OF the seven promises, which in the battle for God and His Christ must stimulate, spur on and inspire the victor, the first is, that he that overcometh shall eat of the Tree of life.
It was eating of the Tree of life, whereby our break with Paradise became accomplished fact.
Though the language, which in Genesis narrates that break with Paradise, be ever so mysterious, it states with utter clearness, that after man’s break with his God, the break with his Paradise was bound to follow. This was necessary for the reason, that he who remained in Paradise would be free to partake of the Tree of life, and because the mere thought, that a creature fallen away from God should eat of the Tree of life, would have been horrible and monstrous.
To prevent this horror, they who had risen in revolt against their God had at once to be removed from the garden of Eden, and immediately afterward a watch of heavenly Cherubim placed itself between them and their lost Paradise. Cherubim, who turned the loveliness of their heavenly appearance toward the inside of Paradise, and sent out toward the curse-laden earth, and toward man who had brought that curse upon it, their flaming terrifying glint and gleam. Those same angels, who at other times minister salvation to God’s humanity, here stand between man and eternal life. They shut off Paradise from him and with it the entrance of God’s blessed heaven. So here is the starting-point of all the misery, that has pursued the sinner.
We feel the misery, because we have the remembrance of Paradise. It is the homesickness after that forfeited and lost Paradise, that in all forms rasps the soul. The stronger that homesickness after the Paradise that is gone from us wakens in our soul, the deeper the lancet of misery enters into our soul. For this reason the suffering of the saints moved them so much more deeply, than the “people who are of the world,” that God’s prophets were moved by it yet more violently than the rank and file of worshipers of His holy Name, and, above all that no one has succumbed more entirely under this suffering, than the Son of man, when in Gethsemane His soul became troubled even unto death, He Who alone among all bore the full, clear consciousness of that Paradise in His heart.
And the first word, that the exalted King of God’s kingdom, on Patmos speaks to His confidant, is, that for him who overcometh, that break with Paradise shall be brought to nought; that the same Cherubim, who drove Adam and Eve out from Paradise, and kept them out, shall escort His blessed ones back to it again, and that to them the right and the power shall be restored, to eat again of the Tree of Life. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God” (Rev. 2, 7).
THIS, then, is the first, the most glorious of what is accorded them who die in Christ. Here is the key-note of the salvation, that is appointed them. What was lost, comes back. The Paradise of God is restored to them.
To receive a new good, is less wonderful than to see a good that was lost given back to you again.
Only think of Jesus’ touching parables of the lost sheep, and of the lost penny.
When the lost penny is found again, she who lost the same, says Jesus, calls her neighbors together, to rejoice with her. When the lost sheep is traced, the faithful shepherd puts it upon his shoulder, being glad, and coming home he calls his friends and neighbors together, saying unto them: “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.” And when the prodigal son is found again, the happy father says in his delight: “It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this my son was dead, and is alive again.” In keeping with this Jesus’ entire appearance is a seeking of what had drifted off, a finding again of what was lost.
And in this connection is also His first promise, His first word to His saints, that he that overcometh shall not be brought into a state of happiness that is foreign to him, but that the homesickness in his heart obtains eternal satisfaction and that he returns to the Paradise once lost.
Into that same Paradise of his God, from which once the angels of God drove him forth, he, after having overcome, is again ushered in. Ushered in to the center, to the middle of the garden, to where the central point of all Paradise-glory is, close to the Tree of Life, that he might eat thereof, and live forever.
THE look of him who dies, is therefore not directed to a foreign, to him a mysterious future, which does not speak to him. but to the past, to what slipped away from him, to what he lost and sinned away.
Jesus in our dying calls us back to the riches of God’s almighty lovingkindness in our creation.
Our state of sin and misery becomes a middle-act, but back of it is God, and His almightiness, and His wondrous creation, when the sons of God rejoiced and the morning stars sang together. When God created man after His image, pure, holy and glorious, and when for man, created after His image, God had prepared Paradise, baptized in a wealth of blessedness, of which in the homesickness of our heart the memory lives on, and in which the goodness of God had glorified itself.
Now all this was gone. To our sense it was all brought to nought. It was, as though it no longer existed. And as though there must be built for us something new, if there would ever be again an habitation, to occupy with gladness of heart.
But so Jesus does not understand it.
No, thrice no, He says to all His saints. That Paradise is not gone, it was only lost. And that lost Paradise returns. What was lost I have found back, even as God has kept it for you.
And this will make your eternal joy so rich, so abounding, so overwhelming, that after dying in the halls of unfading light you will call together your friends and neighbors, saying, rejoice with me, for this my Paradise was lost, and is found again. God has kept it for me.
THE Tree of Life in Paradise must remain a mystery, because it contains so flourishing a fruit: the power of eternal life.
Something of this can be understood, when one considers, how the hidden power of the soul comes out the more readily and undisturbedly and proves effective, the more readily the body places itself at the service of the soul, and in nothing resists or impedes her. And so it is thinkable that the fruit of the Tree of Life was able, to impart such a perfect disposition to the body, that it lost all urge of its own, and altogether became the vehicle of the soul.
There can be no spiritual power by itself in a plant, even in no elect plant of Paradise. Matter only operates directly upon matter, and thus upon our body. But thereby the relation, in which the body stands to the soul, can be dominated. The body can detain the soul, oppose her, disturb her, but, provided it operates altogether harmoniously, it can also serve the soul, in all things serve her, and be at her beck and nod. In the end be nothing but her harmonious instrument. And the wondrous power to realize this can have been put of God in the fruit of the Tree of Life.
In that case it becomes at the same time clear, how after the fall man could still have eaten of the Tree of Life, and how then his body would have become an instrument of his evil soul ready in all things to serve her. How the horribleness and the monstrosity consisted in this, which had to be averted. And how therefore in the state of sin every approach to the Tree of Life had to be cut off.
But though this gives light, a mystery still remains. The real nature and working of the Tree of Life remains to us a mystery.
A MYSTERY likewise the being in Paradise immediately after our dying.
By itself the realm of glory tarries to disclose itself, till Jesus returns. The new heaven only comes, when the new earth shall come.
Yet from His Cross we hear Jesus say to His fellow-crossling: “This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” Something that is the more conclusive, since from the mount of Olives Jesus ascended bodily, and thus also now still is in His glorified body with God.
Yet Jesus says, that before His resurrection, and thus incorporeally, in His separated soul He would be in Paradise. And so also the man, who in his dying on Golgotha was declared blessed.
Though it is perfectly clear, therefore, that our dead, who die in the Lord, shall only in the resurrection be clothed with their body, yet they are already now in Paradise, and in that Paradise they already have rejoicing.
And if you ask, whether that “eating of the Tree of Life” does not come only afterward, it would be mocking with all reality, to doubt this.
And yet this glorious promise of Jesus has also for them already significance.
Or do you not understand, how they who here on earth have known all the struggle of the flesh, and now at last, are liberated from the body of this death, would almost with fearsome anxiety anticipate the moment, when this shackling of the body shall return, and would almost pray against the return in the body.
Well, for this reason this glorious promise comforts also them.
That return in the body shall never occasion them distress again for the soul. For, you shall eat of the Tree of Life. And that fruit of the Tree of Life shall be a guarantee unto you, that the body which you obtain back again, shall never be otherwise than in perfect harmony the ready and willing instrument, eternally with soul and body both to glorify your Father, Who is in heaven.
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