“You Must Not Eat”
The seventh in a series: “I Will be Your God and You Will Be My People.”
Texts: Genesis 2:15-17; Romans 5:12-21
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The only way any one of us will go to heaven is if we are perfectly obedient to the commandments of God. And when I speak of perfect obedience I am not speaking of something momentary–I am speaking about perfect obedience to all the commandments of God, and that you have obeyed them perfectly in thought, word and deed, every moment of your lives. This is what is entailed by our text–Genesis 2:17–when God tells Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam must not eat from the forbidden tree, for when he does, he will surely die.
This is the seventh sermon in our series, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” But there is an important reason why we take up the Covenant of Works (or, as it is also known, the Covenant of Creation) as a separate topic. The Covenant of Works is a major theme in Reformed theology because this particular covenant that God makes with Adam and all of his descendants in the garden is absolutely essential in understanding the subsequent flow of redemptive history, as well as in understanding the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone.
Not only do we all need to be very familiar with this notion of a covenant of works being established between God and humanity in Eden, we also need to be aware that this doctrine has come under increasing attack by a number of people in Reformed circles. It is also under attack from people who, while embracing a Calvinistic understanding of the gospel, will nevertheless remove with their right hand what they have already granted with their left, when they deny the existence of this Covenant of Works as the backdrop to the unfolding drama of redemption. The covenant of works is not incidental to the Reformed faith–it is essential to it. Deny the Covenant of Works and inevitably, you weaken and undercut the doctrine of justification, no matter how loudly you claim to believe in justification by faith alone.
Now before we get to our topic, a bit of review is in order. We have seen how God created Adam and Eve to be divine-image bearers and how he then placed them in Eden, the earthly replica of God’s heavenly temple. God has not only created man and woman in his image, but God has assigned to the first couple the task of ruling and subduing all three realms of creation. Man is to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and the creatures of the ground. Man does so when he and his partner, Eve, are fruitful and multiply, filling the earth. Through this command, God himself establishes the so-called “cultural mandate” along with the human family including the husband-wife and parent-child relationships. For these human relationships are established by God so as to mirror the original relationship that Adam had to his covenant-Lord, Yahweh-Elohim while in Eden. We have seen that the husband-wife relationship is itself a copy of the relationship that Jesus Christ has to his church, which explains the gravity of sexual sins such as fornication and adultery. It is because of this original relationship between the Creator and the creature that wives are to submit to their husbands, that husbands are to love their wives and children are to obey their parents. God has built these things into creation because it is, in part, through being fruitful and multiplying that man rules and subdues the earth.
We have also seen that God assigns to Adam the task of caretaker in God’s garden, which is itself a replica of God’s heavenly temple. Eden is that place where God meets with man, that earthly sanctuary where God could safely reveal his glory to his creature-kings and where Adam and Eve might worship their creator and fulfill their divinely-appointed tasks. Thus it is because Adam is a divine image-bearer that he is entrusted to care for God’s garden. It was also Adam’s task to name the animals and exercise his dominion by laboring to bring forth from the earth his food. Thus Adam exercises his dominion by working. All of this must be seen against the backdrop of the work-Sabbath pattern of creation. Recall that like God, Adam was to work six days and then rest on the seventh. And this pattern of work, followed by rest underlies all of redemptive history. With this in mind, we now turn to our subject this time, God’s command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
As we saw last time, God placed two trees in the midst of the garden of Eden, trees which are invested with great theological import and which serve as the means of blessing and curse for Adam and Eve.
Says Moses simply in Genesis 2 verses 16 and 17, “the LORD God commanded the man, `You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.’”
Before we turn to examine the meaning and significance of these two trees it is vital to notice that the idea of covenant dominates the entire bible, even from the opening chapters. As we will see, even though the phrase “Covenant of Works” is not used here by Moses, all of the elements of a covenant are present, and later writers such as Hosea and Paul, clearly speak of this event in terms of a covenant.
For one thing, there are two parties, God and Adam, who represents all of humanity. There are specific conditions imposed by God, namely, blessing to Adam for obedience and curse for disobedience at any time during the probationary period. In fact, in later biblical revelation such as Hosea 6:7 we read of Israel, “like Adam, they have broken the covenant–they were unfaithful to me.” Indeed, the very point of the analogy that Paul draws between Adam and Christ in Romans 5–our New Testament lesson–only makes sense against the background of some form of covenant between God and Adam here in Eden. Even though the phrase “Covenant of Works” is not found in Genesis 2:17, clearly such a covenant is present in Eden. This covenant will surface repeatedly throughout the drama of redemption.
