When God created Adam and Eve, He placed them in a beautiful garden with many different trees. Two of them were special—the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told them that they could eat from every tree—this would have included the tree of life—but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He was very specific: He said that if you eat from that tree, you will surely die.
Of course, Adam and Eve disobeyed, ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and were driven out of the garden. They had NOT eaten from the tree of life, and God prevented them now from doing so, lest they “eat, and live forever” (Genesis 3:22).
We have long understood that the tree of life—even though a literal tree—was also symbolic for the gift of the Holy Spirit. If they had eaten from the tree of life, they would have received the Holy Spirit and, after a life of overcoming sin, they would have been able to inherit eternal life in the Kingdom of God. Now, they were cut off from access to the Holy Spirit, and that included all their descendants, with a few exceptions, until the time when Christ will open up the possibility of salvation for everyone, beginning with His Second Coming.
As the tree of life was symbolic for the Holy Spirit, it included the right kind of knowledge—godly knowledge—which God would have revealed to them upon eating from the tree of life. In eating instead from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they rejected godly knowledge and rather embraced humanly devised and satanically inspired knowledge—the “knowledge” of what they felt was good and evil.
For instance, before they had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were not ashamed that they were naked (Genesis 2:25)—of course, they were married and the only human beings at the time. But after eating from it, they became ashamed and covered themselves because they were “afraid” (Genesis 3:7, 10). They had chosen to use human wisdom and to decide for themselves what, in their eyes, was good and what was evil (compare Isaiah 5:20-21).
They created a world of Satanic deception—a world being cut off from God the Father. It was and is a world built on sand which cannot and will not endure. The other house—the spiritual temple of Jesus Christ – is built on the rock and will stand forever. However, there cannot be a mixture of the two. As true Christians, being in the Body of Christ, we cannot also be a part of and dwell in the Babylonian house of this world. But not everyone who might be attending a Church of God congregation, is truly righteous and embracing the knowledge of God. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:34: “Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.”
In this world, there is no “truth or mercy or knowledge of God” (Hosea 4:1). God will make the “knowledge“ of the wise men foolishness (Isaiah 44:25). We read that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of (true) knowledge (Proverbs 1:7), but in regard to the people of this world, “there is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:18).
They still eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil on a DAILY basis; thereby following the knowledge and wisdom of Satan and rejecting the good knowledge of God. That is why we have wars, destruction, misery, cursing, bitterness, unrighteousness, lawlessness, adultery, alternate lifestyles and false religions all around us. That is why no one knows the good way to peace (“knowing” instead that peace must be brought about through war), and no one seeks the true God. No one—except the firstfruits—those very few converted Christians in the Body of Christ. But they, too, must come out of this evil and Satanic world (Revelation 18:4). They must be separate (2 Corinthians 6:17-18). They must continuously eat from the tree of life – which gives us godly wisdom and true understanding (Proverbs 3:18). With it, we can be righteous and a tree of life to others (Proverbs 11:30)—a source of encouragement, help and comfort (Proverbs 15:4; 13:12).
We, who have been eating from the tree of life, must be shining examples (Philippians 2:15) to show what it means to reject eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We must not add to or delete from the Word of God (Revelation 22:18-19; New International Version). We must make sure that we grow in the knowledge of Christ (2 Peter 3:18; compare Ephesians 4:13,15), and that we “do His commandments,” so that we never lose our “right to the tree of life” (Revelation 22:14).
