Revelation 22:2 says that the tree of life produces twelve fruits, yielding its fruit each month. The fruits of the tree of life will be the food of God’s redeemed for eternity. They will be continually fresh, produced every month, twelve fruits yearly. Every month there will be a crop, and the tree of life will produce twelve fruits to be our life supply. This depicts that today our Triune God embodied in Christ is our enjoyment.
Our experience should not be like the children of Israel who ate the same food, the manna, every day for forty years. We should have new fruit, that is, new experiences of Christ. Some dear saints enjoy the same fruit for twenty years. They testify of their experience of Christ one year, and many years later they testify of the same experience. Eventually, they lose their taste to repeat their testimony. Their experiences are good but too old. We need new experiences of Christ.
The fact that there are twelve fruits means that the fruit of the tree of life is rich and sufficient for the completion in God’s eternal administration. The significance of the number twelve is eternal completion in God’s administration for His economy. God redeemed us to enjoy the tree of life, and this enjoyment is for God’s administration in His eternal economy.
The mention of “each month” indicates that in the new heaven and new earth the moon will still be there to divide the twelve months. The sun will also be there to separate day and night into periods of twelve hours each. The number seven represents the church and signifies that God is added to His creature, man, in His present dispensation, whereas twelve is the number of the New Jerusalem, signifying that God is mingled with man in His eternal administration. In the New Jerusalem there are the twelve foundations with the names of the twelve apostles, twelve gates which are the twelve pearls with the names of the twelve tribes, and twelve fruits of the tree of life. As far as space is concerned, the city proper is twelve thousand stadia, one thousand times twelve, in three dimensions, and its wall is one hundred forty-four cubits, which is twelve times twelve. As for time, in the new heaven and new earth, there are twelve months yearly, twelve hours daily, and twelve hours nightly.
The fruit borne by the tree of life is good for food (Gen. 2:9), good to nourish us. The water of life quenches our thirst, and the tree of life nourishes us, feeds us, and satisfies us organically (Rev. 22:14; 2:7). As the tree of life, Christ is a fruit tree for eating. He is a vine full of life for eating. For eternity, we are destined to eat Christ as the tree of life, which is the fullest expression of Jesus Christ. The riches of Christ are for us to eat and enjoy.
A vine tree does not produce material for the construction of a building but only fruit for eating. The fruit of the vine is for two purposes. First, the fruit is for the propagation and multiplication of the vine; second, it is for food to provide nourishment to the eaters. Christ today is such a vine, bearing fruit for His propagation and multiplication and for our nourishment.
When a local church is full of the fruits of life, producing new fruit every month, the abundance of life will be fully manifested. Every local church should be a place where people are fed, nourished, watered, and satisfied. However, this is not the situation in many local churches because of the absence of God’s throne in those churches. The abundance of life flows out from the throne. When God’s throne is established in a church, life flows. As soon as life flows, there is watering, refreshing, and thirst quenching. When people touch such a church, they touch living water and life, and they are spontaneously satisfied.
Our destiny and our portion for eternity will be the enjoyment of the tree of life and the water of life. The Bible concludes with a promise and a call. The promise is found in Revelation 22:14, which says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes that they may have right to the tree of life.” The call is found in Revelation 22:17, which says, “Let him who wills take the water of life freely.” Thus, the whole Bible ends with eating and drinking, with enjoying God as the tree of life and drinking Him as the water of life.
Verse 2 says, “The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” In the Bible, leaves are a symbol of man’s deeds (Gen. 3:7). According to the record of the Bible, the first time man used leaves was to make a covering for himself. The leaves of the tree of life symbolize the deeds of Christ. The regenerated believers eat the fruit of the tree of life, receiving Christ as their life and life supply inwardly, that they may enjoy the divine life for eternity; the restored nations are healed by the leaves of the tree of life, taking the deeds of Christ as their guide and regulation outwardly, that they may live the human life forever. When the nations look at the way the Lord Jesus acts and behaves, His deeds will become a source of healing to them, and this healing will maintain their human life forever.
In the Bible leaves denote man’s good Christian behavior. Good behavior can heal man’s corruption. When we enjoy Christ as the tree of life, the unbelievers are regulated by our conduct, which we live out of Christ. For example, if there are some households of saints living in an apartment building, and they come and go in a proper and modest manner, this will affect everyone in the apartment building. Such a testimony would be very helpful for the preaching of the gospel.
According to Matthew 14:34-35, after Jesus and the disciples came to Gennesaret, the people of that place brought to the Lord all who were ill. Verse 36 says, “They begged Him that they might only touch the fringe of His garment. And as many as touched were completely healed.” The healing power went out, not from the inner being of Christ but from the fringe of His garment. The Lord’s garment signifies Christ’s righteous deeds, and the fringe signifies the heavenly ruling (Num. 15:38-39). Out of Christ’s heaven-ruled deeds is the virtue that becomes the healing power. According to Numbers 15, the fringe of the garment signifies the virtue of God’s people who walk according to His regulations. The fringe was made with a blue ribbon. This revealed that their daily walk was regulated by God’s heavenly rule as indicated by the color blue, a heavenly color. When Jesus was on earth as a man, He walked in this way; His daily walk was regulated by God’s heavenly commandments. Therefore, there was with Him a virtue that could flow out to heal others.
