Praise the Lord for the day we received the Lord Jesus! He is the tree of life. “In Him was life” (John 1:4). The tree of life is good for food, and Jesus as the bread of life is also good for food. The best way to receive Jesus as the bread of life into us is by eating. We are a living container. We received Jesus into us by eating Him. I have been eating for about seventy years, but I never really understood the right meaning of eating. Recently I have learned something about eating in a scientific way. When anything is eaten, it is digested and assimilated into the blood system. Eventually, what is eaten becomes the very cells and organic tissues of our being. It simply becomes us. The dieticians tell us that we are what we eat. We are composed of all the elements we eat. It is the same spiritually. If we eat Jesus all the time, we will be composed with Jesus. God made man as His container with His image, and then He put this living container before a tree symbolizing Himself as life. There man was to take God in by the way of eating. The Word tells us that the tree of life was good for food (Gen. 2:9). The only way to take anything into us in order that it might become us is by eating. God is good for eating. God is edible. God presented Himself to man in the form of food.
God’s first attempt to cause man to take Him in as food was a failure because of man’s unfaithfulness in the garden of Eden. Man did not eat of the tree of life. Instead, he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and fell. For this cause God Himself became a man. He came to redeem man by putting Himself through a process. He has been processed for us to take Him in. God again came in the form of food to man.
In His first attempt God presented Himself to man in the form of food. In His second attempt, He did the same. However, there was a difference between the first and second attempt. In a sense, the tree of life did not need any processing, but the bread of life does. In Genesis 2, He was the tree of life, ready to eat. But in John 6 as the bread of life, a process is necessary, for man had fallen, and there was the need of redemption. Redemption is a kind of process. In the book of Exodus, the Passover lamb had to be processed in a certain way before it could be eaten (Exo. 12:9). The lamb was killed and the blood was shed. Then the blood was struck on the door post and the meat of the lamb eaten. God instructed that the lamb must be roasted with fire. This is a process of cooking. Through the cross, Jesus has been processed that we might take Him in by eating. This eating includes redemption, for the processing includes the shedding of blood.
John 6 troubled me for many years, for Jesus firstly said that He was the bread of life (John 6:35), but eventually He said that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood (John 6:53). What kind of bread is this? Bread is something of the vegetable life, and blood is of the animal life. But today I am clear. Christ has many aspects. In one aspect He is the bread, and in another aspect He is the lamb with the flesh and blood. So eventually He is the Lamb-bread. Praise the Lord! Christ is the Lamb-bread, processed and good for eating. When we eat this One we receive the remission of sins and the imparting of life. His blood washes away all the negative things, and His life imparts into us everything positive. Hallelujah!
When we come to the end of the Bible, the tree of life appears again. The tree of life was there in the beginning, and seemed to be taken away. But eventually it appears again. This time it is seen growing in a flow of living water that proceeds out of the throne of God and the Lamb. “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life” (Rev. 22:1-2a). Who is the Lamb? We know that this is the redeeming One. But in eternity, the blood does not flow. In this picture it is the living water that flows out of the Lamb. When the Lord was on the cross, two things flowed out of His side: blood and water (John 19:34). Blood is for redemption, and water is for imparting life. When we get into eternity, we will still see that Christ is the Lamb, but at that time we will not need the blood. We will only need the water. The blood came first to wash us, and the water followed to impart life into us. In eternity, Christ is still the Lamb, but we do not need the blood any longer. Satan, and all the trouble he caused, for which we needed the blood, will then be in the lake of fire. All the negative and sinful things will be gone. We will not need the blood, but we will still need the water of life with the tree of life growing in it.