The tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil

A. Man in the innocence of the garden had four categories of trees — Genesis 2:9, category #1, “...every tree that is desirable to the sight.” This is designed for man’s soulish pleasure. Man observed this category and was stimulated in his soul. These trees reminded man of his status of innocence provided by God’s grace. Innocence represents reaping what God sows and the stimulation of the soul by this category of trees was a reminder of the stimulation to man’s soul by the daily provision of doctrine which was taught by Jesus Christ every evening in the garden. Doctrine resident in the soul gave Adam capacity for life and appreciation for the trees of the garden in that capacity. In other words, category #1 took care of the fact that man had a soul and he had a house for the soul, namely the body. Category #2 is food for the body. Categories 3 & 4 for volition, man’s positive and negative poles. The volition of man’s soul is the purpose for which he was created, to resolve the angelic conflict.

Principles: Before the fall man had a relationship with God. It was not eternal life, it simply is called relationship based upon creation. He had three categories which he was told to utilise:

Category #1 for the soul; to eat from trees which provided food for the body; then, right in the middle of the garden there were two trees: one was for positive volition called the tree of lives (pl), and it meant that every day he had to have capacity for life. The only way that he could appreciate God’s plan — which was grace and excluded anything which was not grace — he had to have capacity for lives. He lived day in and day out, therefore it is plural. This is not eternal life, man was not given eternal life in the garden. Man ate of this tree, man was positive toward this tree, and this gave him the capacity to appreciate who and what God was (one of two ways, the other was the Bible class held every day in the garden). Also for negative, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was forbidden. Why? Because when you have a relationship with God there are two things you don’t need: a) You don’t need works; b) You don’t need evil. Evil is what you think and works is how you put your thinking into operation.

Category #2, good for food. This is designed to satisfy and stimulate the human body. Again, in innocence man reaps what God sows. Adam did not earn or deserve the food provided. The stimulation to the taste buds was a reminder of God’s perfect grace. This category sustained the body as the house for the human soul.

Category #3, the tree of lives in the middle of the garden.

a) This was the tree of positive volition toward the plan of God.

b) This tree was only available as long as man remained in innocence or positive toward the grace plan of God.

c) The tree was no good to man in status spiritual death. Why? Because in spiritual death man has no capacity to appreciate God. And it is in the plural because this capacity had to be renewed every day. It has to do with capacity for life, not eternal life.

d) This tree was provided for man as the ruler of the world. If man is going to rule the world under God he must have capacity to appreciate God, he has to have capacity for life, for love, for happiness, for perfect environment. These capacities are not something you work up by yourself, these are God-given in grace; and the tree of lives was so designed with that in mind.

e) This tree was God’s grace provision for man who was created to resolve the angelic conflict.

f) Man was created with free will in order to resolve Satan’s appeal of his judgement of the lake of fire — Matthew 25:41.

g) The tree of life was provided to be associated with man’s positive volition in innocence to perpetuate grace blessing and man’s rulership of the world.

h) The tree of life was associated with perfect environment and life in the garden plus the perpetuation of that life under positive volition toward God’s original grace provision for man — Genesis 2:9; 3:22. The unbeliever never does appreciate these things because he is spiritually dead. What is spiritual death? It is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And with good and evil you do not know God, you do not appreciate God, you are dead to God. After the fall man is born a do-gooder, born evil, born with the knowledge of good and evil. And that is Satan’s plan, Satan’s project.

i) When man sinned he was driven from the garden and cut off from the tree of life — Genesis 3:24. The next time we see the tree of life is in eternity. Why? It isn’t needed until then. It is instant capacity for life.

k) If man in spiritual death had eaten from the tree of life his volition would no longer be the means of resolving the angelic conflict. Under spiritual death he could not even use the tree of life, it has no meaning to him at all. You cannot appreciate God under spiritual death, and spiritual death is eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

l) The purpose in creation of man could not be perpetuated after the fall of man.

m) But the purpose of creation is perpetuated after the fall by cutting off the tree of life. The tree of life is removed but the tree of knowledge of good and evil goes on into history, and it goes on and on in reversionism and being under the influence of evil.

n) The tree of life is now the cross of Christ after the fall. That is the equivalent to appreciating God. What the tree of lives did in the garden doctrine does today for the believer. So it is the cross that provides redemption toward sin, reconciliation toward man, and propitiation toward God. Here is the beginning of appreciation for God.

o) And man’s non-meritorious positive volition and/or faith in Christ is still the means of resolving the angelic conflict — Ephesians 2:8,9.

p) By remaining in the garden after spiritual death man would be perpetuated under the domination of Satan which would have doomed him to perpetual slavery under spiritual death. In other words, if he had stayed in the garden then he would have stayed under slavery because Satan was now the ruler of the world. To keep man in the garden when Satan rules the world puts man in perpetual slavery. There is no way to get out of you stay in the garden. So man had to be thrown out of the garden to get back on the garden the new way — he must be born again.

q) Furthermore, the tree of life in the garden could not provide the solution to man’s fall and/or spiritual death.

r) The tree of life does not provide redemption, reconciliation and propitiation.

s) Therefore the fall of man provides a new tree of life and perpetuates the solving of the angelic conflict.

t) The salvation work of Christ on the cross is the new tree of life which perpetuates the angelic conflict into human history after the fall.

u) So the tree of life was put out of man’s reach in the garden so that the cross of Christ can come into focus for man’s eternal salvation.

v) By expulsion from the garden after the fall the cross becomes and remains the issue of salvation — John 3:36.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

a) This the tree related to man’s negative volition.

