In this message we will continue to consider Christ as the Priest who trims the lampstands, the churches.
In the epistle to the church in Ephesus, the Lord as the Spirit said, “To him who overcomes, to him I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7). Christ is the tree of life in the Paradise of God for the overcomers to enjoy. While Christ is walking among the churches as the lampstands, He is feeding the believers. He is the life supply to all the overcomers. In the Lord’s epistles to the seven churches, to overcome is to overcome the degraded situation of the churches. In the epistle to the church in Ephesus, to overcome is to recover our first love toward the Lord and to hate the works of the Nicolaitans, the hierarchy that the Lord hates.
The tree of life is Christ with all the riches of life; to eat of the tree of life is to take in Christ as our life supply. We need to eat Him as the tree of life and take Him into us as our enjoyment. Nothing is as enjoyable as eating. We can forget every kind of entertainment, but we cannot give up eating. Christ is our enjoyment, our entertainment, our amusement, our joy, and our rejoicing. The Lord does not care how much we do for Him; instead, He cares for how much we eat Him and enjoy Him daily. We all need to enjoy Him. Every morning the first thing we should do is to eat the Lord Jesus and enjoy Him. Nothing pleases Him as much as our eating Him. The more we eat Him, the happier He is.
Religion always teaches, but the Lord feeds (John 6:35). The apostle Paul did the same thing; that is, he fed the believers (1 Cor. 3:2). 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 of the Lord as our bread of life in our spirit (John 6:57). Even the words of the Scriptures should not be considered merely as doctrines to teach our mind but as food to nourish our spirit (Matt. 4:4; Heb. 5:12-14). In the epistle to the church in Ephesus, the Lord promised to give the overcomer to eat of the tree of life. This points back to Genesis 2, which concerns the matter of the eating ordained by God (vv. 8-9, 16). This indicates that the Lord desires to recover the eating of the proper food by God’s people, the food ordained by God and typified by the tree of life. The degradation of the church distracts God’s people from the eating of Christ as their food and turns them to the teaching of doctrines for knowledge. In the church’s degradation there are the teaching of Balaam (Rev. 2:14), the teaching of the Nicolaitans (v. 15), the teaching by Jezebel (v. 20), and the teaching of the deep things of Satan (v. 24). Now in His epistles to the seven churches, the Lord came to recover the proper eating of Himself as our food supply. We must eat Him as the tree of life.
In Greek the word for tree in Revelation 2:7, as in 1 Peter 2:24, means “wood”; it is not the word usually used for tree. In the Bible the tree of life always signifies 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 signifies the crucified (implied in the tree as a piece of wood—1 Pet. 2:24) and resurrected (implied in the life of God—John 11:25) Christ, who today is in the church, 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).
God’s original intention was that man should eat of the tree of life (Gen. 2:9, 16). Because of the fall the way to the tree of life was closed to man (3:22-24). Through the redemption of Christ the way by which man could touch the tree of life, which is God Himself in Christ as life to man, was opened again (Heb. 10:19-20). But in the church’s degradation, religion crept in with its knowledge to distract the believers in Christ from eating Him as the tree of life. Hence, the Lord promised to grant the overcomers to eat of Himself as the tree of life in the Paradise of God, as a reward. This is an incentive for them to leave religion with its knowledge and return to the enjoyment of Himself. This promise of the Lord restores the church to God’s original intention according to His economy. What the Lord wants the overcomers to do is what the whole church should do in God’s economy. Because of the church’s degradation, the Lord came to call the overcomers to replace the church in the accomplishing of God’s economy.
The eating of the tree of life not only was God’s original intention concerning man but also will be the eternal issue of God’s redemption. All God’s redeemed people will enjoy the tree of life, which is Christ with all the divine riches as the redeemed’s eternal portion for eternity (Rev. 22:2, 14, 19). Because of religion’s distraction and the church’s degradation, the Lord in His wisdom made the enjoyment of Himself in the coming kingdom a reward in order to encourage His believers to overcome religion’s distracting knowledge in teachings and return to the enjoyment of Himself as the life supply in the church life today for the accomplishing of God’s economy.
Eating the tree of life, that is, enjoying Christ as our life supply, should be the primary matter in the church life. The content of the church life depends on the enjoyment of Christ. The more we enjoy Him, the richer the content will be. But to enjoy Christ requires us to love Him with the first love. The first love will bring us to the tree of life. There is a kind of exchange: When we give our first love to the Lord Jesus, He will give us to eat of the tree of life. Our love is His enjoyment, and the tree of life is our enjoyment. To love Him with the first love, the best love, is to give the Lord the first place in all things. In order to give Him the preeminence, we must be willing to be adjusted, to be broken, and to be made nothing so that the Lord can have a way in us, through us, and among us for the building up of His organic Body. We should pray, “O Lord Jesus, I love You first, and I love You best. My first love belongs to you. O Lord Jesus, I give the priority of my love to You.” If we leave our first love toward the Lord, we will miss the enjoyment of Christ and lose the testimony of Jesus; consequently, the lampstand will be removed from us. These three things—loving the Lord, enjoying the Lord, and being the testimony of the Lord—go together.
