Because the church in Ephesus left the first love toward the Lord, it lost the enjoyment of the tree of life (Rev. 2:7). In Genesis 2, in God’s creation, the tree of life is mentioned the first time. Here in Revelation 2, in God’s new creation, the tree of life is mentioned for the church’s enjoyment.
The tree of life is a mystery. In order to understand this mystery, we need to come to the Gospel of John, which is a book of life. John 1:4a says, “In Him was life.” “Him” here refers to Christ, the Word, who was in the beginning, who was with God, who was God, and through whom everything came into being. In Him as the Word was life. The Gospel of John fully develops the revelation concerning Christ as life to us. Eventually, in chapter fifteen, the Lord likens Himself to a tree, the vine tree. If we put together John 1:4a and 15:1, we shall realize that the tree of life, the life tree, is Christ the Son of the living God for our enjoyment. However, if, like the church in Ephesus, we leave the first love toward Him, we certainly shall lose the enjoyment of Him as the tree of life.
In Revelation 2:5 we see the consequence of the church’s degradation. Here the Lord says, “Remember therefore whence you have fallen and repent and do the first works; but if not, I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place, unless you repent.” The consequence of the church’s degradation is losing the testimony. To lose the testimony simply means to have the lampstand removed. If we leave our first love toward the Lord and do not repent, we shall lose the testimony of the Lord and the lampstand will be removed from us. We must be careful and constantly on the alert to avoid this consequence.
The crucial words in the Lord’s epistle to the church in Ephesus are love, life, and light. The basic requirement for having the church life is our love toward the Lord. There is no problem, of course, with the Lord’s love toward us. He has loved us and He continues to love us. The problem is with our love toward Him. Although we have loved Him in the past and may love Him now, there is the danger that our love for the Lord Jesus might fade. The epistle to the church in Ephesus warns us of this. This epistle also gives us a clear revelation of the source of the degradation of the church life-the fading of the first love. Love gives us the position, the ground, the right, and the privilege to eat of the tree of life. Love gives us the supply of life. If we love the Lord, we shall have the full right to enjoy Him as the tree of life, as our life supply. Light always follows life, issuing out of the abundant supply of life. Life, therefore, gives us light. It is vitally important that we love the Lord. If we have love, then we shall have the life symbolized by the tree of life and the light signified by the lampstand.
In 2:7 we have the Lord’s promise to the overcomer. “To him who overcomes, to him I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” To overcome in these seven epistles means to overcome the degraded situation of the churches. In the epistle to the church in Ephesus, it means to recover our first love toward the Lord and also to hate the works of the Nicolaitans, the hierarchy which the Lord hates (v. 6).
In 2:7 the Lord says that to him who overcomes He will give to eat of the tree of life. For the proper church life and the recovery of the church life, that is, for the proper growth in the Christian life, what we need is not merely the mental apprehension of teachings but the eating in our spirit of the Lord as the bread of life (John 6:57). Even the words of the Scripture should not be considered merely doctrines to teach our mind but food to nourish our spirit (Matt. 4:4; Heb. 5:12-14).
The word for “tree” in Revelation 2:7, as in 1 Peter 2:24, is “wood” in Greek, not the usual word for tree. In the Bible the tree of life always refers to Christ as the embodiment of all the riches of God (Col. 2:9) for our food (Gen. 2:9; 3:22, 24; Rev. 22:2, 14, 19). Here it refers to the crucified (implied in the tree as a piece of wood-1 Peter 2:24) and resurrected (implied in the zoe life-John 11:25) Christ who is in the church today, the consummation of which will be the New Jerusalem, in which the crucified and resurrected Christ will be the tree of life for the nourishment of all God’s redeemed people for eternity (Rev. 22:2, 14).
Home | First | Prev | Next