The way for man to contact God as the tree of life was closed due to man’s fall by God’s glory, signified by the cherubim, God’s holiness, signified by the burning flame, and God’s righteousness, signified by the slaying sword (Gen. 3:24). The slaying sword is for executing God’s righteousness. God’s glory, God’s holiness, and God’s righteousness were the gatekeeper around the tree of life.
This closed way was, in the New Testament, opened by the Lord through His death who fulfilled all the requirements of God’s glory, holiness, and righteousness. Hence, now the crucified Christ becomes the reopened way for man to contact God as the tree of life (John 14:6; Heb. 10:19-20). In John 14:6 the Lord said, “I am the way and the reality and the life.” He became the way by being crucified. Hebrews 10 says that today a new way and a living way has been opened for us through His death. Christ with His death today is the reopened way for man to contact God as the tree of life.
Now we want to see the way the God-man is born of God through regeneration, the first item of the organic salvation of Christ. In the creating Christ of all things as the Word of God is the divine life (John 1:1-4). In John 1 there are five great events in the history of the universe: creation (v. 3), incarnation (v. 14), Christ being the Lamb of God for redemption (v. 29), Christ’s becoming the life-giving Spirit for transformation (vv. 32, 42), and the building up of the house of God with Christ as the ladder bringing heaven to earth and joining earth to heaven (v. 51). Ultimately, the consummated New Jerusalem will be the very Bethel, the house of God. Christ as the ladder is for the traffic between heaven and earth. The angels of God, the serving ones, ascend and descend on this ladder to serve us. We are the house, the enjoyers.
In writing about Christ as the Word of God, speaking for God and revealing God, John chose these five events. In creation Christ spoke God. The creation speaks for God. Psalm 19 says that the heavens declare the glory of God and that without a voice heard, the creation still speaks (vv. 1-4). Paul said in Romans 1:20 that God’s eternal power and divine characteristics can be seen by man through ’s creation. Eventually, millions of items of God’s creation are praising God at the end of the Bible (Rev. 5:11-14). Creation is speaking God. That is the word of Christ speaking. Incarnation continues to speak and reveal God. John 1:29 says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” This is also a big speaking. Then there is the transforming Spirit transforming the men of clay into stones for the building of Bethel, which will be the consummated New Jerusalem.
These five great events in the history of the universe are the “trunk” of John 1. Out of this trunk a little branch springs up. This branch is that in this Word is life, and the life is the light that shines with the life (vv. 4-5). The divine life in Christ is the light of men shining with the divine life over men in darkness.
Whoever receives this shining light and believes into Christ as the Word of God who contains God’s divine life will have the authority to become children of God (vv. 11-12).