b) This tree perfectly portrays man’s relationship to God in the garden as grace, grace, and more grace.

c) In the garden man was the ruler of the world. Man’s rulership of the world depended on his relationship to God and God’s sustaining grace.

d) This tree represents the entire policy of Satan as the ruler of the world: human good and human evil. The knowledge of good and evil is not the difference between good and evil, there is no difference! Good and evil are the same.

e) This tree was forbidden because it represents everything that hinders man’s relationship with God. Human good hinders man’s relationship with God and so does evil.

f) In innocence man did not have to know good and evil to have a relationship with God.

g) Man’s relationship in the garden was grace. Grace excludes both good and evil.

h) Along with the tree of life the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was located in the middle of the garden.

i) This dramatises the importance of man’s positive and negative volition toward God’s plan represented by the tree of life and Satan’s plan represented by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

B. Hence the importance of the divine prohibition — Genesis 2:16,17.

a) Note that spiritual death is not only no grace relationship with God but includes cognisance of systems of human good and evil.

b) Human good and evil is the policy of Satan as the ruler of this world.

c) The presence of this tree in the garden is a part of the angelic conflict.

d) God has to present Satan’s plan as a choice for man’s free will. So God’s plan is there: tree of lives; Satan’s plan is there: tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As long as man ate from the tree of lives he was choosing God’s plan, but one day he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and chose Satan’s plan, immediately making Satan the ruler of the world.

e) But God also in grace prohibited the eating of that tree. He warned against it.

f) For that tree is the sum total of Satan’s genius.

g) That tree is the way Satan has been running the world since the fall.

h) Therefore the tree of lives is provided for man’s eating under grace.

i) But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is prohibited.

j) The two tree represent the issue of man’s volition in history.

k) One tree is grace blessing, the other tree is cursing from the evil genius of Satan.

l) Disobedience to God regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil meant not only spiritual death but coming under the rulership of that creature genius, Satan.

m) The summary of Satan’s rulership policy is, therefore, human good and evil.

n) When you understand good and evil you understand the genius of Satan’s policy as the ruler of this world and how it differs from the superior genius of God’s policy of grace.

o) There are two periods of human history where man rules the world under a grace policy from God: the garden and the Millennium.

p) Both are characterised by perfect environment and both periods terminated with man in revolt against that perfect policy.

q) The first revolution was the fall of man, the second is the Gog revolution at the end of the Millennium.

r) In both cases the revolution occurred because some segment of the human race did not understand Satan’s policy of human good and evil but accepted it instead of grace.

s) For the unbeliever Satan’s policy of human good and evil can only produce spiritual death in time and the second death in the eternal lake of fire.

t) For the believer Satan’s policy of human good and evil can only produce reversionism with resultant loss of grace blessing in time and loss of surpassing grace blessing and rewards in eternity.

u) God has invented a protection against human good and evil: Bible doctrine. The protection in the garden was the tree of lives. The protection since the fall is Bible doctrine.

v) Bible doctrine resident in the soul insulates the believer against evil as well as provides the blessings of grace.

C. In the original temptation of the woman Satan used the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by relating it to pride or arrogance — the pride and arrogance of the woman. Genesis 3:1-6. Satan, in approaching the woman, wanted to keep the issue on evil. Satan understood a principle: It is not the man, it is the message. If Satan had appeared to the woman in all of his beauty she would have followed him anywhere. Satan follows certain rules in the angelic conflict, and one of them is that if you are going to get someone away from God — man had a relationship with God through creation — you must stick with the message. The message is good and evil. That is his policy, his message. He has to win her soul. It is not the communicator, it is the communication.

Eating is a non-meritorious function but when you hook it up with Satan’s plan non-meritorious function becomes violation of God’s plan, God’s will; and the act of disobedience was the first sin. In innocence mankind needed to know doctrine for orientation to grace but not human good and evil to orient to Satan’s plan.

D. Therefore three principles must be perceived to understand the policy of Satan: the doctrine of pride, the doctrine of evil, and the doctrine of human good.

The doctrine of human good

a) Human good is dead to the plan of God and the policy of God — Genesis 2:17 where the forbidden tree is called the knowledge of goods and evil. Hebrews 6:1 — “… repentance from dead works.” You must change your mind about dead works because dead works or human good is the plan of Satan, it is dead to the plan of God. Spiritual death, therefore, includes all the evil that the unbeliever thinks and all of the human good that the unbeliever does, and all the evil and human good that the reversionistic believer accomplishes — thinking or doing.

b) Human good is linked with arrogance to produce boasting — Ephesians 2:9; Romans 4:2. Human good always stimulates arrogance.

c) Human good is never acceptable to God — Isaiah 64:6. This is why the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden.

d) However, distinction should be made between Satanic human good and morality which is called good. There are three types of good: divine good, human good, morality or establishment good. Divine good: production of the filling of the Spirit and Bible doctrine; human good: the whole principle of Satan’s policy; morality or establishment good — Romans 13:1-7.

e) Human good will not save mankind — Ephesians 2:8,9; Titus 3:5; 2 Timothy 1:9.

f) The judgement of human good. There are three ways in which human good is judged: i) Human good was not judged at the cross; ii) The judgement of the believer’s human good does take place after the Rapture at the judgement seat of Christ — Romans 5:10; 1 Corinthians 3:11-16; 2 Corinthians 5:10; iii. The judgement of the unbeliever’s human good occurs at the last judgement, the great white throne — Revelation 20:12-15.