It is also clear from the Genesis account that man and woman enjoyed the blessing of God’s very presence in the earthly replica of the heavenly temple, but that such enjoyment of the continued blessings of their Edenic home was contingent upon complete and perfect obedience to all of Yahweh-Elohim’s command, but specifically the command not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Since the man had been assigned the task of royal caretaker of God’s garden, the first question which arises is simply this– “What if the man and woman had obeyed God and fulfilled their care-taking duties, ruling and subduing in obedience to God’s covenant-Lordship?”
Though it is a simple question, the answer is complex and difficult, since the question is strictly hypothetical. And yet if a Covenant of Works truly exists in Eden, the question must be answered.
To answer to this question, we must turn to the original Sabbatical pattern. Man was to work in God’s garden for six days before resting on the seventh. Therefore, we can easily envision a scenario in which man was, according to the terms of the covenant, to labor to bring God’s garden into a perfect state of completion, thereby establishing the kingdom of God upon the earth. Then, finally, Adam would enter into his own eternal Sabbath rest. Just as God had labored for six days and rested on the seventh–having finished his work of creation, only then to begin his Sabbath enthronement, ruling over all creation, so too, Adam was to fulfill his care-taking duties in Eden, bringing to fruition the task that God had given him.
Having successfully completed the divinely-given task of ruling and subduing, then, Adam too would cease from his labors, and enter his own enthronement as creature-king, ruling over all three realms of creation. Then Adam would receive the divine immortality to which his being created in God’s image points. Perfect obedience throughout the period of testing would bring immediate consummation and glorification when the time of probation was completed. If Adam obeyed God’s command, Adam would live forever.
This solves the nagging problem I always wondered about as a kid, “what did Adam do all day?” In Eden, Adam was not idle, he had work to do. But his work had a goal, completion of the earthly temple of God, which would result in eternal life and Sabbath rest. And all of this was patterned after God’s original work of creation during the six days before resting on the seventh.
But you know the story. It will soon become clear that Adam does not comply with the terms of probation when he fails to drive Satan from God’s garden-temple as a faithful creature-king should do, and then later by rebelling against God himself by eating from the forbidden tree. Through these actions, Adam subsequently fails to bring that which he had begun to fruition. Thus man’s rule and Sabbath rest and immortality cannot come until God’s kingdom on earth is finally completed. This was the mission undertaken by the first man, Adam, and then as redemptive history continues to unfold, this same task assigned to the nation of Israel. But like Adam, Israel too, fails to obey the commandments of God.
The kingdom of God is not realized, therefore, until the coming of the second Adam, Jesus Christ, the true image of God, whose Messianic mission coincides with the arrival of the kingdom of heaven in his very person. Christ’s kingdom will be finally consummated at his second coming.
And yet, as we have seen, nothing that happens in Eden happens outside of God’s eternal decree. The creator of all things is also the author of the unfolding drama of redemption. Thus one of greatest mysteries of Christianity is to be found here–“why did God place Adam in this situation and then decree that Adam would not fulfill his covenant obligations?” The only biblical answer to this–and one which certainly does not satisfy everyone–is that God works all things after the council of his will, that he does so in such as way that he is neither the author of evil nor does he do violence to the will of the creature.
Adam was genuinely free to fulfill his covenant obedience or to disobey God’s command, and yet his failure to do so is also said to be decreed by God. This is one of those places where the biblical texts are scant, where human speculation runs wild, and where we as God’s people must simply take what he gives us and be satisfied with it. Something, admittedly, which is not always easy to do.
We now turn our attention to the two mysterious trees in Eden. The first of these is the tree of life which was among those planted in the garden by God himself as we read in Genesis 2:9. As we have seen, the goal of Adam’s care-taking in Eden was the completion of God’s temple on earth, an event which would have brought God’s divine-image bearer to the goal of immortality, so that Adam could enter into his own Sabbath rest.
Thus the tree of life is the sign and seal of immortality. It is the sacrament of man’s participation in the glory of immortality. This is the tree from which man will eat once he completed his task of temple-building (Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 58). It is clear from Genesis 3:22, that after man had fallen and was cast from the garden, all access to this particular tree is now barred this side of entrance into the heavenly city, lest man eat from the tree and receive eternal life. Therefore, the tree of life is the sign and seal of eternal life, the very thing man lost when humanity fell into sin and came under the covenant curse.
This becomes clear when we turn to images of the tree of life which will surface later in the great drama of redemption. In Revelation 2:7, Jesus himself informs the Christians of Ephesus that “to him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” The pattern we have seen earlier–namely that the earthly Eden is the replica of the heavenly temple–holds true here as well. Those who overcome–that is, those who are obedient to the terms of the covenant–and receive eternal life will one day eat from this tree. Thus, here again, the earthly Eden points toward heaven.
