Text:  Genesis 2:4-9, 15-17; 3:1-7, 22-24; Revelation 22:1-5                       Ash Wednesday

The Fruit of Two Trees

            In the name of him who loved us and gave himself for us, dear friends in Christ:  The fundamental truths of the Christian faith are those that declare the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.  These truths include the fact that he is the fully divine, eternal, Son of God; and that to save fallen mankind he entered his own Creation, and became fully human by his birth of a virgin mother – so he is both God and man.  Furthermore, that to complete the plan of salvation, he suffered and died to atone for the sins of the world, that he rose from the dead on the third day, that he ascended into heaven, and that he will return one day to judge all people.  Those are the most basic truths.  Every Christian person believes them; and if not, no matter what the person says or calls himself, he’s not a Christian – he’s still out there in the world’s barren wilderness somewhere, and not to be found in the garden of God that we call the church of Christ. 

            But what about those of us who are in the garden—who believe the basics of the faith?  If we all believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, then why are there so many different Christian denominations?  Now, someone will respond that it’s because we have “different interpretations” about things.  Okay … but why is that?  Why is it that when one person looks at a passage he says it means this, while another comes along and says, no, it means that?  If we both speak the same language and we’re both reading the same words, then how can we say the words mean totally different things?

            There are, of course, a lot of reasons for this. Sometimes it’s because of human pride and stubbornness; and I’ll be the first to admit that some theological differences amount to little than splitting hairs with semantics:  you say “To-May-to”, and I say “To-Mah-to”; but we’re really talking about the same thing:  that red fruit used to make ketchup and spaghetti sauce. On the other hand, many – no, most – differences in the interpretation of Scripture run much deeper than that.  We come to discover that we’re not disputing the precise meanings of individual words and phrases; no, we’re really talking about a fundamentally different way of understanding what the Lord is showing us in his Word.  It’s as if he holds up a piece of fruit that I say is an orange, and someone else comes along and says, no, that’s an apple.  In such a case, one of us is mistaken.  The apples and oranges of God’s Word that I am referring to are the Law and the Gospel. Though they are both the Word of God, they are as different as the fruit of two different species of trees.  And just as you can’t make an apple pie with oranges – because if you try you’ll end up with a big sloppy mess – so also, confusing Law and Gospel will make a total mess of your understanding of God and how it is that you relate to him.  In this year’s series of Lenten messages, I hope to help you better to distinguish the difference between the Law and the Gospel; and just as importantly, how to apply that difference both to the way you hear and read God’s Word, and also to the way you live your life in Christ.  So, understanding that this is our goal, let’s begin:

            Apart from the most basic faith in Christ, there is nothing in theology more important than ability to distinguish between Law and Gospel, so it shouldn’t surprise us that the Lord lays it out for us very clearly already in the very first chapters of the first book of the Bible. There, as we heard in the readings – and which suggested the theme I’m working with here – he presents it to us in the form of the fruit of two different trees.  These two trees help us to see just how different the Law and the Gospel are, and also what are the results of mistaking or confusing their respective fruits. 

            The shortest explanation of the Gospel is this: It’s what God does for you.  It includes everything in the past that he’s done for you, everything that he’s doing now, and everything that he will do for you in the future.  So, in a broad sense it includes your creation, this world he’s given you to live in, the way he takes care of you now, and the heaven that he has prepared to take you to one day.  In a narrower sense, the Gospel is the work of Jesus Christ to redeem you from sin and hell by his own suffering and death on the cross.  Usually when you hear me say the word “Gospel”, that’s what I am referring to.  But everything about the Gospel, either in its broad or narrow sense, I want you to see, is about God giving you life and filling it with meaning and good things. It’s all about his work for you, and never, ever is it about something that you are required, expected, or even able to do for him.  The Gospel is symbolically represented in the Garden of Eden by the Tree of Life.  You eat its fruit, and you live forever. It’s that simple; and there are no strings or conditions attached to it.  Eat the fruit and you live.  That’s the Gospel.

