The first man and woman received perfect life: Companionship with their Creator, good work, and a garden home where all their needs were provided for. But when they doubted God’s goodness and disobeyed his only rule, they were banished from their home and separated from their source of eternal life. This is the beginning of the story of Easter and of our greatest hope.
God only gave one law in the garden. It was about two trees:
Out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
– Genesis 2:9
“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,” he told them. “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17).
In the Hebrew, there is no “surely” in this verse. Instead, we have the same verb, twice, in different forms: “Die.” We can read this “…you will die die,” or as scholars have sometimes said, “dying you will die.”
The root of this word can mean “die,” but also “die prematurely.” This wasn’t a passing conversation God had with Adam in the garden. It was life-giving/life-saving advice from a loving Father to a son, spoken with the strongest of words. Twice.
But Adam and Eve did eat from the forbidden tree, and life as they knew it was over. Their access to the eternal-life-giving tree was lost forever. And so was ours.
The consequences of their choice were dire. Though it looks to us like they lived after the Fall, a process had been set in motion. They (and every human who would come after them) would be separated from the source of life – both spiritually dead and headed for an eventual physical death as well. Though meant for eternity with God, they died prematurely. Those without Jesus still do.
This doesn’t sound like a happy Easter message.
But we cannot understand the magnificence of the gift Easter morning brings us without understanding the state mankind was in when it lost access to eternal life. We cannot understand God’s generosity, his intentionality in preparing for our rescue, or the genius of his plan to save us, even while we were still sinners.
From Eden to Israel: Blessing and curse
God cursed the ground because of Adam. He cursed Eve and the serpent who offered her what she should have refused. But even in the curse is a generous blessing. One day, a descendant of Eve will crush the serpent. In the battle of good and evil, the triumphant end is never really in question.
What God does next looks like just punishment, but it’s also a blessing. So that they will not eat from the tree of life and be consigned to their sinful state forever, Adam and Eve must leave Eden. Two angels with flaming swords obstruct a return to the tree of life (Genesis 3:22-24).
The tragic story of the curse of sin in the world unfolds for most of eight more chapters, until God chooses a childless man, Abram, or Abraham, to bring blessing. Abraham’s descendants will be God’s people, he promises. And through them, the world will be blessed (Genesis 22:17-18).
But generations later, though Abraham’s descendants are many, they are enslaved and brutally mistreated. God (from the midst of a bush on fire) meets a man named Moses to plan their rescue.
God has prepared a home for them. But in this garden – in a cursed world – Abraham’s descendants must obey 613 laws. Each contains a blessing for obedience (fruitfulness, prosperity, belonging with God) and a curse for transgression that ultimately ends with them being separated – again – from God’s blessing, cast from the Promised Land, scattered, and left to their sin.
The laws in the Promised Land could have protected them and made them righteous and happy, but only if they obeyed them perfectly. They didn’t. So, an elaborate system of animal sacrifice was established to deal with their sins. But it couldn’t absolve them forever. The system became an annual reminder of their sinful nature; however, animal offerings could never really solve the problem of sin (Hebrews 10:3-4).
Generations later, when God’s people cry out to him, he gives them a king – David – and makes him a promise. One of David’s descendants will rule over a kingdom where God’s people will again find rest and live forever.
God promises David he will “plant them” in that kingdom, so that they will “dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more” (2 Samuel 7:10). God will be the King’s Father, and the King will be God’s own Son (2 Samuel 7:10-16).
Jesus and the gift of the curse reversed
The city of King David – Jerusalem – sits on a hill. In ancient times and in Jesus’ day, as God’s people climbed the hill to their holy city, they worshiped to a special set of songs – the “songs of ascent.” In one of them, Psalm 133, are these words:
Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!
It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.
– Psalm 133:1, 3
The psalm is a reminder of the garden and a hope for a future eternal life. As a boy, Jesus may have sung this song with family while climbing up to Jerusalem for the Passover.
As a man, he would be the one to make the song a reality. Life forevermore.
Jesus came to earth to bring us eternal life. He, himself, would be our source of it. But there was still the problem of the curse of sin and death. In order to reverse the curse, Jesus would have to die.
