Whereas God is the sole possessor of all knowledge, until evil was conceived by those he created, He alone knew all that existed in the Darkness. As it is written, “Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.” (Psalm 139:12).

By the determination of God, it was preordained that all things, good and evil, should be brought to light and made manifest to all. The scenario was set up so that the knowledge of both might be made known to Adam and Eve through their transgression, and when they sinned, their eyes were opened; they became aware they were naked and conscious of their guilt.

God has eternal knowledge of sin, yet He knows no sin—likewise the Son, who is the express image of His person. The Son resides in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18); He is the very heart of God made manifest by the words of God spoken, saying, “Let there be Light.” For in the beginning was the Word; God spoke the Word that was in him, and the Word is God. (John 1).

The Word of God is the Son of God—the perfect expression of the heart of God made manifest through his spoken word—after whose image the Tree of Life was placed in the midst of the garden to provide eternal life.

The potential for sin existed in the garden; God placed it there. By creating an alternative to the Tree of Life—the tree of knowledge of good and evil—God did no wrong, but rather, He granted mankind free will to love. In the beginning, the innocence of Adam and Eve was not based on their knowledge of good and evil but on faith in the Lord through obedience to His word.

As long as Adam and Eve trusted God’s word, in the innocence of their nescience, they would know no guilt; for without the knowledge of law, transgression is not imputed. “Because the law works wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.” (Romans 4:15). Again, “For until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law.” (Romans 5:13).

Solomon wrote, saying, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Likewise, as God thinks in his heart, so is He. Jesus said that what comes out of the mouth defiles a man because it comes from the heart. Likewise, that which comes from the mouth of God is God. The Word of God is the heart of God spoken as the express image of God and made manifest in the flesh by His Living Word, Jesus Christ. In him is all knowledge of good and evil, yet he is without sin and has all power over all sin.

Man was made in the image of God and after his likeness. Jesus, being the only begotten Son of the Father, is the express image of God. Unlike the first and only begotten Son, Adam possessed in his inner man not only life from the spirit of God but also the potential of death through his own spirit, which, in a figure, is represented by the two trees in the garden—one, the tree of life, and the other, the tree of death by transgression through the knowledge of good and evil.

The sin of Adam was not in the fruit itself, but in breaking the commandment not to eat of it; the Lord has all knowledge of good and evil and yet is sinless.

By breaking fidelity with God, the fruitful garden that the Lord planted in Eden was no longer a joyful habitation where He and man had fellowship but rather a place defiled by disobedience, separation, and the onset of death to be passed on to all generations.

The name Eden is of Hebrew origin, meaning “place of pleasure.” Eve, nonetheless, being enticed to reach beyond the blessings given in a quest for even greater pleasure, brought death to humanity by choosing to taste sinful pleasure and enticing her husband to partake with her.

Contrary to the quest for pleasure in an earthly garden, which resulted in death, the redemption from death also took place in a garden; however, the quest of Christ was one full of suffering and sacrifice, the opposite of Eve’s desire for self-fulfillment.

The antithesis of Eden is Gethsemane, which, in Hebrew (gat shemanim), means “oil press.” It was commanded in the law that only pure beaten olive oil could be used to fuel the seven lamps of the candlestick in the temple. Once lit, they were to burn continually and never to be allowed to go out.

Likewise, in the garden of Gethsemane, Christ offered himself to God to be bruised for us, reconciling us back to God so that our lamps may be lit with pure beaten olive oil to burn forever before the Lord. As said by the prophet Isaiah, “He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”

Crushed by the weight placed upon him like olives under the press, he prayed three times. “And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luke 22:44).

After surrendering his will to the will of the Father in Gethsemane, Jesus willingly surrendered his life to the will of men. Being condemned by man, he carried his cross to the hill of Golgotha, the place of a skull—the mind of Christ—a mind dead to the world but alive to God.

Before the Sabbath began, the body of Jesus was placed in the tomb for three days, after which he rose again in a garden, bringing forth fruit unto God.

We also choose between the fruit of one of the two trees and between the garden of pleasure and the garden of sacrifice. The examples set before us of how to live are either Adam or Jesus Christ. We can seek the worldly pleasures of Eden, or we can offer our lives to the will of God in our garden of Gethsemane.

If we are to live, we must die by choosing to eat the bread Jesus ate and drink of the cup from which he drank before his death. Otherwise, we eat the fruit from the tree of death and never see life.

The will of God is that His garden produces good fruit. If we are to follow Christ into life, we must be willing to forego the pleasures of a worldly garden and choose the garden of Gethsemane. There, the olives are crushed, but many more trees grow from the seeds. “Be fruitful and multiply” is the commandment; this is the purpose for which mankind was created.