The Tree of Life in the Bible: its Identity, Enjoyment, Operation, and Ministry

The way God fulfills His purpose of having a corporate man to express Him and represent Him is by His life.

As seen in Gen. 1-2 and Rev. 21-22, there are four organic items mentioned, which are the procedure God takes to fulfill His purpose: the tree of life, the river of water of life, the precious materials, and the wife (the counterpart, God’s complement).

The center of God’s eternal economy is the tree of life, which typifies Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God to be life and the life supply to man for the producing of a corporate expression of God in humanity.

After man fell, God closed the way to the tree of life so that man would not eat of it and live forever with his sinful nature. But Christ came and fulfilled all the requirements of God’s righteousness, holiness, and glory, and He opened the way to the tree of life for us to partake of God as life and live by Him to be His expression today!

In the church life the primary matter should be eating the tree of life. No matter what we do, where we go, whether we serve and help out with things or people, we need to eat Christ as the tree of life. The tree of life is the focus, and Christ came to be life and life supply to us!

The Way to the Tree of Life is Open!

After Adam fell, God closed the way to the tree of life by putting a cherubim with a flaming sword to guard it (see Gen. 3:24).

God didn’t want man to eat of the tree of life and live forever with his sinful fallen nature, so He set a cherubim (signifying God’s glory) with a flaming (God’s holiness) sword (God’s righteousness) to guard the tree of life. In other words, God’s glory, holiness, and righteousness guard the way to the tree of life.

When Christ died on the cross, He satisfied the demands of God’s glory, holiness, and righteousness, and He opened the way to the tree of life. Now today we can eat Christ as the tree of life and receive God into us as life.

Even more, when we eat the tree of life, the divine attributes of righteousness, holiness, and glory get dispensed into our being. 1 Cor. 1:30 tells us that Christ became wisdom to us from God – both righteousness and sanctification (holiness) and redemption (glory). As we enjoy the tree of life, we are filled with God’s righteousness, holiness, and glory, and we become a rainbow to express God in His glory (see Ezek. 1:28).

The basic colors of the rainbow are red, yellow, and blue. In Ezek. 1 we see the fire (which is red, signifying God’s holiness), electrum (which is yellow, signifying God’s glory), and the sapphire throne (which is blue, signifying God’s righteousness). These all put together are a rainbow around God’s throne.

In Rev. 21:19-20 we see that the foundations of the New Jerusalem have the appearance of a rainbow, which shows us that by eating the tree of life we have the continual dispensing of God’s righteousness, holiness, and glory into us, and we will have the real appearance of God to express Him!

Hallelujah, by eating the tree of life we become God’s corporate expression in the universe!

The Identity, Enjoyment, Operation, and Ministry of the Tree of Life

There are many verses in the Bible which show us the tree of life and God’s desire to be life to man, and today we enjoyed fifteen of them. These fifteen verses show us the identity of the tree of life, the enjoyment of the tree of life, the operation of the tree of life, and the ministry of the tree of life.

God in Christ desires to be our life, and He comes to us in the form of food, as the tree of life, to dispense Himself into us as life and fill us with life!

The Identity of the Tree of Life

• “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:4-5). In Christ as a man was life, and this life was the light of man. God desires to dispense Himself into us, and He came to us as life!
  
• “I am…the life” (John 14:6; cf. John 15:5). On the one hand, Christ is the true vine, and on the other, He is the life. He is the tree of life, even life itself, the divine life of God in the form of food for us to enjoy.
• “I have come that they may have life and may have it abundantly” (John 10:10b). God came to us in Christ so that we may have life and may have it abundantly. What does God want us to have? LIFE! And life in abundance!
• “Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). In the golden time for the Lord Jesus, when all were accepting His ministry and were appreciating His work, He said, It’s time for me to be glorified by going down into the earth to die, and by dying produce much fruit. Christ’s death was a life-releasing death, and His resurrection was a life-dispensing resurrection to produce us, God’s many sons and Christ’s believers, for His multiplication!

The Enjoyment of the Tree of Life

• “If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water…The water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life” (John 4:10, 14). Are you thirsty? Ask the Lord to give you living water! Lord, give me living water to drink! The flowing Triune God – the Father as the fountain, the Son as the spring, and the Spirit as the flowing river – flows into us in a full and free way to flow us into the New Jerusalem, the totality of the eternal life!
• “I am the bread of life…He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me…It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:35, 57, 63). Christ is the bread of life for us to eat Him and live because of Him. God in Christ became the basic element, essence, and factor of our living by being the tree of life, the very life supply.
• “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45b). The first man, Adam, fell, and we all as his descendants are fallen human beings; but Christ as the last Adam became a divine-life-giving Spirit. Whenever we touch Christ today, He gives us life – the zoe life, the divine life!

