Eat the Tree of Life to be Dependent on God, and Saved from Independence and Rebellion

Eating the tree of life causes us to be dependent on God, to depend on Him as our life, but eating the tree of knowledge of good and evil causes us to rebel against God and be independent of Him. Oh, Lord Jesus!

Our Christian life is not a matter of doing the right thing and not the wrong thing, nor is it a matter of doing what is good and rejecting what is evil.

This will be the outcome, but it results out of our eating the tree of life. What we focus on is life; what we want is to gain more of God as our life and be dependent on God as life.

We may be completely right, but we may be dead inside; on the other hand, however, we may be wrong outwardly according to others’ standards, but we may be in life inwardly, and the Lord richly supplies us with life.

God wants to dispense Himself into us as life; this is seen from the very first chapters of the Bible, where we are told that God created man and put him in front of two trees.

Our great God gives us all the choice: we can partake of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and thus receive death and end in death, or we can partake of the tree of life, which is God Himself to be our life, and we will live forever.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil is pleasant to the sight and good for food, so appetizing and enticing, and the enemy of God wants us to eat of it so that we may receive death and remain in death.

The tree of life is so simple – it is just life, it imparts life to us, and it makes us beings of life to express God by His life.

It may be surprising to realize that one tree is the tree of life and the other is the tree of knowledge; we may expect that, if one tree is of life, the other is of death.

The truth is that one tree is of life resulting in life, while the other tree is of death resulting in death.

We may think we accumulate more knowledge, we know what is good and what is evil so that we do the good and reject the evil, but actually, we receive more death and remain in death.

Even in our daily Christian life and in the church life, our main consideration shouldn’t be doing the right thing or staying away from evil; rather, it is to eat Christ as the tree of life.

The primary matter in the church life should be our enjoying, partaking of, and eating Christ as the tree of life so that we may gain more God and live because of what we eat.

May we be those praying, singing, calling on the name of the Lord, and partaking of Him by unceasingly praying and pray-reading the word, so that we may be persons of the tree of life, persons living Christ by the life which He is in us and to us.

Seeing the Two Trees issuing in Two Lines, Two Ways of Living, and Two Destinations

The book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, contains many seeds of the divine revelation.

Many things are mentioned or introduced in Genesis as a seed which develops throughout the Bible in the subsequent books, consummating in the book of Revelation.

The two trees are such seeds sown in Genesis and reaped as a harvest in the book of Revelation.

Furthermore, the two trees – the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil – issue in two lines, two ways of living, and consummating in two destinations.

The tree of life issues in the line of life, on which we see many positive characters in the Bible such as Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, to name a few.

This line continues with the likes of Samuel, David, and the prophets in the Old Testament, and with the Lord Jesus and His disciples in the New Testament.

We the believers in Christ are on the line of life; the church is on the line of life, and the consummation of the church as the Body of Christ and the bride of Christ is the New Jerusalem, the city of life, the destination of the line of life.

Many people are on the line of life not because they were special but because they chose to live by the tree of life, that is, they were dependent on God and partook of God as their life.

Today we can be on the line of life fully by being dependent on God, by abiding in Christ, so that we together would consummate the city of life, New Jerusalem.

The line of the tree of knowledge of good and evil also issues in the line of death, also called the line of good and evil, or the line of knowledge.

On this line, we see people such as Cain and many of his descendants, Esau, Pharaoh, Saul, the evil and wicked kings in Israel and Judah, Jezebel, the Judaizers, and the persecutors of the church in the New Testament.

The line of death includes the Antichrist and the great dragon, and it consummates in the lake of fire.

In Rev. 20:10, 14 we see that death is cast into the lake of fire, while Rev. 22:2 reveals that life abides in the New Jerusalem.

At the beginning of the Bible, we see life and death and at the end, we also see life and death; between these two ends, there are two lines – the line of death and the line of life.

We start on the line of death and by being regenerated we are transferred on the line of life; daily, however, we may live quite a lot on the line of knowledge of good and evil, so we need to learn to turn to our spirit and take the Lord in as life to be one with Him on the line of life.

Life begins with the tree of life and ends at the New Jerusalem; death begins with the tree of knowledge of good and evil and ends with the lake of fire.

May we choose to turn to our spirit, reject mere knowledge, and contact the Lord to take Him in as life and depend on God as our life.

Amen, may we be those on the line of life today, those eating the Lord and drinking Him, partaking of Him as our life and life supply!

Lord Jesus, thank You for bringing us on the line of life when we were saved. Hallelujah, we believers in Christ are on the line of the tree of life, learning to partake of Christ as our life and live Christ day by day! Amen, Lord, save us from living on the line of death, the line of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Save us from merely knowing about God and from merely having Bible knowledge without touching God as life. We come to You in Your word, dear Lord, to enjoy You, partake of You, and receive You as life! Amen, Lord, we depend on You as our life. We want to abide in You and allow You to abide in us.

Eating the Tree of Life makes us Dependent on God, but the other Tree makes us Independent and Rebellious

Eating the tree of life causes us to be dependent on God (John 15:5), but eating the other tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, causes us to be rebellious against God and be independent of Him (Gen. 3:5).

Eating is a matter of life, something that makes us dependent; we don’t eat a lot of food at once and then do not eat at all but rather, we eat and eat and eat, for eating is a dependent matter. Eating indicates dependence; God being our food means that we must depend on God continually.

