See the Two Trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

In the divine revelation there are two trees, two sources, two ways, two principles, and two consummations; we need to see a vision of the two trees – the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – and reject any knowledge, good, and evil apart from God Himself in Christ as the tree of life.

Lord Jesus, grant us to see a vision of the tree of life. May we see that God in Christ as the Spirit is now available for us to enjoy, partake of, and eat as life. Amen, Lord, we choose You as the tree of life. We choose to reject any knowledge, good, and evil that is apart from God in Christ as life. Bring us to our spirit again and again, Lord, for us to choose You, eat You, and live because of You as our life! Amen!

This week in our morning revival we come to the book of Job from a very particular point of view or vision: Job and the Two Trees.

As we are prayerfully considering the patterns of Enoch, Noah, and Job as overcoming saints on the line of life to fulfill the economy of God, we need to pray much before the Lord that these patterns would not only inspire us but even more, we would gain Christ in our prayerful consideration.

We want to live an overcoming life on the line of life to fulfill the economy of God.

Noah, Daniel, and Job with their life and work show us how the Triune God is working Himself into us, His chosen and redeemed people, to fulfill His eternal economy.

The entire Bible with its sixty-six books is written according to this governing principle: the Triune God dispensing Himself into us for us to experience Him, enjoy Him, and express Him for the fulfillment of His divine economy.

When we shepherd people, as we are learning to cherish and nourish people, the best way is to show them a proper pattern. Many Christians today lose their direction because they lack the proper pattern.

As we learn to care for the new believers, those who are young in the Lord, the best way is to show them a pattern. As we show them some patters of people who live an overcoming life, they are nourished, cherished, and shepherded. May we be on the line of life today.

May we be those who live an overcoming life.

Today the Lord’s recovery is to build up Zion; the beauty, the blessing, the life, and the building up of Jerusalem comes from Zion. Jerusalem typifies the church, and Zion typifies the overcomers in the churches.

For the fulfillment of His economy, God needs to gain not only the church but a group of overcomers.

These are the beachhead for the glorious King, the Lord, to come and take over the whole earth to make it His kingdom. We want to be His overcoming saints today, those on the line of life!

See the Two Trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

God has an original intention, an eternal intention, according to which He does all things. He also has a way to fulfill His eternal intention. In Genesis we see that God created all things, and He came in to restore and further create the heavens and the earth with all things in them.

In particular, Genesis 1:26 tells us that God created man in His image and according to His likeness so that man would express Him and represent Him.

This is the intention God created man with; God wants man to express Him with His image and have God’s dominion to represent Him.

What is the way that God fulfills His intention? We further see in Genesis that, after God created man, He put the man He created in front of two trees: the tree of life in the middle of the garden of Eden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We need to see these two trees and apply them in our Christian life.

The way God fulfills His intention is by putting man in front of the tree of life (Gen. 2:9) so that man would choose God as life and live by God as life for the fulfillment of God’s purpose.

As God works Himself into man as life, man becomes God’s complement, His counterpart. The tree of life signifies the Triune God embodied in Christ coming as food to be life to man (Psa. 36:9).

The reason God put man in front of the tree of life and interdicted man to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is that God wants to come into man as life.

God’s intention is that man would eat God in Christ as life, the tree of life, so that man would absorb God metabolically. He wants to come into man to be constituted into man, mingled with man, and one with man, so that man and God would be fully one.

However, God is great; He did not only give man the tree of life but gave man a choice: he could eat of either the tree of life or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17).

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is so complicated, and we may not know it is the wrong tree until we read that God tells man that, the day he eats of it, he shall surely die. Wow!

So this tree of the knowledge of good and evil is actually the tree of death! This tree is a type of Satan as the source of death; Satan as death to man is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

These two trees, therefore, represent two persons – God as life and Satan as death – to come into man and be joined to man. The tree of life is so simple and so pure: it is just life, and life is God and God is life.

This tree can also be seen throughout the Bible and also in Revelation, even at the end of Revelation, showing us that God’s intention can be accomplished by and is related to the tree of life.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, however, is complicated, for on the same tree there is knowledge, good, and evil, and the result of eating this tree is death.

According to the divine revelation in the Bible, knowledge is Satan, good is Satan, and evil is Satan; knowledge, good, and evil apart from God as life are simply of Satan.

Before Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were ignorant, they did not know, and they had no sin.

But after they ate of the forbidden tree, their eyes were opened, they became knowledgeable, and death came in to operate in them and eventually they died. Oh Lord!

We may think that, as long as something is of knowledge or if something is good, we need to embrace that thing and do the good thing.

However, according to the Bible, the genuine good is God Himself (Matt. 19:17; Mark 10:17-18), and eternal life is to know God and the One whom He has sent, Jesus Christ.

Anything apart from God in Christ as our life is knowledge, good, and evil, and when we partake of such things, no matter how good they may seem, we partake of death. Oh Lord!

But praise the Lord, Christ came and in Him was life (John 1:4). He also is the vine (John 15:5), a tree.

When we put these two together we realise that God in Christ is the tree of life for us to partake of and live by today. Christ is the tree of life.

Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God is the tree of life for us to choose, eat, digest, and be constituted with so that we may live by the tree of life.

May we see the two trees in our experience and may we choose the tree of life.

