In this chapter we want to see the truth of the two kinds of fruit out of the divine life. According to the revelation of the Scriptures, there is a divine principle set up by God as His design, as His economy. This design is that God wants to dispense Himself into us human beings to live in us as our life. This divine life is a producing life, producing two kinds of fruit. God’s intention for man is revealed in the first two chapters of Genesis. God created man according to His image with the intention that man could be His vessel to contain and express Him (1:26). God Himself wanted to be man’s contents. He brought man to the tree of life in Genesis 2 because He had the desire to be within man as man’s life (vv. 8-9). This unique tree of life, which was seen at the beginning of the Bible, is also seen at its conclusion in Revelation 22. It signifies God Himself as life to us.
The human life created by God is mysterious. No one can completely understand our human life. How much more mysterious the divine life is! Because the life of God is so mysterious, God gave us a picture of this life. A picture is better than a thousand words. Immediately after God created man, He brought him to a tree called the tree of life. An apple tree or a peach tree may seemingly be easy to understand, but what about the tree of life? One Bible teacher said that the tree of life was something in the past that has nothing to do with us today. But the tree of life is not something merely in the past. If the tree of life did not have anything to do with us today, we would be altogether in a miserable situation. Thank the Lord that we can enjoy Him as the tree of life today.
The Gospel of John shows us the tree of life, illustrating Christ. If we are going to understand the tree of life in Genesis 2, we have to come to the Gospel of John. This book has twenty-one chapters that give a full, detailed explanation of the tree of life being the very embodiment of God, which is Christ. In John 15 Christ told us that He is the vine tree. The Lord Jesus also told us in the Gospel of John, “I am the...life” (14:6). He is the vine tree and the life-the tree of life. I believe that the tree of life in Genesis 2 was a vine tree. It was not like a pine tree growing upward and high toward the heavens. If Jesus were such a high and tall tree, His fruit would not be available to us. But Jesus is a vine tree who is so available for man to eat and to enjoy. In Revelation 22 the one tree of life growing on the two sides of the river signifies that the tree of life is a vine tree spreading and proceeding along the flow of the water of life (vv. 1-2).
In Revelation 2:7 the Lord said, “To him who overcomes, to him I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” According to the entire book of Revelation, the paradise of God in 2:7 is the New Jerusalem (3:12; 21:2, 10; 22:1-2, 14, 19), of which the church is a foretaste today. 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’s church life is God’s paradise. In the church life, we have some taste that we are in the paradise of God. At times we may be arguing or speaking corrupt things. But while we are meeting together, singing, praising, and praying, we have the feeling that we are in paradise. Sometimes in the church meetings we are in a kind of ecstasy. When I look at the faces of the saints in a meeting, nearly every face is smiling. This is because we are happy in the paradise of God. This world is a terrible place. Even many of the unbelievers agree with this. 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. In the New Jerusalem is the tree of life growing in the river of water of life for our eating and drinking. That will be our enjoyment in eternity. Even today we have the privilege of eating the tree of life and of “drinking at the Fountain that never runs dry” (see Hymns, #322). In the church life, we are in the paradise of God enjoying Christ as the tree of life.
Today Christ as the embodiment of God is our tree of life, and this tree of life is growing in us. The Lord Jesus told a parable of a sower going out to sow the seed (Mark 4:1-20). He is both the sower and the seed of life. He sows Himself as the seed of life into us, the earth. We are the earth that grows Christ. On the day we were regenerated, Christ was sown into our being. Our very being is the earth that contains Christ and grows Christ. We have received the divine life, and this very productive divine life is growing within us. We have to grow Christ.
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