from this nation Christ came to present and provide the way of salvation via a new system based on grace and faith.

Rom. 11—Israel will yet be saved.  They have only been temporarily blinded to grace and faith so that the lesson could be learned by the rest of the world.  We have all stumbled under the same system in the same way (vs. 30-33), but Israel has provided for us a microcosmic view of the worldwide problem.  The veil over Israel’s mind (veil of Moses and the law) will yet be removed in Christ (see also 2 Cor. 3:15-16).

Comment:

God knew from the very beginning that a relationship with Him based on knowledge and performance would not work.  He never saw our imperfections as handicaps in any way.  It was Satan who deceived us into this view.  It has been humanity’s reality, not God’s.  But God has stayed with us in our reality of performance and shame, along with the resulting sin and death.  Throughout our entire history, our Creator has been working to reveal His reality and the way to dwell in it.  Even a nation called out specially by God and given the most righteous laws that could ever be written down, could not live spiritually happy, fulfilling, or successful lives under the system Adam and Eve chose—that of knowledge and performance.

Conclusion:

God promises to set up a kingdom in the age to come that will be built on the foundation of grace and faith.  Only a child will be able to enter into it.  The tree of the knowledge of good and evil will be replaced by the tree of life.

1.      The tree of life; what does it represent?

Scriptures:

Gen. 3:22—Eating of the tree gives us eternal life.

Rev. 2:7—If you overcome, you will eat of the tree in the Paradise of God.

Rev. 22:2—It grows from the life that proceeds from God, and the leaves heal people.

Rev. 22:14—Those who keep God’s commandments get to eat of the tree of life.

Rom. 8:11—God’s Spirit in us gives us life.

Jo. 5:25-29—Jesus has life in himself, and will grant life to the dead.

Jo. 17:3—The essence of eternal life is knowing God and Jesus.

Jo. 1:17—Grace of Christ is contrasted against the law of Moses.

Acts 15:11—We are saved through grace of Christ, not works of law.

Rom. 6:14—Sin does not have dominion over someone who is under a grace-based system, as it does for those under the law-based one.

Rom. 5:2-5—We have access to God’s grace through faith in Christ.

Gal. 2:21—Righteousness doesn’t’ come by law, but by grace.

Eph. 2:8—We are saved by grace through faith.

Titus 2:11-14—It is under the system/approach of grace and faith that people are purified for doing the good works of God.

Titus 3:5-7—Grace is the way to eternal life.

Matt. 11:28-30—We can rest in Jesus’ way of grace.  His yoke is easy and light, compared to the system of law, which is heavy and a yoke of bondage to sin and death.

Comment:

There is something written into the heart of human beings that encourages growth in us if we choose to "define" God's value for us (and by extension, our own sense of self-value) on the unmeritable love and acceptance our Father has always had for us, the children He created imperfect.  Such definitions will start us out with healthy self-perceptions through the vehicle of grace, and will, if cultivated, enslave us to right desires.  These perceptions and desires in turn lead to the behavior God calls "righteous obedience".  We become "slaves to righteousness", as Paul says.  Against such there is no written law, not because it is perfectly within the law, but because our behavior is done out of a childlike heart of sincerity, honesty, and transparency, as well as admiration and love for the Father.

Conclusion:

The tree of life represents a system of rest (grace and faith) from which we derive positive value and worth for our existence.  The ultimate fruit of this tree is eternal life with God our Father, and His Son, Jesus.

2.      How does this approach of rest (grace and faith) as a basis for our justification (value, worth, love-ability, etc.) lead to the true righteousness of God?

Scriptures:

Heb. 2:14-15—Satan has held us captive to sin and death through fear.  As we have learned previously, this fear is a result of living under condemnation within a knowledge and performance based system of justification before God.

Rom. 8: 14-16—Through Jesus we are to subject ourselves no more to the spirit of fear that leads to bondage, but to the Spirit of adoption (sonship), whereby we cry, Abba (Daddy), Father!

Gal. 5:4-7—We were under the law and slaves, but now we’re under the grace Christ introduced and are sons.  We no longer need fear God’s acceptance and approval based on our imperfection, as long as we walk as a child in sincerity, truth, transparency, openness, and forgiveness.

Luke 4:18-19—Jesus came to set the captives free and heal the broken-hearted (see also Isaiah 61).  He knows the shame others have inflicted upon us, and even what we have inflicted upon others in turn.

Heb. 4—Entering God’s rest (see also resting in Christ, Matt. 11) demands that we have faith in the grace of God in our lives.  It’s not by any perfection we have that we are justified, accepted, and loved by God, but by His unmeritable/unconditional love for us.  Knowing this, we can abandon our performance-for-value perspective, and trust in God’s lavish Parental grace.  We can come boldly to the throne of grace for help for our weaknesses and imperfections.

1 Jo. 1:7-9—Under grace, we can feel secure in admitting our inherent weaknesses.  As we repent of them, He will heal and cleanse us.

John 10:10—After all, Jesus came that we would have abundant life, both in this world and the next.

2 Cor. 3:18—Our change comes one step at a time, not all at once as the law and perfectionism demands.

Comment:

The grace of God is a relational system, which we have access to by faith.  It is the basis of a healthy Father/son relationship.

Conclusion:

God did not create men and women morally perfect.  Otherwise they would have been like God immediately.  Instead, we were like young children, sincere, honest, and open to the urgings and counsel of our Father, in whom we had full assurance of the grace in which we stood.  Satan deceived us into accepting another relational approach to God, that of the knowledge of good and evil, and the appropriate implementation of it.  We lost that innocence as soon as this approach took root in us, and shame overwhelmed us.  Jesus has made it profoundly plain to us that God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that who ever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  This is the way of His immeasurable grace as our Father.  The good news Jesus brought is that the world to come will be based on this very system of rest; God’s grace and our response to it, faith.

3.      The future Kingdom of God on earth—a  system of rest, grace, and faith—is coming.

Scriptures:

Daniel 2:44—And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed…it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.

Daniel 7:27—And the kingdom…under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High… and all dominions shall serve and obey him.

Rev. 11:15—And the seventh angel sounded…The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

Isa. 2:2-4—Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it.  Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.”  For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.  He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

Isa. 9:6-7—For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder.  And his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end; upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever.  The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

Isa. 11:6-9—The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play by the cobra’s hole, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper’s den.  They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Zechariah 9:10—his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.

Zechariah 14:17—Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem.

Conclusion:

We have seen how two mutually exclusive perceptions can create two mutually exclusive realities.  This present age is the result of one of those, under the sway of Satan —the age to come will be the result of the other, under the kingship of Jesus.  Even so, come lord, Jesus.