            The Law, on the other hand, is most simply described as what God requires of you.  It has to do with all the “Thou shalts and Thou shalt nots” we find in the Scriptures.  The Law includes everything that God expects of you if you are to go on happily living in his beautiful Garden.  And that’s important:  the Law always comes with conditions.  With the Law it’s always, “If you obey, then this will happen to you; and if you don’t, well, then that will happen.” Incidentally, the this associated with obedience is always infinitely preferable to the that connected to disobedience.  And there are never any exceptions to the conditions.  The Law is the Word of God, and the Word of God cannot be broken.  We find the Law represented by the tree that stands in the center of the Garden; it’s the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  With it was connected the only prohibition and condition that God gave to our first parents.  He said, “Don’t eat its fruit.”  That was the prohibition.  And the condition followed:  “If you do, you will surely die.”  It was that simple.  Don’t eat the fruit; if you do, you die.  That was the Law.  It was the only real Law they had.

            Now, I still run into a lot of people who think that the Lord was pretty mean or foolish to set so potentially dangerous a tree right in the middle of his beautiful garden, so before I go on, I think it bears mentioning again that he actually had a great and loving purpose for it. As a matter of fact, the reason was love.  The Lord made our first parents in his own image; and God is love.  And when I say love, I don’t mean the romantic attraction that men and women feel for each other, or even the feeling of affection we have for parents, friends, and children.  That’s all very nice and makes us feel good, but strictly speaking, it’s not love in the biblical sense.  Love, the perfect, divine love that God has, really doesn’t have anything to do with feelings; it has to do with a determined commitment to do, and to serve, and to give to the object of your love, without any thought for the personal cost or sacrifice that’s involved.  My confirmation students are required to understand that love is “self-sacrificial devotion”.  If you love someone, you commit yourself to his or her ultimate good no matter what price you have to pay, even if it costs you your life.  That’s love.

            And because our first parents were created in God’s image of love, that’s the way they loved each other.  They had the perfect relationship:  each one totally devoted to serving and taking care of the other one. They were also totally devoted to God and as such, they needed to have a way to express their love for him.  But that’s where we run into a problem.  By definition, God has no wants or needs. He’s complete in himself, lacking nothing.  He provides for us – that’s why he’s God; so there’s really nothing we can do to serve or take care of him.  So how can you show self-sacrificial devotion to God?  The answer is:  you can’t – unless he provides you a way. And he did for Adam and Eve.  He gave them the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  They expressed their love for God by denying themselves – by sacrificing their ability to eat the fruit of that tree.  So far from being a dangerous trap designed to test their obedience, the tree was a place of worship, a place where they could show God their love for him. That’s why it was in the center of the garden.  People sometimes say to me, if I had been one of them, I’d have chopped that tree down – but understand that to them that would be like destroying your church. And we know just how unthinkable and awful that is.

But because it was their place of worship, the place where they expressed their love for God, it was exactly the place Satan chose to make his attack. That’s the way it always is.  The devil spends most of his time working on deceiving people in the church – he doesn’t have to waste his time on those outside:  they’re already deceived.  And we know from this evening’s very familiar Scripture readings that he was successful in causing our first parents to stumble into his deception – but I want you to see how.  He tricked them.  He told them lies.  He told them that eating the fruit of the Law tree would not really cause them to die.  He told them eating it would make them better than they were – that it would make them more like God.  And hey, being like God would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? Why, if they were more like him, they wouldn’t be so dependent upon him for everything.  They’d be better able to take care of themselves.  Why, if they were more like him, they might even be able to do something truly worthy for him to show him their love – something far more spectacular than simply doing what he asked and avoiding a certain kind of fruit.  It made so much sense, they could hardly resist the temptation – and they didn’t.

            And you know what happened as a result:  hoping to become wise, they became fools; and according to his unbreakable Word, the Lord condemned them both to die – to return to the dust from which they were taken.  There were other consequences as well:  they lost God’s image and the capacity to truly love.  The love they had for each other and for God was twisted and turned inward on themselves.  And their lives became hard and filled with bitterness and pain.  Creation itself, once their faithful servant, became antagonistic to them.  And lastly, the Lord expelled them from the beautiful garden he’d prepared so that they would have to eke out their existence in less favorable places.