The Operation of the Tree of Life

• “The law of the Spirit of life has freed me in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and of death” (Rom. 8:2). We have sin in our flesh which is even more powerful than our natural strength or will power. But we also have the law of the Spirit of life which is stronger and higher than the law of sin. We don’t need to try to overcome the law of sin, but simply activate the law of the Spirit of life. Every time we try to overcome the law of sin, we are defeated, but if we enjoy Christ as the law of the Spirit of life, we spontaneously overcome the law of sin and of death. The secret: enjoy Christ as the tree of life!
• “If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10). Our soul is so corrupted that it is the self, our body is polluted to be the flesh, but one third of our being is life – our spirit is life! No matter how you feel and where you are, your spirit is life!
• “The mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6; cf. 1 Cor. 6:17). The believers are a miniature of the garden of Eden: our flesh is the tree of knowledge of good and evil, our spirit is the tree of life, and the mind of our soul needs to choose where to be set. When we set our mind on the flesh we have the sense of death: darkness, weakening, dissatisfaction, emptiness, oldness, dryness, depression, strife, discord, discomfort, restlessness, pain, bondage, and grief. This sense is a warning to us – turn back to the spirit! When we set our mind on the spirit, we have the sense of life (satisfaction, strengthening, refreshment, watering, enlightenment, and anointing) and peace (ease, comfort, harmony, joy, and liberty). Whenever we are about to make a decision, and in all the things of our daily life, we need to go with the inner sense of life and peace.
• “If the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you” (Rom. 8:11). We all have experienced “bringing our body to the meetings of the church” when we were not doing so well spiritually, and life was dispensed into our mortal body! Today we have a foretaste of enjoying the divine life dispensed into our mortal body, but one day God will saturate even our body with His life!
• “Blessed are those who wash their robes that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter by the gates into the city” (Rev. 22:14; cf. Psa. 51:2, 7, 10, 12). We may fail, we may sin, we may do this or that and be cut off from the tree of life, but we can always come back to the Lord, apply His blood, wash our robes, and we will have the right to eat the tree of life and enter into the city! As we eat the tree of life, we enter into the union and mingling of God and man!
• “To him who overcomes, to him I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7; cf. John 6:57, 63; Jer. 15:16; John 15:1, 5, 7; 8:31). We need to be overcomers of today, those who overcome to eat the tree of life. It is a fight and a struggle to be so simple to eat the tree of life, but as we have a foretaste today, we will be rewarded with the full taste when the Lord returns.

The Ministry of the Tree of Life

• “[God] has also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, ministers not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6, cf. 8-9; 5:20). The ministry of the tree of life is to give life. As we enjoy the tree of life, we will be entrusted with a ministry, that is, we will minister life to others. This is a new covenant in which everything is related to and is in life!
• “If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask and he will give life to him” (1 John 5:16). We see – we ask – we give life. We don’t see – criticize – spread death. When we see problems in the church or in other believers, we simply pray to the Lord and ask Him to give more life to them. The source of all problems is the lack of growth in life, and the solution to the problems is eating Christ as the tree of life!

Lord Jesus, cause us to return from anything else to You as the tree of life and just eat You! Lord, wash us and cleanse us in Your precious blood. Create in us a clean heart, and renew a steadfast spirit within us. Sustain us with a willing spirit, and restore to us the joy of our salvation. Lord Jesus, keep us eating You as the tree of life. May we keep turning to You as the tree of life in our spirit and enjoy You. Give us more life. Make us ministers of life. We want to be persons of life!

References and Further Reading

• Inspiration: bro. Ed Marks’ sharing in the message and portions in, The God-men (ch. 4), and, Life-study of Genesis (msgs. 11, 13-14), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on the Crystallization Study of Genesis (1), week/msg 1, The Central Thought of God.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Blessed are those who wash their robes / That they might have right to the tree of life.
  # Lord, our human spirit now contains You. / Still Your purpose in us You would do; / If our wandering mind would leave old thoughts behind, / Then Your life and peace in it we’ll find.
  # Thus within the church-life garden / There’s a fruit-producing tree / Full of life and so available to eat. / So be simple, don’t be hardened, / Drop your concepts—eat that tree! / Take in Jesus every moment—He’s so sweet!