The healing that takes place in the church life does not mainly issue from the inner being of the Lord Jesus. Rather, it primarily issues from the virtue of the Lord’s human life. In the church life we experience the Lord’s presence with us on the “sea” in the midst of the “contrary winds” (Matt. 14:24). His presence prepares the way for His virtue to flow out to reach the sick people and to heal them. This type of healing is different from the miraculous healing by divine power. The garment of Jesus does not signify His divinity. Rather, it signifies the righteous deeds of His humanity. His humanity bore the mark of the blue ribbon, of being regulated by the heavenly ruling. This produced a virtue that was capable of healing the sick. This kind of virtue can be expressed only through the proper church life where Jesus is present.
In the new heaven and the new earth, the leaves of the tree of life will be for the healing of the nations; that is, the virtue of Christ’s humanity will heal the people. In Matthew, after the boat reached its destination, the virtue of the Lord’s human deeds became so prevailing that every manner of sickness was healed (vv. 34-36). Likewise, when we have the proper church life with the Lord’s presence today, there is among us the uplifted humanity of Jesus. This uplifted humanity has the virtue signified by the fringe of Christ’s garment. If we, the church people, have the proper church life and live by Christ, we will live out His uplifted humanity. In this kind of living there will be a virtue with the power to heal those around us. We must live out the uplifted humanity of Jesus to have the virtue that can heal those surrounding us. For others to be healed means that their corrupted character is changed. Those around the church life are all in darkness and corruption. But if the church people live out the uplifted humanity of Christ, this will cause healing power to flow into them.
The sons of God are regenerated to be the new creation. The peoples of God are not regenerated but restored to their created condition that was lost due to the fall of Adam. Through Christ’s redemption, the heaven, the earth, and all created things were reconciled, redeemed back to God (Col. 1:20). Redemption is not a matter of the divine life. To be redeemed is not to be regenerated. For the heavens and the earth to be redeemed does not mean that they are regenerated. Christ’s redemption is not only for us, the regenerated people, but also for all the things in the heavens and the earth (v. 20; Heb. 2:9). The sheep in the millennial kingdom and the peoples of God outside the New Jerusalem will be the restored ones and the redeemed ones, but they have never been and will never be regenerated. The New Jerusalem will be the composition of all the regenerated, saved, and transformed persons. But the nations will be there simply as natural, restored people. From the New Jerusalem a group of kings and priests will rule over the restored nations.
After Christ destroys all the evil ones, He will set up His throne in today’s Jerusalem to gather all the nations who are left and to judge them (Matt. 25:32-46). He will separate them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. They will be judged based upon how they have treated the Lord’s brothers during the three and a half years of the great tribulation. The sheep are those who have helped the Lord’s brothers—the Jews and the Christians—during the great tribulation. These sheep will inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. Those of the nations who treated Christ’s brothers poorly will be considered as the goats. They will go directly to the lake of fire, just like Antichrist and the false prophet. The nations who are the sheep will be in the new earth as the people of God for eternity. They will be the restored and purified nations outside the city, the people who are not regenerated to have the uncreated life of God but who are restored in their created life to its original state, preserved forever by the leaves of the tree of life (Rev. 22:2b). All God’s redeemed people, including the Old Testament saints, the New Testament saints, and the saved Jews in the millennium, will be kings reigning in the realm of the eternal life over the nations (v. 5b; 21:24) who will continue to remain in the new heaven and new earth for eternity. The fruit of the tree of life will be our food on which we live. The tree of life will be the processed and consummated Triune God as our life forever. But the leaves of the tree of life will be the healing element to sustain the restored nations forever.
The nations are restored miraculously, but we believers are sustained by life. We are not the nations; we are the sons produced by regeneration and sustained by the enjoyment of the fruit of the tree of life, that is, by the essence of the tree of life. We are now enjoying the New Jerusalem as the finalization of God’s New Testament economy. For eternity we will enjoy life and life alone. We will enjoy nothing else but life.
In short, in the new heaven and the new earth the tree of life has two functions. One function is to produce the fruit to feed the believers, and the other function is to produce leaves for the healing of the nations. Healing is something miraculous. The miraculous healing through the leaves of the tree of life is related to the physical body of the nations. The fruit of the tree of life which feeds the believers is related to the divine life within them.
Revelation 11:15 says, “He will reign forever and ever.” In Revelation 22:5 we are told that the believers “will reign forever and ever.” To reign forever will be the final blessing to God’s redeemed in eternity. This reigning is an issue, a glorious, eternal, corporate consummation of our present reigning in life through the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness unto eternal life. This is a blessing we will enjoy for eternity in the new heaven and the new earth. We will be kings over the nations, reigning forever.
We need to remember that we are members of the royal family, kings of the kingly family. Even when we are at a restaurant, we should remember that we are kings eating there. We are heaven-born kings; hence, we should never sell our royal status. If we consider that we are kings, we would not act lightly, talk loosely, or behave meanly. We can even preach the gospel with this in view. We may tell others that we are kings. Then we may start our preaching of the gospel by saying, “The Bible tells me that, as a child of God, I am a king.” There are many ways to preach the gospel. We need this kind of vital preaching of the gospel.
In eternity the believers as sons of God and as the constituents of the New Jerusalem will all be kings. The angels will be serving ones (Heb. 1:13-14), serving us. They are the servants of the royal family, and we are kings over the nations. This is the kingdom of God in eternity.