Tree of Life...

September 11, 2009

Danielle Joyner Kelley

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17.

When tragic events take place, we embark on a search for answers. The bad things that happen throw us off balance, and our natural instinct is to bring the scales back to level position. The questions of why God lets bad things happen, and why He allows people to suffer consequences for the sins of others abound. When we ask those questions, we are forgetting that God was and is on our side, not wanting any sins or consequences to flow.

From the beginning of time, He tried to prevent this from happening. “And 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." Genesis 2:16-17. God gave us choices, and when He told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil”, He walked away.

When man chose to disobey Him there were consequences. Often we do not want to pay the price ourselves, but when others wrong us we want them held accountable. For one to pay and another to slip by is an injustice. As the author of justice, for God to pretend the sin never took place would be unjust, and justice requires consequences. Once man fell into sin, God could not allow man to eat from the tree of life. “And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." Genesis 3:22. As a parent, He has trust in our abilities, and consequences for our falls.

When we lose focus in the right direction, the tempter moves in. "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Genesis 3:4-5.

But God is so just that He made sure there were consequences for the tempter as well. After Adam and Eve’s admission of guilt, God told Satan, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." Genesis 3:15. Enmity is hostility, and God put that hostility between us and Satan. In turn, Eve’s offspring would crush Satan’s head, and Satan would strike his heel. And this is the way God would right the wrong.

Instead of doing it this way, God could have chosen to end all sin, but that would have meant ending all of us. He flooded the world with Noah, but the world filled with evil once again. God showed us that to truly end sin’s power over us it would take something huge to allow us to access the tree of life again. Somehow, we would have to be cleansed of our sins. As the perfect and just God that He is, He kept His word, and sent one of Eve’s offspring to accomplish the task. Through Jesus death and resurrection, the grave was conquered and Satan was defeated. He is so loving that instead of ridding the world of all sin, and thus ridding the world of us, He took our mistakes upon Himself.

As such a loving God, we never get less than all that He has, and even with the possibility of forgiveness through Jesus, He knows we will sin, but He gives us every opportunity not to. Even with one of Eve and Adam’s sons, He was there telling him to turn back. “Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." Genesis 4:6-7. As it was in the beginning, we still have the choice to make. When others do not make the right choice, we all suffer the consequence, just as mankind suffered for Adam’s fall.

God brings light and victory into tragedy, seen through Jesus death. Through our obsession with tree that caused the fall of man, we often forget that there were two trees in the garden. The other tree was the tree of life. Now we know that the tree of life is Jesus Christ. “Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6. And even prior to the prophesy of Eve’s offspring crushing Satan so early on in the Bible, Jesus always was. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” Revelation 22:13.

Still, there is an enmity between mankind and Satan, and he spends his time working to strike every heel that he can. When he does and we see the tragedy and horror before our eyes, he knows that we will seek answers. That is the exact moment he whispers to us, “don’t you want to know why God is letting this happen?”.

That is when you remember that buying into his question of knowledge is what caused all the bad to start with, and in remembering that fact,

You just answered your own question.