Likewise in a passage we saw last time, Ezekiel 47, when the prophet is describing the heavenly temple, he states in verses 7 and 12, that the tree of life is again present on both sides of the river of life, and its fruit will serve for food and its leaves for healing. And then, finally, in Revelation 22, the tree appears yet again, this time in John’s vision of the heavenly city, coming down out of heaven, where John states, “on each side of the river [of life] stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of nations.” But John goes on to say in the next verse, “no longer will there be any curse.”
Thus Adam’s fallen children will not be allowed to partake from this tree until that which it symbolizes–eternal life–finally has been attained through Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead. This is why the tree appears only at the beginning and end of the great drama of redemption.
While man could eat from the tree of life only when he had fulfilled the terms of the Covenant of Works and was granted eternal life, it is the second tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which serves as the means of probation. For it was about this tree that God himself declared, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die. While the tree of life is sacramental and represents God’s glorious presence with his people, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is, on the other hand, the tree of probation and testing. This is the tree of blessing and of curse. It is the tree upon which humanities’ destiny rests.
But why this tree and why this curse? Well, if the intent of God creating man and woman as divine-image bearers was that the man would complete his care-taking work in Eden, finish God’s earthly temple and only then enter his Sabbath rest and receive that to which the divine image pointed–eternal life–then the curse associated with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is very appropriate. For death entails the loss of all of those things to which Adam’s role as creature king pointed. The curse brings the complete reversal of man’s original relationship to God and the world (Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 63). God intended for man to rule and subdue the earth. Now the earth will rule and subdue him when at death man returns to the dust from which he had come when God breathed into Adam the breath of life.
Because of the curse, the man and woman lose not the divine image–but the glory of the divine image, which is immortality. As soon as they ate from the tree, they realized they were naked and they now were ashamed, for the divine glory of the image had departed. In addition, that which God has joined together, body and soul, will now be ripped apart by the cessation of earthly life. Adam and Eve were not only naked and ashamed, they know that they will taste death. In addition, man loses those glorious endowments which render him but a little lower than the angels–namely, true righteousness, holiness and knowledge. What is worse perhaps, Adam will now experience the shame and frustration of being cast from God’s temple-garden, and is now forced to wander east of Eden, with no hope of entering his Sabbath rest in this life. Work will become toil. Weeds will spoil his crops. Childbirth will now be excruciatingly painful. In fact, it will take a second Adam to defeat Satan and open the way to the New Eden, depicted by John in Revelation 21 as a New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven.
Even as the tree of life is barred from Adam, so too, the domain of death and curse will also appear in biblical revelation. As blessing is life eternal in the New Eden, so too, curse is torment in the eternal realm of torment. With this in mind we can now see how the frightening image of the “lake of fire” stands in marked contrast to the glory of Eden and the tree of life. The lake of fire–in contrast to the river of life–is the realm of eternal darkness, that place where those who die apart from God’s grace and mercy experience what John calls in Revelation 20, “the second death.” Though so many of our contemporaries whine about how such a penalty is unfair and cruel, the severity of the curse perfectly corresponds to the gravity of man’s original offence (Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 64). Adam rebelled against the Holy God, his creator and covenant-Lord, in God’s own earthly temple. Adam, who reflects God’s divine glory as a divine image-bearer, is now stripped of that glory. Instead of receiving immortality as a reward, he now faces the sentence of eternal death. Despite the protests of those who do not see these things with the eyes of faith, nothing could be more appropriate than eternal death, given the fact that Eden is an earthly replica of the heaven temple and the original glory of the divine image.
Well, we have answered the question, “why the curse?” But now we must ask, “why this particular tree?” To answer this question, there are several things to consider. For one thing, it is important to remember that Adam’s task was to tend the garden, to bring the earthly temple to its completion. But Adam was to do so under Yahweh’s lordship. Thus Adam’s work had a very specific goal. This was not an indefinite period of trial with no end, but a specified period of probation, carefully limited by the nature of Adam’s original task of ruling and subduing. A second thing to consider is that Adam is acting in this capacity as the federal head or representative of all those countless men and women who would come from his being fruitful and multiplying with his wife Eve. Thus Adam represents each of us in the same sense as if each one of us had been in that garden under the same covenant sanction.
Thus it was appropriate that the probation center in some very clearly defined command–though Adam is bound to obey God in all things–his period of probation required a very specific sanction. In this case, God permitted Adam to eat from any tree in the garden, save one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This, of course, tested Adam at the precise point of God’s prior command that Adam exercise dominion. Adam had dominion over all other trees, and yet one particular tree is now set apart and is forbidden from the man. This prohibition from eating from this particular tree gets right to the heart of the matter. Who is Lord of the garden? Yahweh, who allowed Adam to eat from any tree, except one? Or Adam, who was barred from this particular tree as a sign that even though he is God’s creature-king, Yahweh is still his covenant Lord? Like the curse, the probation test is perfectly suited. Adam was hereby confronted with God’s absolute sovereignty. Will he bow his knee in obedience to the Creator in whose name he rules over Eden, or will raise his fist in protest?
