Genesis 2:9. And 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 [center] of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis 2:16-17. 16And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17but 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.”
You’ve probably made several choices already today. Maybe you’ve chosen things like the clothes you are wearing or what you ate for breakfast. You’ve also made some bigger choices like what kind of attitude you will have today or whether or not you will listen to your parents. Every day, God puts all kinds of choices in front of us. Some are big and some are small, but every choice we make adds up to what we are becoming.
God put a choice in front of Adam and Eve too, and he gave them the ability to make a choice. A choice between two trees. The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
To choose the Tree of Life would be to choose God. This tree was in the center of the garden, and it offered a chance for whoever ate from it to live forever with God. Later on in the Bible, in the book of Proverbs, God’s wisdom will be called the Tree of Life. So this tree offered a chance to know God and to trust God so that we can live with God forever. God wanted Adam and Eve to eat from this Tree of Life, but sadly they made a wrong choice.
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil can be a little bit harder to understand. But at the very least we know that God warns that eating from it will cause the person to begin to die – in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. Literally, this says “dying you will begin to die.” Eating from this tree is the opposite of trusting God. It is trusting in yourself, in your own knowledge of right and wrong. Sadly, this is the tree that Adam and Eve will eat from, and we’ve all been trying to decide right and wrong for ourselves ever since.
Many people ask why would God create a tree that would lead to sinning and dying? If God knew that Adam and Eve would eat from the wrong tree, then why create that tree in the first place? This is a very good question. And the answer is LOVE. All love requires choice. You can’t force someone to love you, can you? One of the most unloving things you can do is try to make another person love you more. Love is only love when we choose to do it from our heart.
God wanted Adam and Eve (and us) to love him from our heart, as our own choice. That’s why God gave Adam and Eve a choice, and that’s why he still gives us the ability to make choices today. If God just wanted us to obey him, he could have made us as pre-programmed robots or as puppets that he makes do whatever he wants. But God didn’t make us to be robots. He made us to be human beings who can choose. Choose to obey or not obey. Choose to love or not love.
God has freely chosen to love you. So much so that he sent his son, Jesus to die for your sins. Hopefully you have chosen to love God too. Hopefully, his love for you has made you want to love him back. And once we begin to love God, then we can begin to trust and obey God. We can show that we love him by doing the things he asks us to do. All of which are his way of loving us first.
Questions: What choices have you made today? Have you made any choices that have been loving? How has God shown his choice to love you? How can knowing God loves you help you choose to love others?
TLICfamily 