Two Trees in the Middle

God stops speaking things into existence and FORMS the man from the soil, then breathes life into his nostrils. God planted the orchard, including the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and put it in the middle, next to the tree of life. The tree of life is a picture of partaking of Christ. Genesis 3:22–24 will later bar the way so they cannot live forever in unredeemed sin. Randy’s answer to “why put the tree there at all” is that love requires a choice. No choice, no love, only robots. The same pattern shows up in “take up your cross daily.” Without that tree, God would never be known as Savior, Redeemer, or Emmanuel. A redeemed man is in Christ, beyond Adam before he sinned: filled with the fullness of deity (Colossians 2:9–10; not ourselves deity), one with Christ (1 Corinthians 6:17), seated above the angels (Ephesians 2). Adam had work before the fall: care for and maintain the garden. Work is not the curse. Thorns are. The command is one tree, with no briefing about an enemy, because the obedience was meant to be love. “You may freely eat” is what the serpent will leave out. After the fall we carry an orphan spirit: fear of God’s presence, hoarding, and treating someone else’s gain as our loss, then painting that stinginess back onto God. Isaiah 55 says he is not in our league. First Corinthians 2:12 says the Spirit was given so we would know what has been freely given, not to thump us.