Why were there two trees in the Garden of Eden?

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.

In Genesis 2 it is found at the heart of things in the midst of the garden of Eden. Adjacent to it was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now while the latter was forbidden to Adam, the former was not. It seems certain that two actual and special trees stood there, to which God in wisdom attached certain moral lessons. That of the knowledge of good and evil represented Adam's responsibility to his Maker, while that of Life represented the privilege that he might enjoy as long as he remained unfallen. The forbidden tree was by no means a privation or a denial to Adam of pleasure or taste; for the Lord God had set in the garden every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. Upon it hung fruit truly; but the restriction imposed as to its consumption was purely to remind God's wonderful creature that he held all in trust under his Maker. Beneath man was everything in this lower creation. Above him, God. The one simple security for his tenure of the position, obedience. And obedience, not to a complicated code of laws, but to one simple command. Obedience would have maintained him in the knowledge of good and good alone. Disobedience would leave him with the knowledge of the good he had once enjoyed, but with the added knowledge of the evil he had acquired, which would overpower and condemn him. It was the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

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.

I affirm then that, when God thus made man, when He put him in Eden, the actual test was the interdict not of a thing which was in itself evil, but simply and prescriptively wrong for man because God had forbidden it. Such is the very essence of a test for an innocent man. In fact any other thought (such as the law) is not only contrary to scripture, but when you closely and seriously think of it as a believer, it will be seen to be an impossible state of things then. Consequently a moral test such as the wise and prudent would introduce here, and count a worthier reason why there should be so vast a ruin for the world ensuing, is out of the question. No, it was the simple question whether God was really Jehovah-Elohim, whether He was a moral governor or not, whether man was to be independent of God or not. This was decided not by some grave and mighty matter, of which man could reason and see the consequences, but simply by doing or not doing the will of God. Thus we see how the simple truth is after all the deepest wisdom.

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.

Scarce any fact of paradise seems less understood than that recorded in the latter half of Gen. 2:9, none supposed to be more distinctly an early myth. Yet were these two trees, singled out from the rest, a positive fact suited to that day of primeval innocence, and to no other; but embodying divine principles of the deepest and most enduring value for all time; and this without applying force to either, or indulging in imagination of any kind, but in subjection to the indications of the inspired record itself. And the truth conveyed intimately concerns every soul of man.

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).

In our minds we often couple innocence and irresponsibility together; as in the case, for instance of a very small child. In verses 16 and 17, however, we find that Adam though created in a state of innocence was put in a place of responsibility. He had no knowledge of good and evil, so that one tree was forbidden to him, though he might eat freely of every other tree in the garden. He was put under law in the simplest way, for the law consisted of only one commandment and that commandment concerned with only one tree. He might have had many commands given to him of an intricate and confusing nature or alternatively, he might have been forbidden all the trees in the garden save one. As it was, the Divine command was cut down to the barest minimum, just sufficient to keep before him that as the creature he must be subject to the Creator and walk in obedience.

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.

I call your attention for a moment to this. It is often a difficulty with souls that God should have made the moral history of the world to turn on touching that tree or eating of that fruit. The mere mind of man thinks it a mighty difficulty that what appears to be so small a matter should be pregnant with such awful results. Do you not understand that this was the very essence of the trial? It was the essential feature that the trial should be simply a question of God's authority in prohibition, not one of grave moral evil. There was the whole matter. When God made man, when Jehovah-Elohim breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, man had no knowledge of things as right or wrong in themselves. This was acquired (have you never known, or have you forgotten, the solemn fact?) by the fall. An innocent man could not have had the knowledge of good and evil; it pertains necessarily to a fallen one. He who is innocent — a man absolutely without any evil either in himself or in that which was around him, where all was from God — (and this is the revealed account of things), how could he have a knowledge of evil? How possibly have that discrimination which decides morally between what is good and what is evil? How perfect therefore is the intimation of scripture! Yet none did or could anticipate it.

The whole history of man began with the garden of Eden and a problem which only God Himself could solve. Man assumed that he could grapple with it, this was the suggestion of the serpent. Of the two trees, one he could have, the tree of life was available, but the other, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was denied him, it was superfluous to his immediate necessities, for everything had been pronounced good by God. However, the usurper came in and they fell for his suggestion, they relied more on the suggestion of the serpent than what God had said, even though the evidence was there that everything was good. In taking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil man suggested that he was equal to grapple with such a problem, the problem of good and evil. We live in a time after six thousand years of this grappling and groping and frustration, even though there is a great advance in science, so that man can manipulate and introduce all manner of conveniences, yet the vexed problem, the moral question of good and evil is still left unsolved. It is still a problem for the highest intellect. The very fact that they were deprived of it, God saying, "You shall not eat of it", was a kindly thought on the part of God showing a consideration for man, it was something that would be a heavy load for a child to lift, and any thoughtful parent would not expect a child to lift a load above its ability, so that tree of the knowledge of good and evil is beyond our ability or capacity or even our consideration. That was kindliness on the part of God; a great consideration.

God had given every tree of the garden for food save one solitary tree. This prohibition was a test of the creature's obedience to the Creator. Moreover the Creator knew that if they did eat of the tree of knowledge and evil, the result would be the ruin of man's innocence, the poisoning of his very system by the introduction of the knowledge of evil, with no power to resist it. Therefore His prohibition was merciful. Satan too knew that to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil would mean the ruin and fall of God's creatures. How evil was the great Adversary of set purpose to work such havoc and ruin. No one can faintly realize the awful tide of sin and wickedness that had its germ in this one act of disobedience.