We do not graduate from matters of life such as eating, drinking, and breathing; we always depend on eating, drinking, and breathing.

However, when we have the knowledge, we become independent; once we graduate from university, we think we know better than our professors and we no longer need them.

God is not knowledge to us; God is life to us. We depend on the Lord as our life; we depend on Him as life in our daily living.

Just as we depend on eating food and drinking in our daily life, so we depend on the Lord as our life and life supply.

The Lord Jesus is our bread of life, the living bread, and we need to eat Him day by day, even moment by moment; we can’t live without Him, for we’re dependent on God.

The tree of knowledge indicates independence; in God’s eyes, man’s first sin and the greatest sin is independence.

When we come to the Bible, we need to contact the Lord in spirit, coming to Him as we come to His word, so that we may receive not only knowledge but even more, God as life (John 5:39-40).

God didn’t create us to be independent beings; the main independent person in the universe is Satan, and his independence is closely related to his being rebellious against God.

Actually, seeking to be independent of God is being rebellious against Him.

We human beings are dependent persons; we depend on food, drink, air, and many things. Taking God as our life issues in a dependent life.

Accumulating mere knowledge, however, makes us more independent. Praise the Lord, God is not knowledge to us – He is life to us!

We take Him as our life, and this life right away issues in a kind of dependence within us.

From the very beginning of our Christian life, when we first partook of God as life, we started to sense our need for God, our need for God to be our life continually.

The Lord Jesus said that whoever drinks of the water that this world has to offer will thirst again, for the water in the world never satisfies, but the water He gives will quench our thirst and issue in eternal life! Hallelujah!

before we were saved, we were altogether independent of God and rebellious against Him; when we repented and believed in the Lord, we became dependent.

Now we are dependent on God, for Christ is the vine and we are the branches (John 15:1, 5).

We have been grafted into Christ, and we depend on Him just as the branches of the vine depend on the vine.

It is such a shame to see a Christian who lives in independence from God!

It is quite tragic to see a believer in Christ who does not depend on God, for he tries really hard to live as the Bible says he should, but he doesn’t take Christ as his life, nor is he dependent on God.

When we live by the spirit and allow the Lord to live in us, we are dependent on God, and that is a normal Christian life.

A normal Christian is one who depends on God; he doesn’t speak of himself, nor does he do things of himself, but he takes Christ as his life, he enjoys Christ as life, and he depends on God as life.

This should be normal to us in our daily life. However, by default, we have lived so much in independence from God that it is normal for us not to contact the Lord.

We need to build up a habit of contacting the Lord and depending on Him as our life.

Being independent of God means being rebellious toward Him; to rebel means to be independent of God.

God presents Himself to us as life by the way of eating; He wants us to eat Him so that we may be nourished organically and depend on Him as our life.

God is the reality of our food; the food we eat is a type, a symbol, of God as our real food (Col. 2:16-17).

When we enjoy God and eat Him in His word, He is being assimilated into our being in an organic way to become part of us.

His new element replaces what we are, and our old element is being discharged.

May we not commit the greatest sin, the sin of independence, but may we learn to depend on God continually by eating Him as the tree of life.

The more we eat the Lord, the more we open to Him and exercise our spirit to pray and read His word, the more we are infused with what He is, and we depend on Him in all things.

The consummation of our depending on God as life is the city of life, the New Jerusalem, where we see that God is the light of life, the tree of life, and the river of life for the eternal continual supply of His people.

May we today come to the Lord, again and again, to feed on Him and take Him in as life!

Lord Jesus, we depend on You as our life. We take You in as life. We open to You and come to You in Your word to take You in as our life and life supply. We want to learn to depend on God as life, for we are beings of the tree of life. Amen, Lord, we give ourselves to You to be dependent on God as the tree of life! We do not want to be independent of God nor to be rebellious against Him. Remind us to turn again and again. Keep us abiding in You as the real vine to receive all Your divine riches. Amen, Lord, we need You as our food, our drink, our living air, and our everything. You are the reality of our food. You are our real water that quenches our thirst. You are the living air that we breathe. We want to learn to depend on God continually until we are fully one with God!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ed Marks in the message, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1979, vol. 1, “Basic Lessons on Life,” pp. 488-491, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Taking the Way of Enjoying Christ as the Tree of Life (2022 Memorial Day Weekend Conference), week 1, entitled, Taking the Way of Enjoying Christ as the Tree of Life for the Accomplishing of God’s Eternal Economy.
• Further reading: recommending this excerpt from Basic Lessons on Life, Chapter 3.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Keep us living and walking as did old Abraham; / In Your holy appearing to be transfused like him. / As did Isaac and Jacob, Moses lived this way— / So dependent upon Your presence with him each day. (Hymns #1194)
  – Our old man has been crucified with Christ; / Yes, all we are in oldness He sufficed / To bring to naught upon the cross that He / Himself as our new Husband fully be / Enjoyed by us. / Yes, all our strength of independence died, / For we with Christ were fully crucified. / Now we’re so glad to be His proper wife, / Dependently enjoying Him as life / Forevermore. (Hymns #1140)
  – No more in vain need we struggle, / Trying the way in to find. / Praise God—we’re in Him already, / Hallelujah, abiding in the vine. / Abiding in the vine, / Abiding in the vine, / All the riches of God’s life are mine! / Praise God, He put us here, / Never to leave; oh, we’re— / Abiding, abiding in the vine. (Hymns #1162)