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A Garden of Soul Provision
By John Gavazzoni
It's popularly presumed that, before sin entered the picture, Adam walked with God in sweet unbroken fellowship along with the woman, Eve, taken from his side to be his complement. In fact, though, there is nothing in the Genesis account to indicate that they had such a relationship. It is recorded that God did speak to them. He gave his permission to eat "of all the trees of the garden," but with one exception: "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it, for in the day you eat thereof, dying you shall die." He also commissioned them to "be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue (conquer) it." But there was little in the way of conversation, for all we know from the record is that Adam only replied briefly with great trepidation to two questions from the Lord, and Eve once to one question upon and after their sin of eating from the forbidden tree.
Even had there been more conversation, that, in itself, would not have constituted a relationship of fellowship, of communion. Fellowship with God involves the Lord opening up Himself to us, bringing us into an intimate, experiential knowledge of Himself which essentially means us being brought to know Him as the love that He is. It involves also God opening us up to Him. In the New Testament, this knowledge is conveyed by the Greek word, "gnosis." That first couple had no such a knowledge of God during their stay in the Garden of Eden (delight) for "all the trees of the garden" provided for their nourishment and enjoyment were for the provision of their soulical/soilish existence. Have you ever wondered why the tree of life did not attract their attention that they would want to enjoy its fruits along with "all the trees of the garden?"
Might they have sensed something foreign, alien, and strange about that tree? Did they sense something ominous that seemed so out of place with the tree's promise of life-provision? Did they see without understanding a menacing-something? The composer of the song, The Holy City, wrote of it: "...the shadow of a cross arose upon a lonely hill." Strange that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which would be death to them, was seen, by Eve, as good for food, pleasant to the eye, and a tree to be desired to make one wise.
The text does not indicate any misperception on her part. It was all those things as pertaining to their soulical existence. Beware of that which is good for the soul which does not lead to what is good for the spirit, for otherwise the soulical leads to soulishness and death. By soulishness I mean mostly the self-centered self. The garden of delight was created as a delight for the soul of man, for man as a soul. The garden scene was a scene of the soul and for the soul.
St. Paul made it clear: "the first man was of the earth, earthy, the last Man was the Lord from heaven." "The first Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a life-giving Spirit." When God created man on the sixth day of creation, He saw that it was all very good....good soulically; good materially, but good spiritually? Well yes, but only in the sense that it was preparatory for that which is spiritual. That was yet to come. Yet to come was God and man becoming home to one another: God taking man as His habitation, while providing Himself as many rooms, many abodes for mankind's dwelling. Jesus described it as man's participation in the reality of Him being in the Father, and the Father in Him: "...That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us..."
So this brings us to the matter of restoration. Scripture is clear, God will restore all things/all mankind; restore as in returning all to its original state. But do we want to be returned to our original state of soul-being? Do we want to start all over again from that point of corruptibility and mortality? Adam and Eve were corruptible, otherwise they couldn't have been corrupted. They were mortal, otherwise they could not have died. When Peter, preaching on the Day of Pentecost, prophesied of the restitution (KJV) of all things, is that what the Spirit of prophecy had in mind?
Strong's Exhaustive concordance has the KJV "restitution" first as "reconstitution." Will the reconstitution take us "back" further than Eden to our original being in the infinity of God? To overcomers (and all humanity will ultimately attain that state), the Lord has promised to grant us to eat of the tree of life (metaphorically receiving Christ as our life). Will the restoration of all things be a reconstitution of the earthy beyond the garden condition all the way to the heavenly? Yes, it will! For God took from the spirit of our begotten being, formed from it the creaturely version of who we are, sent us through death and out of death to glorification, to reconstitute creaturehood back into sonship, enriching sonship by the process.
Creaturehood, by some definition, and in some sense, involves a separation, a disconnect, from the begotten base of our being. The purpose of God involves a unity or oneness of togetherness: "for this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh" (NAS). The reader might find the thesis of this article more understandable by reading our other article, "Separation Is Good." Out from within the Oneness of the Divine Nature, all things have been separated in order to be reunited. This is a mystery re: Christ and the ecclesia, His bride. As Eve was separated out from Adam, that they might become together one flesh, so it must be with Christ and His bride. When Eve was still inside Adam, that condition was good, but when God divided/separated Eve from out of Adam, that they might come together and become one flesh, this was the better leading to the best.
For it is through the suffering of corruptibility and mortality, i.e., being corrupted to death, that the full riches of our sonship will be drawn forth for full disclosure, even to ourselves first, and then outward to the whole of the creation in which we share. This I believe is what is meant by "the Spirit searches out the deep things of God." The Spirit of God searches out its own depths to bring forth this of which I speak. "That I might know...the fellowship of His sufferings" wrote Paul. The death that comes from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is death without faith. To eat of the tree of life is death with faith. The former leads to, and is consummated by the latter.
The way to the tree of life has been reopened to us in Christ. No longer does a cherubim with a flaming sword guard the way. For the death that makes the life of that tree necessarily glorious, has been died once for all. The death factor is in place. Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, is also the death that belongs to that resurrection. You can't have one without the other.
Jesus qualified as the Good Shepherd in the Gospel of John because the Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. In that parable, He is also the One who, again qualifying as the Shepherd, goes through the door into the sheepfold to lead the sheep to pasture, compared with the thief who goes in some other way. Dying for the sheep, and going through the door are the same qualification. The door is His death, but He also said He is the Door. Jesus said He is the resurrection, and in this parable we see that He is also the death.
This is Hebrew parallelism at its best. I repeat: He goes through the door, and He is the Door. Notice how all those qualifications intersect. He dies for the sheep. He goes through the door into the sheepfold. At the same time He is the Door. The door is His death, and He is that Door, that death. I repeat again: Thus as the Door, He is death for the sheep. He goes through the Door, yet He is the Door. He goes in the door into the sheepfold as the Door of death, and leads them out into green pastures as the resurrection and the life.
The brazen serpent that God commanded Moses to make and hang on a pole was a type of Christ. Fiery serpents sent as a judgment of God because of Israel's disobedience in the wilderness, had bitten many of them and many were dying. In this typology, the serpents are death-inflictors. Christ becomes the all-summarizing death inflictor ("know you not that your old man was crucified with Christ..."), leading to Him being the Life-giving Spirit out of death. Union with Christ kills, but thank God, in that same union is life, and that more abundantly.
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