The fact that the tree is named “the tree of good and evil” reflects the fact that this tree demands that Adam discern his own will from that of God’s and that Adam as a divine image-bearer is fully capable of discerning the right choice from the wrong one. This was not a trick, nor an unrealistic test. Adam knew full well what was entailed–perfect obedience to God’s command. As the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, this tree becomes the tree of judgement (Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 66). The destiny of Adam and his descendants centers upon this tree. As one commentator puts it, this is the hinge on which everything turns (Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 67)!
Enter now the villain of the drama of redemption in the person of Satan. As we will learn in Genesis chapter 3, it is by divine permission that Satan now enters the God’s temple-garden, through the agency of the serpent, one of the creatures who had inhabited Eden. A creature, by the way, over whom Adam was to exercise his dominion. Adam not to eat from the tree. And as Lord over all the creatures who inhabited all three realms of creation–the land the sea and the sky, Adam’s own role as creature king was to be tested by the presence of God’s enemy, Satan, who is in the garden through the presence of his foil, the serpent. Not only would God test Adam’s obedience to the prohibition not to eat from the tree, God would test Adam’s dominion over the creatures, and in doing so test Adam’s own loyalty to Yahweh in the face of this Satanic interloper.
Thus it is all very clear. If Adam drove the serpent from the garden at the exact moment when the serpent suggested that Adam eat from the forbidden tree, Satan would have been judged on the spot and Adam would have immediately entered the Sabbath rest and the consummation. Emerging obedient to Yahweh’s command and faithful to his covenant Lord, Adam would have earned for himself and all his descendants eternal life and the glory of immortality. At that point Adam could be properly declared righteous!
What, then, do we take with us from the fact that God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of good and evil? Why is this Covenant of Works so important and so foundational to our faith?
All of this takes us back to my opening comments. There will be no one in heaven–the New Eden and who has access to the tree of life–who has not been perfectly obedient to the commandments of God. For the Covenant of Works that God made with Adam in Eden has never been abrogated. The covenant of works still stands. God still says to us whenever his law is read “do this and you will live.” And he still says to us, “cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything I have commanded!” For God’s law as revealed in the Ten Commandments reflects in much greater detail the original commandment given under the Covenant of Works which God established in Eden with Adam and all his descendants.
I also hope that all of you have noticed by now that this is not good news! For not only are we all guilty for Adam’s act of rebellion–since he was both our federal and biological head–and who among us has ever obeyed God’s commandments perfectly, in thought, in word and in deed, for even a single moment? Indeed, the covenant curse still hang over all those who know not Christ, and the day of judgment is soon to come!
This is why we must look to Jesus Christ, who is, as Paul calls him, the second Adam. As Paul puts it in Romans 5:12 and following, “therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” In other words, it is because of Adam’s sin that we are reckoned as sinners. It is because of Adam’s sin that we are born without true righteousness, true holiness and true knowledge. We are all sinners, therefore, by nature and by choice. And we too will be condemned for our own sinful acts of rebellion against God. This is why Paul goes on to say in verse 18, that our only hope of eternal life and the restoration of divine glory is to be found in Jesus Christ. "Consequently, just as the result of one trespass [Adam’s] was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness [Christ’s] was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” In Adam, we have been made sinners. It is in Christ that we are reckoned as righteous, as law-keepers, not law-breakers.
Why is this? This is because Jesus Christ as the second Adam, did what the first Adam failed to do. Not only did Jesus drive Satan out of the heavenly temple and then bound him when the kingdom of heaven dawned in his very person. But Jesus also defeated Satan at the cross, exactly as God had promised Adam that he would do in Genesis 3:15, when the curse is pronounced upon the covenant breaking Adam and Eve and the serpent in the garden. Even more than that, Jesus as the second Adam, was perfectly obedient to all the commandments of God. Jesus Christ fulfilled all of the righteous requirements of perfect obedience as set forth in the original Covenant of Works as well as in the Law of Moses. This means Jesus Christ alone is without sin. Jesus Christ alone has passed through the probation of God and earned the crown of righteousness which he now gives to all this disobedient children of Adam who seek everlasting life in him.
Therefore, it is Jesus Christ–the second Adam–who alone can remove from us the guilt of our failure to obey the commandments of God. It is only Jesus Christ, who can reckon us as though we too had perfectly obeyed God’s commandments. It is in Jesus Christ that we are found perfectly obedient. It is in Jesus Christ that we enter the New Eden, take from the tree of life and live. For under the Covenant of Works, God says to us “you must not eat.” But in Jesus Christ, God says to us, “come and eat from the tree of life and live forever!” Amen!
To read the next in this series, Click here: Riddleblog - And I Ate -- Genesis 3:1-19