            This last penalty, however, turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  The Lord threw them out of the garden to keep them away from the Tree of Life.  He did not want them to eat of its fruit and end up living forever in their fallen state.  That would mean living forever in the body – but being forever dead in sin on the inside.  So the Lord dispatched an angel to remain there with a flaming sword to kill anyone who tried to approach the Tree.  The only way to get to the Tree of Life thereafter was through death.

            But in his infinite mercy, the Lord made that possible. Before he cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden, he promised them the Savior – one who would restore them to life and to God’s perfect image of love.  And in the fullness of time, the Savior was sent into the world – that’s the Gospel in the narrow sense that I mentioned earlier:  The Lord Jesus’ atonement for the sins of the world on the cross.  That’s the Gospel.  That’s the Tree of Life.  And the fruit of the Tree is his sacrificed body and blood that he gave up in his devotion to you.  Eat that fruit by faith, that is, trust in him, and you live forever.  But to get to the Tree, you have to die.

            How?  Well, understand that everyone outside of the Garden of God is still eating from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Remember, it’s the Law tree.  You might say that people have a hereditary taste for its fruit.  And what I mean is that everyone understands right and wrong – the dos and don’ts of God’s commands.  And because all people are deceived by Satan, we still think that we become wise and virtuous – more like God – by eating this fruit, that is, by attempting to obey the Law.  All of the world’s religious systems are built on the idea that if pitch your tent at the base of the Law tree and eat enough of its fruit, that is, if you are good enough and obey all the rules, sooner or later you will become like God. You can earn your way back into his good graces and be admitted back into the Garden of Paradise.  But it doesn’t work that way.  Eating the fruit of the Law tree can only kill you.  That’s what God designed its fruit to do.  Sadly, the majority of people never understand that.  They keep eating its fruit, thinking that they’re getting better.  Sadder still is that most of them die believing it.

            But when by the power of the Holy Spirit the fruit of the Law tree does its proper work, you come to understand that despite your sincerest efforts to obey the rules, you’re really not getting any better. You see that on the inside, you’re still dead in sin.  You’re still filled with wicked, selfish thoughts and desires.  You still can’t love anyone but yourself.  Then you can see that you stand condemned before God and you can give up the life of trying to get better on your own.  At that point, you’re ready to face the sword the angel carries.  We call it repentance.  It’s the dying to self – dying to dependence on self – surrendering the works of the flesh by which we try to earn our way back into God’s favor – and turning in trust to Christ who did it all for us.  That’s eating the fruit of the Tree of life.  Then we are counted as having died with him on the cross, and his perfect obedience and love of God is reckoned as our own.  More than that, his Spirit working within us actually begins to restore us to the image of God.

            And so, here we are.  Having passed by the angel with the sword, through the death of repentance, to the Tree of Life, now we’re back in the Garden, so to speak.  It’s the church of Christ.  And in this Garden, we still have two trees to choose from.  We have the Law and the Gospel – the commandments and the cross. You might think that having been put back here by God’s grace, we’d never make the same dumb mistake of eating from that Law tree again.  But we always do.  Satan’s same old tricks and deceptions work on us all the time. Despite all we’ve learned and been through, we still fall for the devilish lie that we become wiser, more like God, or better Christians if we work harder to try to obey the Ten Commandments.  We still judge our spiritual progress and that of others according to how much more of the fruit of the Law tree we eat.  We still stupidly choose the death we have to work to for over the life freely given to us by Christ.

            And so our lives in this earthly Garden are ones of constantly seeing that we keep eating the forbidden fruit – that we’ve fallen yet again – which only proves that we love and trust ourselves more than we love and trust Christ.  But then, through his Word, we hear the Lord walking through the Garden.  He calls us out of hiding and confronts us with the fact we’ve done it again.  Then he calls us to die to self through repentance, and to come back to eat of the Tree that gives forgiveness and new life.  That’s where he would have us remain always – beneath the cross of Jesus. That’s where we can eat and live.

            In our Lenten meditations together in God’s Word this year, I pray that we will all learn how to better tell the difference between Gospel apples and Law oranges.  And further, that we’ll learn to keep them separate and distinct from now until that time when the Lord takes us to live in his heavenly Garden of Paradise where the Tree of Life grows on both sides of the River and that other Tree cannot be found.  God grant it to us for Jesus sake.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!