When we overcome to return to Christ as our first love by giving Him the preeminence in every way and in everything, we will enjoy Him as life and will shine forth the divine light as the lampstand to keep the testimony of Jesus (1:9; 12:17) in our locality. We will testify of Christ’s person as God and man as well as Christ’s human living, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, descension, and second appearing. The shining of the light is a testimony. In every aspect of our daily life we should be shining forth Christ. This shining is the shining of the lampstand. We need love, life, light, and the lampstand. Then we will be rewarded by the Lord with what we live and are in Him.
The Paradise in Luke 23:43 is the pleasant and restful place where Abraham and all the dead saints are (16:23-26). But the Paradise of God in Revelation 2:7 is the New Jerusalem (3:12; 21:2, 10; 22:1-2, 14, 19), of which the church is a foretaste today. This Paradise will be much more pleasant than the garden of Eden. The Paradise of God is today’s church and tomorrow’s New Jerusalem. Today we are the church, and in the future the church will be the New Jerusalem. Today the church life is the precursor of this coming paradise; it is the miniature of the New Jerusalem in the coming kingdom. The church life is a small paradise. In this paradise we enjoy Christ as the tree of life. We are enjoying the crucified and resurrected Christ as the tree of life, the food supply in our spirit, as a foretaste today in the church. In today’s human society, one does not have the taste of paradise; instead, one may have the taste of hell. But when we are in the church life, we are in paradise. The Paradise of God is located in the local churches. To be in the church life is to live a life in paradise. Eventually the consummation of the church life in the age to come and in eternity will be the New Jerusalem. This enjoyment of the foretaste will usher us into the full taste of the crucified and resurrected Christ as the tree of life—our nourishment of life in the New Jerusalem for eternity, the eternal paradise with the tree of life in its center.
Today our paradise is the church life, which is a most pleasant place. Every local church is a paradise of God, where Christ is the tree of life for the overcomers to enjoy. Whoever enjoys the tree of life in the local church as the Paradise of God will be an overcomer. Yet if we do not give the preeminence to the Lord or enjoy the Lord as the tree of life, the church life may become an unpleasant place to us. Then the church is no longer at all a paradise to us. When we give the Lord the preeminence in everything and maintain our eating of Christ as the tree of life throughout the day, the church, no matter what its condition may be, becomes paradise to us. Thus, our feeling and attitude toward the church depend upon our situation. This is why the Lord indicates that we need to eat the tree of life in the Paradise of God.
In the Bible the principle is that our reward is always what we are. In other words, what we are will become our reward. There is a basic principle in the New Testament that what we will enjoy in the future we should enjoy in this age and that what we enjoy in this age will be our enjoyment in the future. This is the principle of the foretaste in the New Testament. The foretaste is a sign of the full taste to come. While we are enjoying the foretaste of the tree of life, we are looking for the full taste to come. To eat the fruit of the tree of life is to enjoy the blessing of eternal life, to enjoy eternal life itself. To have a foretaste of the fruit of the tree of life is to have an early enjoyment of the blessing of eternal life. Before the coming of the new heaven and the new earth, the Lord first gives the freshness of the blessing of eternal life, the fruit of the tree of life, as a reward to the overcomers as a foretaste and an early enjoyment in the millennial kingdom.
Strictly, “to eat of the tree of life...in the Paradise of God” in Revelation 2:7 refers to the particular enjoyment of Christ as our life supply in the New Jerusalem in the coming millennial kingdom, because this is a promise of reward made by the Lord to His overcomers. The enjoyment of Christ as the tree of life in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth will be the common portion of all God’s redeemed people, whereas the particular enjoyment of Him as the tree of life in the New Jerusalem in the coming millennial kingdom is a reward given only to the overcoming believers. If we overcome all the distractions in the church’s degradation to enjoy Christ as the tree of life in the church today, we will be thus rewarded. Otherwise, we will miss this particular enjoyment in the coming kingdom, though we will still enjoy Christ as the tree of life in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth for eternity. If we enjoy the Lord in this age, we will be rewarded with the eating of the tree of life, Christ Himself, in the New Jerusalem as the Paradise of God in the thousand-year kingdom. Therefore, we need to continue in the enjoyment of the life supply of Christ in the present church life so that we can be rewarded with the enjoyment of Christ as the tree of life in the Paradise of God, the New Jerusalem, in the millennial kingdom. In the freshness of the New Jerusalem as the Paradise of God, we will fully participate in the enjoyment of the rich life supply of Christ as the embodiment of the processed and consummated Triune God. The Lord’s promises concerning the reward and His predictions concerning the loss, at the end of each of the seven epistles, refer to His dealing with His believers in the coming millennial kingdom. They have nothing to do with the believers’ eternal destiny—their eternal salvation.