Did Adam and Eve eat from the tree of life before the fall?

From the position in Paradise of the tree of life (for it distinctly states that it grew "in the midst of the garden") we learn that CHRIST has always been God's centre, although the six days of creation, with Adam as its head, were first developed. But along with the tree of life (and in the same place) is found the "tree of knowledge of good and evil;" for Eve says, speaking of this tree, that its place too is "in the midst of the garden." (Gen. 3:3.) As to the "tree of life," it is clear that it could only refer to Christ (Rev. 2:7); and in the fact that both are "in the midst of the garden" we see that both are united in Him. Our responsibility, as of Adam, has been taken up, and met in Him and by Him. He is thus God's centre, and life is His by acquired right. Around Him, as the tree of life in the eternal state, God will group, as He did in type in Eden, "every tree that is pleasant to the eye, and good for food." While for Adam (Christ) himself there will be found one (Eve) of himself too (type of the Church) to enter into, and to share with him in all that he has, as thus set in enjoyment over all things. For it was in the garden, before man fell, that Eve was brought to Adam. The creation in Genesis is God's picture, in type and shadow, of the purpose of His heart concerning CHRIST - a purpose hidden, in the past ages, but existing there from all eternity, long before the foundation of the world, and now made known to faith. (Eph. 1:9-10; Eph. 3:9-11.) God will presently act in power to bring out into full display His own original thought; and it is to this He refers when, in the view of all that sin, sorrow, and death have done in the first creation, we read, "And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new." (Rev. 21:5.) And "for eternity" attaches to all, since all is based, not on the first man, but on the second.

It does not appear that the "tree of life" was forbidden to man before he fell. He was set up in Paradise in life, and with this word, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Gen. 2:16-17.) God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." The man lived. As long as he ate of every tree of the garden, save the one forbidden, he continued to live; i.e., in partaking of the tree of life, as well as of the other trees. He continued in that state in which God had at first created him. This does not seem to me to shut out his then eating of the "'tree of life." He was responsible to live (and the means to live were around him) in that state in which God had created him; that is, he was to know nothing more, neither good nor evil. It was innocence; for he was not to know anything in addition to that life in which he stood with God. But this was responsibility, and on this ground all was lost. Sin entered, and the law proved it, and only showed how complete the ruin was. Death was upon all.

For the first time then after the Fall it appears the "tree of life" was forbidden to man; a most gracious provision on the part of God. Man had acquired the knowledge of good (and God was its source), without power to act upon it or to please Him. (Rom. 7:18.) He had also acquired the knowledge of evil, and along with that a nature always prone to follow it. Now God speaks, and He says, "The man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever." To eat, and by thus eating to live for ever as long as he ate, in that state of innocence in which God had first created him, would have been right and simple obedience; but to eat, and live for ever in the garden, with the knowledge of good and evil (good to which he could never attain, and evil to which he was always prone), in misery therefore, God could not have; "so He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." This was grace, not judgment; the judgment was pronounced before, both on Adam and his wife, and on the serpent too. Life then is distinctly refused to a responsible but a fallen race in that condition.

The first thing to note is that "the tree of life" in the midst of the garden was absolutely distinct from that "of knowledge of good and evil." To eat of the latter was forbidden on pain of certain death (ver. 17). Only when the man did eat of the prohibited tree, the LORD God took care that be should not take also of the tree of life (Gen. 3:22). It would have been the perpetuated life of sinful man: a calamity, and violation of all order, not a blessing. Apart from that transgression, the tree of life was open to him, and expressly outside the tree of knowledge.

Clearly then the first tree points out the channel of life for man unfallen, the provision of God for Adam in paradise freely given and quite independently of the second tree: so true is this that man forfeited his title to partake of the one tree when he ate of the other. Man was responsible not to eat of the tree of knowledge; if he abstained, he was free to eat of the tree of life. When guilty and fallen, he was debarred, and driven out, with a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life (Gen. 3:24).

Now the constant effort of man, especially of religious man, is as it were to identify the two trees; that is, to suspend life on the fulfilment of responsibility: a notion which flies in the face of the facts, when man was innocent, and still more manifestly false, when man was a sinner, and expressly excluded from the tree of life. The original relationship was lost through transgression. The only natural religion that ever had or could have reality had ceased to be. All henceforth turned on what God is to man in saving mercy. Man in the most favourable circumstances had wholly failed toward God. Sin morally compelled God to be a judge. Love, divine grace, made Him a Saviour. Even so it was to lie only in and through His Son, His deigning to become man, and His going down into death and judgment for the guilty. The Father hath sent the Son as Saviour of the world (1 John 4:14); the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10).

It is of great interest and importance to observe that God distinguished from the first between responsibility on the one hand, and life-giving on the other, in the two trees (verse 9). Even for Adam, innocent as he was, life did not depend on abstinence from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Death followed if he disobeyed God in eating of this tree (verse 17); but, walking in obedience, he was free to eat of the tree of life. He fell in partaking of the forbidden fruit; and God took care that he should not eat of the tree of life. But the two trees, representing the two principles, which man is ever confounding or obliterating one for the other, are in the scripture as in truth wholly distinct.

Before sin came in, “out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also” (Gen. 2:9). This tree of life in the midst of the garden was not forbidden to man; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was. After man had fallen, lest in that fallen and sinful condition he should “put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever; therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden” (Gen. 3. 22-23). The Cherubim and the flaming sword were then placed at the east of the garden to keep the way of the tree of life (v. 24). In grace our Lord Jesus Christ came into man’s place of condemnation and death, and by the sacrifice of Himself put away the sin which had brought this about and opened for us the way of life. But if in the earliest chapters of the Bible we find man excluded from the tree of life in the midst of a paradise of innocence, in the closing chapters we find him redeemed through Christ’s precious blood, and in the paradise of God—the paradise of holiness, eating of the Tree of Life, in a higher sphere and condition than before; in a realm of life and love and holiness, where sin can never come; in a scene of immortality, incorruptibility and unfading glory.

