We need to see the fact that the whole Bible presents and unveils God in Christ as the tree of life to be our food. This can be seen all the way from the beginning to the end of the Bible, and this is the main burden of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.
The Lord’s burden is that all of us – wherever we are – would be recovered back to the beginning, that is, back to the eating of the tree of life! We need to come back to the enjoyment of the tree of life – He who eats Me shall live because of Me (John 6:57)!
Also, in the context of God’s economy, through the precious all-inclusive death of Christ, through His wonderful judicial redemption, the way which has been closed to the tree of life now has been opened!
Saints, now we no longer need to “mess around” but come forward with boldness through the blood of Jesus!
Even more, according to God’s economy, we are not only eaters of the tree of life, enjoying the tree of life as our food and living because of Him, but we are also part of the tree of life – we are branches! We are a little tree of life! We should never treat each other in a common way! We are part of Him because of this precious organic life union with Him!
Passing through a process to be grafted into God
In order for us to be grafted into God and for God to have us grafted into Him both parties needed to pass through a process, just as in the physical world both the tree and the branch to be grafted into the tree needed to be cut.
Christ as God who dwells in unapproachable light needed to pass through the process of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection, so that He may become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45) – the graftable God. By becoming such a Spirit, God in Christ was ready for grafting!
On our side, we needed to be cut from the old source so that we may be ready to be grafted into God – we need to repent, call on the name of the Lord, and receive Christ as the life-giving Spirit into our spirit.
Once we repent and receive the Lord, we are joined organically to Him – we are grafted into God. Our wound kisses His wound, and there’s an organic union of grafting, where a lower life (our human life) is grafted into a higher life (the divine life) to become one organically!
Not an exchanged life but a grafted life, a mingled life
Some Christian teachers say that since our human life is so low and so poor, God needs to “throw away” our lower human life and bring in the divine for a full replacement – an “exchanged life”.
But the Bible clearly reveals that what God desires is not an exchanged life but a grafted life. We are created in God’s kind and our human life can be grafted into the divine life, having its resemblance.
These two lives can be joined organically and the divine life can live and be expressed through the human life!
Living a grafted life: Christ living in us!
Now that we have been grafted into Christ, we live a grafted life, a mingled life! As Paul rightly said in Gal. 2:20 – we have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer us who live, but Christ lives in us; and the life which we now live we live in the organic union – the faith – with the Son of God who loves us.
We still live so much in and by ourselves – but we need to be reminded that we have been united and mingled with Christ, therefore we shouldn’t live by our flesh or by our natural being but by our mingled spirit, a spirit grafted with Christ!
We are becoming the tree of life!
We are not becoming “THE TREE OF LIFE” just as we are not becoming God in His Godhead, but by being grafted into Christ and as branches in the vine, we are part of the tree of life! When we are grafted into Christ, His divine life fills our human life, mingles with our human life, and spontaneously enriches, uplifts, and transforms our human life. In His economy, God dispenses His divine life and element into us to mingle Himself with us and make us the same as He is. Now we are branches of the tree of life – and wherever we are, the tree of life is reaching out to others to minister life to them!
[this is the topmost enjoyment from the whole week, and this sharing is very much inspired from, the life-study of Romans, The Experience of God’s Organic Salvation Equaling Reigning in Christ’s Life, and, The Divine Economy, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Four Great Pillars in the Lord’s Recovery. ]
O, Lord, keep us in this romantic precious divine-human organic union. Thank You for grafting us into God – we were cut through repentance and receiving and You were cut through the process You went through. O, Lord, we love being here, in the sweet eternal kiss between God and man, in the organic union, in the One Spirit! Keep us minding our mingled spirit and living not by our human natural life but by the divine life mingled with our human life! Lord, reach out through us wherever we are as the tree of life!
God's original intention was that man should take the tree of life. Because of man's fall the way to the tree of life was closed to man. Hallelujah through the redemption of Christ the way by which man could touch the tree of life was opened again. Christ came to accomplish redemption. His redemption satisfied God's glory, holiness and righteousness. Therefore through Christ's redemption the way was opened for fallen man to contact God. How we thank God for Christ redemption the veil was rent from top to bottom thus opening a new and living way for us who were alienated from God, who is signified by the tree of life, to enter into the holy of Holies to contact God. [by Anatalia Pesana]
Amen! Praise the Lord! We are vessels to contain the living God!