The Kings of Life

I have been thinking about the ‘tree of life’ a lot. It’s a difficult subject because the Bible just throws the picture out there. In Genesis, just from a casual reading it seems like an actual real physical tree with actual real physical fruit that gave life. In a sense every tree that bears fruit, apples, oranges, bananas and pears, are all trees of life because they give us food that we need to live. We need to eat food to live; if we don’t eat we die. But God gave other trees for Adam to eat the fruit of. So the tree of life was a special tree. The other trees gave the physical body ‘life’, but the tree of life gave the human spirit real life, because after all the real life is spiritual life and the real you is the eternal you. This explains why the tree of knowledge of good and evil did not kill Adam and Eve physically, but spiritually. So in the plain reading of Genesis there once was an actual tree that gave spiritual life.

Was this ‘tree’ Jesus? Jesus said He is the true vine. Jesus said He is the Life and the Resurrection. The ‘tree of life’ was in the centre of the Garden of Eden. Just as Jesus should be the centre of lives and hearts.

So why the mystery around the ‘tree of life’, why does the Bible just throw it out there without much explanation? If God wants to teach us something as important as spiritual life, why is he so vague? “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out” (Proverbs 25:2 ESV). Simply put the searching for truth separates the men from the boys as the saying goes, but to use the metaphor of the Bible this separates the kings from the slaves, the rulers from the ruled. So what does God want us to found out? What are the questions we should be asking in order to find the truth, when it comes to the ‘Tree of Life’?

Was it a real (physical) tree in the Garden of Eden? Is it a real tree described by John in the book of Revelation? Is it just a symbol? So what if it is? Does it matter thinking about such things? “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and whoever captures souls is wise” (Proverbs 11:30 ESV). Now here is the right question. Are we being the tree of life to others? Is Jesus, the true Tree of Life, living inside us, so that when people look at us, are they captivated by Jesus?