The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 7 – 9
The word tree is the Hebrew word ets. That word in turn derives from the root word atsah, which means “to shut”; specifically, to shut the eyes (as it was used in Proverbs 16:30). Now that’s interesting, because it means that the very idea of tree, in Hebrew, signifies “closed eyes”!
Which means if you translated the word “tree” a second time, into its own root meaning, then in the midst of the Garden there was “the closed eyes being opened” (tree of the knowledge of good and evil) and “the closed eyes receiving life” (tree of life). Thus the very idea of trees symbolized people with eyes closed!
When you fully understand their names, these trees fully reveal their purpose; for “the tree of life”, fully translated, meant “life for those with closed eyes”, or translating more freely “the giving of live to those who are in darkness” – compare to John 8:12. In other words, this is the tree of grace.
This tree gives grace to those who have a cloak for their sin (John 15:22); those who are blind (John 9:41). This tree says, as this same tree would say 4,000 years later, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
The other tree, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, fully translated, meant “opening of eyes for those with closed eyes”, or, more freely “the awakening of a soul” or “bringing a soul out of darkness”. In other words, this is the tree of judging – and of judgment.
This tree was against the other tree, for by opening their eyes, it made the other tree unable to give them life (Colossians 2:14). Which was the curse, that when you ate of it, grace could no longer keep you alive!
And yet without our eyes open, are we truly alive? Compare to Isaiah 42:7,16 (good), contrasted to Lamentations 3:2 (evil); giving to every man according to his choices (Matthew 16:27). So we must begin to die, in order to ever truly live (John 12:25).
We have to gamble on God’s willingness to lead us, on Jesus’ willingness to shine a light for us. But most of all, gamble on our soul’s ability to chart a path; because once we eat of the wrong fruit, we can’t eat of the other tree again. Because there can be no sacrifice for a sin committed with open eyes (Hebrews 10:26).
THE FORBIDDEN TREE
An awake soul cannot receive grace for sins; grace is for the ignorant. It is for those in darkness, not those with open eyes. So once you eat of the tree and open your eyes, you cannot go back to the other tree for help (Genesis 3:22-23).
When we’re in darkness – ignorant – we can go to the tree of life and receive grace to live indefinitely. That is why our sins are overlooked, because we know not what we do (Acts 17:30). But when we eat of the other tree, our eyes are opened; our soul comes out of darkness.
When that happens, we can no longer claim “I didn’t know!”, because the whole POINT of that tree was that we could have known, should have known, and probably DID know! The tree of good and evil is a tree of judgment; and there is no mercy in that tree (Hebrews 10:28).
So clearly, we need mercy. But from where? Not from the tree of life, because you are forbidden from eating or drinking that fruit while you’re a sinner! So you cannot drink Jesus’ blood for the remission of sins if you’re a sinner!
Think about that! If you’ve sinned against the tree of judgment, you cannot eat of the tree of grace – which means Jesus’ body and Jesus’ blood, the fruit and the leaves are walled off from you! Matthew 3:6-8, John 9:31. The tree of grace was walled off from those who needed it most… that hardly seems fair, now does it?
Who then can be saved? Exactly (1 Peter 4:18). I mean, think about it; the whole point of the promise in John 7:37-39 was because that had not been possible, and to that day still wasn’t possible for most people! Revelation 22:17.
In the beginning, the Father’s tree was the forbidden fruit; but after they ate that fruit, it was Jesus’ tree which became the forbidden fruit. But why? Why wall off the only tree that can save us? Why deny us access to the tree that can make us the people He supposedly wants us to be?
THE VICTIM MUST FORGIVE
When you choose evil, you are sinning against the tree of judgment; sinning against the Father Himself. It is His law that provides the underpinnings of the universe. And when your soul offends His soul, you must die. That’s the curse… and the promise (Genesis 2:17).
If you sin against your neighbor, I cannot forgive you. How can I? You don’t owe me anything, so I have nothing to forgive you for. He is the person you wronged, and He is the person you must work out your sin with (Matthew 5:23-24).
The law is not from Jesus, but from the Father (James 4:12). The law flows out from under His throne like a river (Micah 4:2, Revelation 22:1). So whoever sins against the law sins against the Father; not against Jesus (Psalms 51:4, Genesis 39:9).
Therefore, if you sin against the law, the law must be repaid; not Jesus, the law. The law demands your death, and one way or another, it must have it (Hebrews 10:30-31). There is simply no way around that, Jesus or no Jesus (Psalms 89:48). The law must have your death.
Now Jesus tasted death for all men (Hebrews 2:9). So Jesus’ death can repay the law; but the key here, is that it is the law which must be repaid. It is the Father’s law which must be satisfied, and it must be satisfied by your death BEFORE you eat of the tree of life again!
But how?
