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Scripture Reading: Psa. 36:9; John 1:1-2, 4; 6:35; 10:10b; 15:1; Col. 3:4a; Rev. 2:7; 22:2, 14
The Bible is a book of the divine mysteries. As we have seen, the first mystery in the Bible is the divine economy. But this mystery has been missed, lost, and buried for centuries. Thank the Lord that in these last days He has opened up this mystery to us. We can even see such a mystery in the first two chapters of the Bible. Here the divine economy has been sown in the Word as a seed. Many of the divine truths in the divine revelation are sown in Genesis as seeds, and in the following books of the Bible these seeds grow and develop. Whatever is revealed in Genesis is developed throughout all the books of the Bible until the last book, the book of Revelation, where there is the harvest of all these truths.
The truth concerning the tree of life is sown in Genesis 2, and this truth is reaped in Revelation 22. In between Genesis and Revelation there is the development of the truth concerning the tree of life. The tree of life is for God to dispense Himself into His chosen people. The tree of life signifies God Himself as life to us. God Himself desires to be our life. We have to realize that life is mysterious, abstract, and altogether invisible. You cannot see life, but it is so real, living, organic, and powerful. Our physical life is an invisible entity, but it can be realized. Life is living, organic, vigorous, energetic, and powerful.
God desires to be life to us, but how can we realize and touch this life? It is for this reason that God as life has to be embodied. Electricity is real and powerful, but no one can see it. For the electricity to be appropriated and applied, the electricity needs to be embodied. A cable or a wire is the embodiment of electricity. The electricity is embodied in the wire. When we have the wire or the cable, we have electricity. In like manner, the tree of life is the embodiment of life. The tree is the embodiment of the divine life just as your physical body is the embodiment of your physical life. The tree of life is the embodiment of God as life, the embodiment of the divine life. The Bible reveals that the embodiment of the divine life is Jesus. Where is God? He is embodied in Jesus. Outside of Jesus there is no God. Outside of Jesus you cannot see God or find God. This is the same as saying that outside of the cable or wire you cannot see electricity or find electricity. God is embodied in Jesus, and this very God embodied in Jesus is life. This embodied God makes Jesus the tree of life.
In the Old Testament the tree of life is mentioned only once. Its mentioning in Genesis 2 is a seed of the divine truth sown there. Due to the fall of man, there is a long history of silence concerning the tree of life. Then in the New Testament we are told that God became a man. The Word in the beginning was God Himself, and this very God became flesh, a man in the flesh by the name of Jesus. In John 1:4 we are told that “in Him was life.” When God became a man, life was no longer abstract. Life was embodied in the flesh. In Jesus was life. The tree is the flesh, and the flesh is the tree. John tells us that the apostles saw this tree and touched this tree (1 John 1:1). When they touched Jesus, they touched the tree of life. They received life because in Him was life. He told us that He came that we may have life and that we may have life abundantly (John 10:10b). He did not only want us to have a small amount of life but the abundance of life. Jesus is the divine life embodied. In Him was life. Life was His content.
From my youth I was taught by many Christian teachers that Jesus came to save sinners. First Timothy 1:15 tells us that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. This is a wonderful fact in the Scriptures, but very few Christian teachers told me that Jesus came that we may have life. Jesus came not only to be our Savior but also to be the embodiment of life. When we believed in Him, we not only got saved, but we also received the divine life because He is the embodiment of this life.
One day the Lord Jesus told people that He is the bread of life (John 6:35). He is not only life but the bread of life so that we can eat Him. The bread of life is the life supply in the form of food, like the tree of life (Gen. 2:9), which is also the life supply “good for food.” We need to realize that Jesus is eatable. I was a Christian for many years and never heard that I could eat Jesus. In John 6:57 the Lord Jesus said, “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me.” The bread of life is surely something eatable. For Jesus to tell us that He is the bread of life implies that He is eatable, and He told us directly that we can eat Him. We live because of Him when we eat Him. We live by what we eat. My eating three times a day helps me to be energetic and vigorous. Dieticians tell us that we are what we eat. The more we eat Jesus, the more we become Jesus. We live by what we eat, and we are what we eat.
Jesus also told us that He is the true vine (15:1). He is the vine tree. We all know that a vine tree is not a tall tree. 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 enjoy. He is not a tall tree but a long tree. In John 15 Jesus told us that He is the vine, then in Revelation 22:2 we see that the one tree of life grows on the two sides of the river, which signifies that the tree of life is a vine, spreading and proceeding along the flow of the water of life for God’s people to receive and enjoy.
