The Tree of Life/Redemptive Suffering
by Jim Kenaston
April 5, 2021

“Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—’ therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” - Genesis 3:22-24

Did humans know anything of death and decay prior to The Fall? Perhaps, as we are told in these verses that our first priestly pair would have had to eat of the tree of life in order to live forever. It is clear that the spiritual death they encountered was new to their experience, but it could be that the cycles of life and death we know today may have already been built into the framework of their existence. They too may have known it well within their surroundings and experience.

Can we then take the “tree of life” as an early pointer to the much later Cross of Christ? Certainly Adam had disqualified himself as one who could “eat” of it and live forever. If “eating of the tree of life” were to represent choosing a path of redemptive suffering for the sake of others, or better yet, for the forgiveness of sin, then it follows that the way to it would be barred to all but those who are truly qualified to “eat of it.” Such a person would have to be sinless, otherwise their suffering would merely serve as a just penalty for their own sin.

It seems that we indeed have here an early hint of what was to come. Many other hints would follow, and eventually the world would have to consider the claims of Jesus of Nazareth and His followers.

Yet even since Christ’s resurrection, the world continues to suffer, as does each human being who inhabits the earth. Could it be that some manner of suffering and loss has always been with us, even prior to The Fall that we read of in Genesis 3? If so, then certainly the judgment for our rebellion against God (where we sought to define for ourselves what is good and what is evil), has brought upon us a manner of suffering that was at one time new to the world. We see God’s judgment of this sin outlined earlier in the chapter. Those judgments hold true today, but also seem to be in balance with a redemptive trend that has taken hold since the time of Christ.

While we can say that Jesus was the only person truly qualified to “eat of the tree of life,” He also presents Himself as being the tree of life: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6)

In inaugurating His kingdom on earth, He invites us to “eat of the tree of life” as well, both with the sacrament of Communion, where we symbolically eat of His flesh and drink of His blood, and with the admonition to His disciples: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)  

This is where our sufferings of today may serve a redemptive purpose. Our sufferings are not new to mankind, but rather than allow them to develop in us a heart of bitterness, we can trust God to weave them into His larger redemptive purpose for this world, a purpose that we gain our first hints of in Genesis 3.

The first step in allowing God to use our suffering toward His larger redemptive purpose is to recognize that we are not God ourselves. This is to repent of the choice that we have all made since the time of Adam and Eve. Like them, we do not have the wisdom or breadth of view to know how our lives rightly fit into His redemptive narrative, though in now picking up our cross and following Christ, abiding in Him and following His Word as He invites us to do, our new life of faith can accomplish His unique purposes for us in this world. It is indeed a life or “walk” of faith, as we cannot know in this life the full weight of our choices, whether in obedience to Him or in reversion to our former life of selfish pursuits.

A second step is in understanding that our lives are not all about ourselves, but that we fit into a larger narrative that is not our own. We can freely choose to fit into that narrative according to God’s design, or we can fight it and live with both the self-inflicted suffering we will cause, as well as the suffering that our selfish choices inflict upon others (and they upon us).

To do this, taking up our cross to follow Christ, is to allow our life to be used for His redemptive purposes in this world. Our life then takes on meaning beyond merely accomplishing and acquiring temporal things to assuage our own egos. This is not the “prosperity gospel” where we look to gain heaven on earth. But in Christ our suffering, which is part and parcel to every life, can have a redemptive purpose beyond our own sanctification.

How is this so?

One’s suffering may be physical, mental (as when we experience great anguish or personal loss), a life lived under some form of political oppression, or any combination of these and other forms of personal challenge. Christ experienced all of this just as we do. What He had not experienced is the shame, guilt and regret that comes with one’s own sins, though He willingly took upon Himself the shame, guilt and punishment for our sins, offering forgiveness as we trust and abide in Him.

What we can find among His followers are positive examples of people who have experienced the full range of human trials that we are likely to face, yet they have fixed their hope on Christ and His kingdom. In Christ their suffering through lives of obedience to Him have become redemptive, to the extent that their positive example has helped advance His kingdom on Earth. We each have the opportunity to add to this catalog of positive faith examples, allowing Christ to weave our own manner of suffering into His redemptive narrative for this world.

While we could highlight examples of redemptive suffering among people who have served to prick the conscience of others, or who have allowed their suffering to in some way serve a redemptive ministry purpose, it may be more useful to ask whether the path of redemptive suffering had been built into God’s design for the world from the beginning.

To return to the Garden of Eden, what if our priestly couple, representing the people* of their day (and us as well), had chosen to forsake the fruit of the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” in favor of the fruit of the “tree of life?” It seems that their path forward would have been one of redemptive suffering. Instead of gaining a knowledge of good and evil by illicit means, along with guilt, shame, and punishment, they could have learned to discern good and evil in obedience to God, as seems to have been God’s original design and intent. Yes, I’ll assert, they would have lived out their natural lives and died as we all do, though in having eaten of the tree of life, living lives of redemptive suffering for the sake of others, and in communion with God Himself, their lives would have set a very different course for the rest of humanity.

This begs the question as to what God’s original purpose for the world was prior to The Fall. Perhaps human life was always intended to be lived in the testing ground of this world where we have a choice between rebellion and obedience to God. Adam and Eve chose the former, and each of us in our own way has followed suit.

Yet in another garden, thousands of years later, Jesus anguished over whether to obey God’s design for this world by “eating of the tree of life,” which for Him meant bearing a cross for the sake of others. He chose God’s will and not His own, and in doing so, He opened the door for us to follow Him as the first fruit of a new creation.

The two thieves that hung on crosses next to Jesus offer us a choice to consider for ourselves. One chose to continue gorging on the rotten fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He died in his sins. The other was the first person willing to choose the fruit of the tree of life, offered by Christ Himself as they both hung on their respective cross. As a new follower of Jesus, his suffering was redemptive in that it demonstrates Christ’s compassion at even such a late stage in one’s life of corruption.

We each face our own eventual death, whether on a cross, a ventilator, or under any number of other distressing circumstances, though in eating of the tree of life, offered by and in Christ Himself, we have an opportunity that the “good thief” lacked in dying soon thereafter. Like him, we can repent of our sin and selfishness, but unlike him, we can then move forward through the rest of the life that God has given us, trusting whatever manner of suffering we experience to God’s larger redemptive purposes for this world.

All who believe that Jesus is the Christ and that He rose from the dead have experienced the grace of knowing that in Him our sins are forgiven, and as such, our subsequent calling in life is to live in obedience to God’s Word and design for this world, “picking up our cross,” as it were, “to follow Him.” To do so is to eat of the tree of life, a meal and a path through life that may have been meant for all of humanity from the beginning.

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* By way of clarification, it seems to me an error to impose upon the text the expectation that Adam and Eve were the first hominids to inhabit the earth. From the text we can rightly consider them to be the first humans to whom God gives a law for which He intends to hold them accountable. They also represent the earliest traces of the nation of Israel. If we understand them to serve in a priestly role, duly impacting others in their choices, they apparently did so for any people we might presume to live during their time, as well as for all humans who would chronologically follow. We inherit from them a heart of rebellion, though one that can be redeemed by the atoning sacrifice of “the second Adam,” Christ Himself, the sinless priest who redeems with His own blood.