Everything we need to know about salvation was visible in the Garden; they had time, between eating of the fruit and being caught, to make clothes of leaves… which meant they also had time to find a way of satisfying the broken law.
The wages of sin is death; the law doesn’t care how that gets done, as long as you’re buried – one way or another (Job 24:19). They knew their sin made them unclean, which is why they covered their uncleanness…
But covering themselves with leaves of any kind was stupid, because everyone knows, if you’re dirty… you need to take a bath! When we dive in the river, we are buried in the water. And burying yourself in water is a sort of death (Romans 6:3-5).
BATHING IS DYING
We all instinctively know that, yet forget it as adults. Children hate taking baths; because they are young enough to still know the truth: bathing is like dying (Genesis 6:17). And Adam and Eve, metaphorical children that they were, were afraid to wash in the river! They didn’t want to die.
So they covered themselves with leaves instead, hoping that God simply wouldn’t notice the dirt. I remember telling my mom “why do I have to take a bath? I’m clean under my clothes, so let me just change clothes!” Despite my compelling logic, it rarely worked.
And like all of us, Adam and Eve spent their time hiding their sins instead of washing them off (Proverbs 28:13). But the river of life was right there; why not remove the uncleanness, instead of covering it up? Because, as Adam said… they were afraid (Genesis 3:8-10).
Think about that… the voice of God. And what does that sound like? Psalms 29:3, Revelation 1:15. They were afraid to dip in the river, afraid of the voice of God they heard there! Afraid to be killed by the thunderous sound of God’s judgment (compare to Exodus 20:18-20).
Had Adam and Eve been willing to humble themselves under this river, the Father’s heart, His law, they could have been saved on the spot, and never been kicked out of the Garden. Their fear of death prevented that… and it is that fear which kept them in bondage (Hebrews 2:15), in every sense of the word.
Psalms 88 goes through the process of death-by-water in great detail. Verse 6 mentions “the deeps”; where this river “afflicted me with all thy waves” (Hebrews 2:7); he was “shut up, and cannot come forth”, as in a grave; which is the land of darkness and “forgetfulness” (Hebrews 2:11-12); and what is forgetfulness, if not mercy? Hebrews 10:17-18.
Psalms 88:6-17 says God’s terrors “come about me like water”. So clearly, this is all about bathing in the river – which is a type of dying. Fortunately, that’s not the end of the story; it would be, had not God had a plan (2 Samuel 14:14).
Going down into those waters to die is necessary; but if you go into them for the right reasons, there’s a way back out of them (Psalms 49:15). Had they trusted God, had they confessed their sins and admitted that they deserved to die, they would have learned that the purpose of the river is far greater than a simple death sentence; the purpose of the river is to give them mercy.
THE RIVER OF MERCY
Unlike the trees, the river of mercy doesn’t care what you’ve done; it doesn’t care whether you were awake or not when you sinned; the river kills one as well as another (Ecclesiastes 9:1-5). Notice that last verse: the memory of them is forgotten. If their memory is forgotten, can God still be angry with them? Isaiah 65:16-17.
They are hidden from His eyes! Hidden from His judgment! In fact, the English word “hell”, as well as the original Greek word Hades, literally means “the unseen”. So whether you’re unseen under the Earth, or unseen under the river, you’re still equally dead according to God’s definition (Psalms 69:13-15).
So after choosing a poison fruit, Adam and Eve needed to bathe themselves in the law. They needed to realize exactly where they went wrong, put themselves under the law and let the law bury them – the proper wages of sin.
In their fear, Adam and Eve couldn’t understand that their death was the only path back to life (1 Corinthians 15:36). That the only way to survive after sinning was to accept His judgment, and trust in His goodness; to revive them – or not, either way, “blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).
Like them, before we can again eat of the tree of life, we must first obtain mercy by washing our sins away – by repenting, and burying the selfish heart in the law. By symbolically killing the beast which committed that sin.
Said differently, before you can access the blood of Jesus to forgive your sins, you must be washed. You must acknowledge that you broke the Father’s law, and let it kill you; or as Peter put it “Repent (admit that you chose poorly), and be baptized (bathe in the river)” (Acts 2:38).
And we have to do this in a timely manner upon realizing our mistake, or God will “hurl you out of your place” so you won’t have access to the tree of life (Isaiah 55:6-7). Before that happens, while you still have a chance, you must pass through the waters of death.
Because the waters represent the law; and the law represents death (Romans 7:5-12). And yet that very death is “holy, just, and good”; because that law comes from the one being who is good: Matthew 19:17. That is why God wants His laws to be written on our own hearts, as they are written in His (Matthew 5:43-48).
Because, as you learned in the very first lessons, God’s law is not all death; it’s also life… just like the tree contains the knowledge of good AND evil. The four sides of the law require God to give life, just as much as it requires Him to take it away.