The New Jerusalem is a square city. Its length, breadth, and height are all twelve thousand stadia (21:16). A stadion equals about six hundred feet, so twelve thousand stadia is about thirteen hundred and fifty miles. The New Jerusalem is a mountain on the top of which is the throne of God. Out of this throne proceeds a river of water of life (22:1), and along the river grows the tree of life. The river begins from the throne and reaches all the twelve gates of the city. In order to do this the river must spiral its way through the entire city to reach all the twelve gates. The vine tree begins from the throne and grows spirally around the mountain along the banks of the river. Eventually, it passes through all the twelve gates.
How long is this vine tree? This vine reaches every corner of the inhabited earth. It is long enough to reach Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Bolivia, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Russia, China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Jesus as the marvelous vine tree is growing around the globe. It is not a tall tree from the earth to the heavens, but it is a long tree growing spirally around the globe. Jesus is not a pine tree but a vine tree spreading and growing over the entire earth. In John 15 the Lord Jesus told us directly that He is the vine, and in Revelation 22 the tree of life is a vine. We should not think that there are two vines. There is only one vine, one tree of life. This vine tree is in Genesis 2 as the tree of life and in John 15 as the true vine, and in Revelation 22 it is growing spirally around the mountain of the New Jerusalem to reach all God’s chosen and redeemed people. We must be brought into the realization and into the vision of the Lord Jesus as the tree of life, the embodiment of the divine life, the long and spreading vine tree.
In Genesis 2 there was the tree of life, and in Revelation 22 there will be the vine tree, the tree of life. On the one hand, the tree of life was an item in the past. On the other hand, the tree of life will be an item in the future. But we must also realize the good news that the eating of the tree of life is something for today. Revelation 2:7 says, “To him who overcomes, to him I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God.” The tree of life is available in the church life today. There is a basic principle in the New Testament that what we will enjoy in the future we should enjoy in this age, and what we enjoy in this age will be our enjoyment in the future.
In the New Testament there is the principle of the foretaste. The foretaste is a sign of the full taste to come. God has prepared the tree of life for our eternal enjoyment, but today we have to enjoy the tree of life as a foretaste. If we do not have the foretaste today, we could never have the full taste in the next age, the age of the kingdom. Undoubtedly, we will enjoy the tree of life in the New Jerusalem in the future as the full taste. But today in the church life we can enjoy the tree of life in the way of a foretaste. If we do not enjoy the Lord Jesus today as the tree of life in the way of a foretaste, we will miss the particular enjoyment of Him as the tree of life in the New Jerusalem in the coming millennial kingdom as a reward to the overcoming believers.
The Paradise of God in Revelation 2:7 refers to the New Jerusalem, of which the church is a foretaste today. Today’s church life is a miniature of the Paradise of God, the New Jerusalem. The church life is a small paradise. In this paradise we enjoy Christ as the tree of life. Without eating, there is no enjoyment. To eat of the tree of life, that is, to enjoy Christ as our life supply, should be the primary matter in the church life. In today’s Christendom there is very little eating and very little enjoyment of Christ. In the Lord’s recovery we need to have the enjoyment of Christ every day. All day long we need to eat Jesus and drink of Jesus. While we are enjoying the foretaste of the tree of life, we are looking for the full taste to come. We are enjoying Him by eating Him as the tree of life and the bread of life.
We not only eat Him, but we also are united to Him. We are now His branches and are a part of the great vine. We enjoy the fruit of this vine, and we also enjoy the very life-juice as the branches. We are not only the eaters but also the branches. As the branches of the great vine, we can abide in Him, and He abides in us. What an enjoyment! We not only eat Him, but we also abide in Him. Christ as the tree of life is for the divine economy to dispense God Himself into you and me. As the branches of this great vine, we are abiding in Him, and He is abiding in us. Then there is a dispensing of God into us, a dispensing of life from the tree into the branches. The tree of life is the very embodiment of God as life to us. Now we are united to Him organically. As we abide in Him and He abides in us, this embodied God is dispensing Himself into us to make us God-men. Furthermore, this embodied God is dispensing the divine gold into us to make us gold men. Praise Him for the divine dispensing of the divine gold into our being to make us all gold men! Praise Him for the tree of life, the embodiment of God as life, to be eaten and enjoyed by us to make us men of life!