May we realise that there are two sources today: God as life and Satan as death; these two sources manifest themselves and are available to us as the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Lord Jesus, unveil us to see the two trees in this universe: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Amen, Lord, may we see that God in Christ came to be the tree of life for us to eat, partake of, and live by. Hallelujah, when Christ came, He came as life, He came to give us life, and He is the vine: He is the tree of life! Thank You, Lord Jesus, we can come to You to take You in as our life. Grant us to see a vision of the tree of life. May we see that God is the source of life and Satan is the source of death. May we reject anything of the knowledge, good, and evil that is apart from God in Christ as life. Amen, Lord, we choose You today as the tree of life. We choose to partake of You as life. We exercise our spirit to touch You. We don’t want more knowledge; we want more of God! We don’t want to merely do the good; we choose God as the only good One, and we want to live by eating the tree of life. Amen, Lord Jesus, we give ourselves to You today to eat You as the tree of life!

Job and the Two Trees: We need to Choose the Tree of Life today!

In the book of Job we see not only the history of a man who was righteous in himself and who went through much suffering until he heard God and saw God.

In this book we see Job and the two trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life.

The two trees in the garden of Eden are no longer something that is outward: in the book of Job we see them part of man, even man partaking of these trees in an inward way and having a particular kind of living outwardly.

If we see the two trees and realise that life is of God but knowledge, good, and evil apart from God in Christ as life is of Satan and leads to death, our Christian life will change radically.

In the situation of Job, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is now inside of Job and his friends; the situation has developed. At the beginning, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was outside of Adam, being objective.

Then, Adam partook of this tree and the result was that he died.

Even more, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil came into man and began to grow in man until, at the time of Job, both him and his friends had the tree of the knowledge of good and evil developed in them.

There was so much knowledge that many chapters were composed with their knowledge.

There was so much good and evil, and so much knowledge of good and evil, that more than thirty chapters of the Bible are filled with the expression of this tree. Oh Lord!

Job was an upright man, a God-fearing man, always staying away from evil (Job 1:1, 8).

However, this is not what God wants; He wants man to partake of the tree of life and reject the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so that man would be filled with God and be able to be one with God to fulfill God’s purpose.

Merely doing the good and abstaining from evil, as Job did, was not enough; it was only the living by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Job’s attainment seemed to be quite high in the eyes of those around him, for he was an upright man who kept himself from evil; in God’s eyes, however, Job did not fulfill God’s original purpose in creating man, neither did he satisfy God’s desire.

Only God knew the true need of Job. God knew that Job was short of God. In man’s eyes, Job was right, and even God boasted about him to Satan.

God had a council in heavens, and even Satan came to participate at that council; this is very meaningful, very educational and revealing.

Satan had been judged by God, but he was still free; he was used by God for a particular intention, that is, to be an ugly tool to accomplish what God intends toward His loving ones and carry out some severe dealings.

However, Satan did not know God’s purpose toward those whom He loved; Satan’s mind is full of the commercial principle, he always wants to gain something and he desires to inflict pain and suffering and loss on the interest of God.

But God used Satan as an ugly tool to deal with Job and strip him until he realised, when he saw God, that he was a tree-of-knowledge-of-good-and-evil-man but God wanted him to be a tree-of-life-man.

God carried out a work of stripping and consuming in Job so that Job may gain God to the fullest extent and not remain in the stage of just being satisfied with his self-uprightness or physical attainments in the moral realm (Job 42:5-6).

We need to see this and we need to open to the Lord concerning it. We need the Lord to shine on us and expose our eating and reliance on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We have the tree of life in our spirit, but we still depend on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and live by it. May we open to the Lord concerning this and allow Him to expose what He needs to expose, even to bring us back to Himself as the tree of life.

Lord Jesus, shine on us and expose what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is in us and to us. Have mercy on us, Lord, and expose our reliance on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so that we may turn to You and take You as the tree of life. Amen, Lord, thank You for coming into us as the tree of life. Praise the Lord, God in Christ as life is in our spirit to be the tree of life for us to eat, enjoy, and live by today! Amen, Lord, we do not want to try to improve ourselves or have our own righteousness which is out of the law; we simply come to You as the tree of life. We come forward to You in our spirit to touch You. Save us from eating of the wrong tree and therefore being in death. May we choose the tree of life today! May we be delivered from being in the realm of ethics, morality, and self-improvement, and may we be brought fully in the realm of life! Amen, Lord, we love You and we take You as our life. We come to You in Your word and we exercise our spirit to gain more of You as life! Praise the Lord! Christ is our life!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brothers on this topic, and portions from, Life-study of Job, msgs. 10-11, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Noah, Daniel, and Job – Patterns of Living an Overcoming Life on the Line of Life to Fulfill the Economy of God (2026 International Chinese-Speaking Conference), week 4, Job and the Two Trees – day 1.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Yet no rules He gave, no instructions, save: / “Every tree shall be to thee for meat.” / But one tree, He said, surely makes you dead; / Fruit of knowledge isn’t good to eat. / Midst the garden fair, see the life tree there— / God Himself the tree of life does show. / But the enemy, somehow subtly / Tempted man the other tree to know. (Hymns #1144 stanzas 2-3)
  – In Eden’s garden fair we see / That God before two trees placed man, / The trees of life, and knowledge too, / Which for the Lord and Satan stand. / The tree of life the center is / Of God’s eternal, perfect plan, / Denoting God in Christ as life / To be received as all by man. / The tree of knowledge standing there, / Bespeaks a sure and warning voice: / Outside of God there is a source / Of death to all who make this choice. (Hymns #733 stanzas 1-3)
  – The tree of life, how sweet the fruit, / With God as life complete. / I once was dead, but now I live, / Was starved, but now I eat. (Hymns #1143 stanza 1)