While working on a Sunday school lesson on Rev 2:1-7, the first of the seven letters to seven churches in Revelation 2–3, I came across this quote by Dr. John Walvoord:
To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. The tree of life, first mentioned in Genesis 3:22, was in the Garden of Eden. Later it reappears in the New Jerusalem where it bears abundant fruit (Rev. 22:2). Those who eat of it will never die (Gen. 3:22). This promise should not be construed as reward for only a special group of Christians but a normal expectation for all Christians (“Revelation” in BKC, p. 934).
I disagree with his view that all believers are overcomers and that all will have the right to eat from the tree of life.
However, in this blog, I want to consider something else Dr. Walvoord wrote: “Those who eat of it will never die (Gen 3:22).” Is that true?
Genesis 3:22-23 says:
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.
Dr. Walvoord’s understanding of the words “lest he…eat and live forever” is common. In this view, one bite of the tree of life guaranteed that a person would never die physically. In fact, he seems to suggest that glorified believers won’t die because we will all eat from the tree of life.
But aren’t believers immortal once they are glorified? Do we need to eat the fruit of the tree of life to gain immortality? Didn’t Jesus conquer death for us?
And didn’t Adam and Eve eat from the tree of life before they fell? While I can’t prove it, I think it inconceivable that they would eat the forbidden fruit before eating the allowed fruit of the tree called the tree of life. My guess is that they ate from the tree of life many times before they fell.
Hamilton comments:
It is not clear whether the last half of the verse prohibits man from starting to eat or from continuing to eat. Taken by itself the wording of v. 22 could suggest that man has not yet eaten of the tree of life. How else is one to explain the use of also (Heb. gam) in the verse? And where gam was used earlier in the narrative (3:6), it implied new and additional activity—“she gave also to him.” Yet nowhere in the previous dialogue did God forbid access to the tree of life. Thus the divine prohibition in this verse has nothing to do with God’s jealous protection and hoarding of divine prerogatives. God should not be diminished into something less than human! (Genesis, p. 209).
Keil and Delitzsch write:
For immortality in a state of sin is not the zōē aiōnios [life everlasting], which God designed for man, but endless misery, which the Scriptures call “the second death” (Rev. 2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8). The expulsion from paradise, therefore, was a punishment inflicted for man’s good, intended, while exposing him to temporal death, to preserve him from eternal death (Commentary on the Old Testament, Vol. 1, p. 67).
While that would be true of unbelievers, Adam and Eve believed in the coming Messiah (Gen 3:15) before God expelled them from the Garden. They already had everlasting life. So, for them, the point was that God did not want them to remain mortal forever. He wanted them, like all believers, to have everlasting life in immortal, glorified bodies.
I understand Gen 3:22 to mean that if mortals had kept eating from the tree of life, they would have stopped aging and would never have died physically. Alternatively, it might mean that if mortals had eaten once from the tree, they would never have aged or died physically. But one thing is clear. If an immortal person ate from the tree of life, he would not gain anything he didn’t already have. Glorified believers in the kingdom will be immortal without eating from the tree of life.
The twelve fruits of the tree of life will do what the tree of life was originally intended to do: enhance one’s life. Only overcomers will be permitted to eat these wonderful, life-enhancing fruits.
Keep grace in focus, and you’ll enjoy the tree of life’s fruits forever.
