THE TREE OF LIFE

"To him that overcomes will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God" (Revelation 2:7b).

I have called these "promises", but a better word might be "evidences". We tend to see a promise as a future thing, something we have to wait for. I like evidences better, because if something is evident in my life then it is the demonstration of something which is mine already. The Lord says when we live as overcomers our lives will be characterized by certain evidences. By these we know who the Overcomers are, and we know if we are indeed living the normal Christian life - which is a life of overcoming.

The first evidence is that the Overcomers eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God. Immediately we go back to the Book of Genesis and see that Adam was originally driven out of the paradise of God, Eden, and no longer had access to the tree of life. The tree of life was blocked by angels and a flaming sword (Genesis 3:24). Because Adam ate from the tree of knowledge, he was prohibited from eating from the tree of life.

We should see that Christ does more than restore what Adam lost. He goes beyond Adam, offering the Overcomers fruit from the tree of life, fruit Adam knows nothing about. Obviously this is symbolic language, but what does it mean? The tree of life represents the Cross, for from that Tree the Lord yielded up His Life for us all. Those who overcome have learned that fruitfulness and life come from death to Self, and that is what the Cross means. The Cross is a tree of life to those who embrace it.

Like Adam, we can choose to eat from either tree, but we cannot eat from both. Adam sinned when he fell into the flesh and yielded to his Self-life. He rejected the tree of life in favor of something that was "good... pleasant... and desirable" (Genesis 3:6ff). The Cross does not look like a tree of life at all. It is neither good, nor pleasant, nor desirable. It looks like death. Perhaps this is why Adam did not eat from it first. But God's End is not death, regardless of appearances: God's End is life out of death, which is resurrection. To eat of the fruit of the tree of life is to glory in the Cross of Jesus Christ and find life out of death. It is becoming popular to preach and teach about the Cross these days, but how many are eating of its fruit? Can we really see the Cross as the TREE OF LIFE, and are we eating of its fruit? We will know a true disciple of the Lord, not by words, but by fruit (Matthew 7:20), and the Cross is the tree of life from which this fruit comes.