Rev. 22:2. — Then in the midst of the street, or broad public pathway, flows the river, on either side of which is the tree of life. Neither man, innocent nor sinful, eat of the tree of life in Eden, we do not say paradise. The cherubim and flaming sword stood in the way of access to the tree of life in the garden (Gen. 3:24), and well that it was so, for if sinful man had eaten of its fruit he would have lived for ever a life of misery in this world. But in the city of gold and glory “the way of life is free,” neither cherubim nor sword barring it. The two symbolic trees of Eden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The former is the first and last named in the Scriptures. Life in the one and responsibility in the other are the respective principles set forth by these trees.

This, the first promise to the overcomer, contains an evident allusion to the garden of Eden, with the tree of life in its midst (Gen. 2). Adam had not to overcome in the garden, he had simply to obey and keep his innocence, and the test of an innocent creature’s obedience was the prohibition against eating of the symbolical tree of knowledge of good and evil. We have no ground to suppose that Adam ate of the tree of life although not forbidden to do so. But the scene presented to the gaze of the Christian overcomer is one of a far more glorious character than that of Genesis 2. Here we have the Paradise of God with its tree of life, of which one may freely eat, and no tree of good and evil, the symbol of creature responsibility. The life of innocence (Gen. 2) was dependent on obedience. But here the tree of life, eternal life in its full character of blessedness, is enjoyed without alloy, without fear of failure. Eternal life becomes the everlasting feast of the conqueror in the Paradise of God. The word Paradise occurs three times in the New Testament (Luke 23:43; 2 Cor. 12:4: and Rev. 2:7). It is of Oriental derivation, meaning a pleasure garden. It is three times used in this sense in the Old Testament. To an Oriental mind “Paradise” is the expression and sum of blessedness. The Paradise of God is the expression of Heaven’s blessedness. It is an actual place, of which the earthly garden (Gen. 2) was but a shadow. Here the blessedness is fixed and eternal. Paradise is the sum of all enjoyment, the aggregate of all pleasure, promised to the converted dying robber, and “into” it Paul was caught. It is the special and unique promise held out to the overcomer in the Ephesian state of the Church.

Rev. 2:7. Why did Adam eat of the tree of death — the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — but never touched the tree of life? In man's paradise the tree of life was not eaten, for man by nature cares not for that tree, but it is promised to those in God's paradise… .

Thus it is by almost all men affirmed that Adam was created in righteousness and in holiness of the truth. Not so. This is how the apostle describes the new man exclusively. In no way can it apply to man as originally created for he was simply untainted and upright, but in no real sense cognisant of "the truth" any more than "righteous" and "holy." He was innocent; he had not what scripture here calls "the knowledge of good and evil." Man only gained it by the fall. He had, of course, the consciousness of responsibility. He knew that he was bound to obey God, though the test of his obedience lay solely in his not eating, as we shall see in ver. 17, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now holiness implies that, having this knowledge, we are separate from the evil to good. Adam had no such knowledge. Unfallen, he had no lust. He could not have understood the Ten Commandments, still less the Sermon on the Mount. He had neither father nor mother to honour. Nor was there a neighbour to traduce or aught to covet, to say nothing of theft, murder, and adultery. When neighbours began to be, man had been long an outcast from the garden, and the one prohibition in it applied no more. Henceforth as a fallen being he knew good and evil, but he had that knowledge with a bad conscience. As a heathen wrote of himself, we may say of fallen Adam and his race, that they saw the better and followed the worse. Such became the state of man till God intervened with fresh dealings which involved other responsibility.

But there is revealed in ver. 9 another fact of the deepest interest. The tree of life was distinct from that of knowing good and evil. The test of responsible obedience was one thing, quite another the means of life. They are thus from the first shown to be separate; and, in fact, as we know, when man disobeyed by eating of the one tree, he was driven out lest he should take also of the other (Gen. 3:22-23), and thus make his fallen sinful estate everlasting. The tree of life was for one who did not eat of the forbidden tree. So clearly was it here marked that responsibility and life are wholly separate.

With what perfect goodness had God provided a residence for man, before man himself was created to enjoy it! How everything must have witnessed to man the beneficence of his Creator! Everything pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life to sustain him in immortality, in case of his obedience, and but one object, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, by which his obedience was put to the test.

Genesis 2:15, etc. It was from God that the man had received his being, and it was by Him that he was placed in the garden prepared for him — placed there, not to be inactive, but "to dress it and to keep it." How absolute were God's rights over the creature that He had formed! All Adam's rights, as regarded the garden, the earth, and the various tribes of inferior creatures, flowed from the sovereign appointment of Him, whose, equally with Adam himself, they all were. How fitting that there be some test of whether Adam recognised these rights of His Creator: and if there were to be a test, how could there have been one easier or more favourable to man? In Genesis 2:16-17, observe, 1, God's authority — He "commanded the man;" 2, His bounty — "Of every tree," etc.; 3, His prohibition — "Thou shalt not;" 4, His threatening — "In the day," etc. Man is thus fully set in responsibility before that woman is created. She was to share the responsibility with him.

Man being thus created, a Garden of delights was formed for his dwelling place. The name Eden has the meaning of "Pleasure," and every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food was there, so for the sustainment of life and the giving of pleasure nothing was lacking. Two trees are specially mentioned. The tree of life was surely a witness to the fact that there was a life distinct from that which man already possessed, and that it was put within his reach. On the other hand the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to remind him of his responsibility, and prove a test to it.