When he came to earth, Jesus quoted another psalm about the broken system for sin he would replace. “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,” he tells the Father, “but a body have you prepared for me … Behold, I have come to do your will….” (Hebrews 10:5-7).
Though he was God, he was born as we are. He took on human form and human nature and lived as one of us so he could take our sins on himself. Though it was horrible and he wished for another way, he laid down his life willingly out of obedience to the Father and love for us. Only a perfect sacrifice could take away the sin of the world, and only Jesus lived without sin.
Some people saw him for who he was – an old man named Simeon the day Jesus was dedicated at the temple. John the Baptist, who announced on Jesus’ first day of his ministry, “Behold the lamb who takes away the sins of the world.” But most people didn’t get it.
Jesus taught them about their need for a different kind of life. Eternal life, which had been available in the garden, was now available through him. He said that those who trusted him could cross over from death to life.
And he proved his power over death, raising a dead man (Lazarus) to life in front of the sisters who’d seen him die (John 17). Right before it happened, one of them, Martha, was angry that Jesus had not come sooner, while her brother was still alive.
“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus tells Martha.
She believes in a coming resurrection, but Jesus clarifies this isn’t what he means.
“I am the resurrection and the life,” he says. “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”
Just a short while later, Jesus raised Martha’s brother to life. And just a little while after that, Jesus took our sin upon himself and was killed as a cursed criminal (Galatians 3:13), making eternal life available to all who trust and abide in him (John 3:16, John 15) – not only life forever, but life with God again (John 17:1-3).
To restore us to the Father, to bring us a true and forever kind of life, a price first had to be paid for sin. The perfect sacrifice had to be made. The one who knew no sin became sin for us, the righteous for the unrighteous, once for all. No longer must we “die die.” Because of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, we can live in the Spirit in newness of life, his life. Christ’s brutal death was the kindest act in history, the most generous gift there ever was – the reversal of the curse (Galatians 3:13).
Resurrection in a garden
When Jesus first appears after his death it’s in a garden. Mary Magdalene doesn’t recognize him. She had witnessed his death, (though her testimony about it would be considered worthless). She was a woman, one with an ugly past. But Jesus had healed her, and she loved him, followed him, and supported his ministry.
“Mary,” he said after she spoke to him like a stranger.
When he called her by name, she knew immediately that it was her Rabbi. Did she remember what he had taught? “Truly, truly, I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a seed; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24 BSB). Fruit, like the original garden’s tree of life. Jesus’ body was buried and raised in a garden. The seed of his life had been planted – for Mary, for the disciples who came that day, and for all who would believe in him, even us. And as God raised him to life that day, he promises to raise us too.
He is the first of many who will rise from the dead. He is the Messiah, our sacrificially generous provider of eternal life. And from this garden, the seed he planted would begin to bear fruit.
Then, everyone who left the garden where Jesus rose ran out of it. Fear, excitement, the desire to share with others – whatever the motivation, word that Jesus was alive again spread fast, despite potential consequences, despite attempts to cover up the news. Jesus appeared to hundreds of people in his risen body. Then, he ascended to heaven, but not before telling them to take what they were already doing (telling about him) and carry the message of the astonishing gift he’d given them to the ends of the earth.
The garden kingdom
Sacrificing his only Son to bring us the gift of eternal life is the most generous thing God has ever done. The most generous thing he will do is bring heaven to earth and put us in the garden of his presence again.
Throughout time – from the Tower of Babel to the rich young ruler – humans have gone to great lengths to try to find a way to reach God by their own efforts. But Jesus told people throughout his ministry that the kingdom of God is near, even already among them. This was so because the kingdom is wherever Jesus is.
And, if we have entrusted our lives to him, we have the assurance that where he is we will also be (John 14:3). It’s a promise.
In Revelation 21, we see God’s promised holy city coming down from heaven to us. God and Jesus – the Lamb who was slain to take away the sins of the world – are on a throne, but they live among and interact with people. The city is indescribable. John uses the name of every precious stone he can think of to describe what he sees, but it is beyond our imagination (Revelation 21).
And in the center of the city is a garden. From the throne of God and the Lamb flows a clear-as-crystal river which waters the tree of life. In this garden, the tree is everywhere. Its fruit sustains God’s people, and its leaves heal them. But, best of all, the curse of the first garden is gone forever (Revelation 22).