And that’s why the river demands your death… but doesn’t care if eventually, you rise from the water. You’re still clean! All that’s necessary is the humility to put yourself under the law and take your just punishment (compare 2 Kings 5:9-14). Accept that you must die, and that if you never rise again, it is no less than you deserved.
THAT WHICH WAS DEATH BECAME LIFE
Thus death in the water is not necessarily the end, as the beast fears it might be; because the grapevine has overcome the tree of judgment. The grapevine can be your lifeline out of that water… but only if you’re already under it.
Because in order for the grapevine to help you, you must first be dead to sin (Romans 6:2-4). Consider Matthew 14:25-31. The waters COULDN’T take hold on Jesus, because He had never sinned! Therefore they held no terror for Him, and they could not hold Him! (Acts 2:24). Nor could they hold anyone whom Jesus “held up” out of them!
Jesus can pluck us out of the waters we are being buried in, as He did Peter, because by being buried we are dying. And by dying, we are becoming dead to sin; and being dead to sin is the definition of mercy. And once we receive the Father’s mercy, through repentance and burial in the waters, then Jesus can start saving us.
To receive this mercy, all you have to do is admit that you picked the wrong fruit; admit that the law was “holy, just, and good”, and admit that you deserve to die and then let God kill you (Hebrews 11:13). You can hope Jesus will save you; but you have to go into the waters with the mindset that you don’t deserve it. That you are getting exactly what you’ve earned.
Another version of what happened in the Garden is recounted in a parable in Job 27:19-23. What man has ever been richer than Adam, who had the dominion over everything? Genesis 1:28. But he opened his eyes, and now he is dead. He was afraid of God immediately, because the terror of the waters took hold on him!
That’s why he didn’t bathe in them! Just like any small child fears death by bathing! Because of that, a tempest – a strong wind, or angel – from the east took him away. The storm of the Dragon behind Babylon “hurled him out of his place”.
Like them, we have been hurled out of the Garden, in every sense of the word; lost the trust of God, lost the trust of our fractions, and lost many other metaphorical “gardens” as well. By prematurely opening our eyes and choosing the wrong fruit, we have doomed ourselves to spend our lives wandering the desert, in the vain hope of trying to find our way back into the Garden again.
But that is the greatest thing about this river. See, to access either of the trees, whether to gain wisdom or grace, you must get past the flaming sword of the angel of the east gate; you must, in other words, make it past the deception of Babylon. But the river flows past the walls of the Garden to the four corners of the Earth!
The river is not hid by Babylon; it is not walled off by the Garden in the most holy place. Because everyone has a Bible! And anyone who wants to repent can bathe in it! (2 Chronicles 16:9, John 4:23). Anyone who decides to follow the law, anywhere, for any reason, gets God’s attention even if they are thousands of miles from His holy place! (Habakkuk 2:14).
All they have to do is repent, and bury themselves in that river, and they, too, can be freed from sin (Matthew 28:19), and led to the tree of life (John 6:44-45). But only by passing through the river of mercy first, and being washed in the waters of life.
TWO WASHINGS
Thus, contrary to everything you’ve been told about salvation, being baptized is not being “washed in the blood”, for until you’re baptized you’re not allowed to drink of Jesus’ blood! Baptism is washing in water, not blood (1 John 5:6).
Baptism is washing in the Father’s heart, submitting yourself to His law. But baptism in water is not enough! But neither is blood! Which is why Jesus brought both (John 19:34). No amount of water can truly purify you, not even the river of life itself (Jeremiah 2:22).
Because all water can do is wash the outside. But wine can wash the INSIDE! (Jeremiah 4:14). When you read Psalms 51:2, you probably think he’s just being poetic; but remember: God never stutters. He’s speaking of two different washings – an internal, and an external washing – just as Hebrews 9:13-15 tells us.
When Adam and Eve chose the evil fruit, they committed both an internal and an external sin; for they had to touch the fruit, which was forbidden (Genesis 3:3). And then they put the fruit inside of them. So naturally, to be restored as they were before they started, they would have needed to be cleaned in both of those places.
As I said above, since the Father was the One who was offended, He was the One who had to be appeased. And the only appeasement He accepted was death – either literal death (Genesis 3:19), or, if they were smart, burial in the river… which we would call baptism.
Upon rising out of the river, they would be clean externally, but not internally. Even if you pulled a fast one on God, and managed to take a dive, have Him pronounce you dead, and then pop up somewhere else when He wasn’t looking, you would still have only external life; but inside, you’d still be dead to Him – still not qualified to eat His almonds.
You can wash your car forever, but the stain on the seats won’t go away unless you wash inside of it. And that’s where Jesus’s blood comes in (Hebrews 9:13-14). So after bathing in the river, leaving their external sins behind with the old man, they needed to be washed inside.
And since drinking wine is, in a very real sense, washing out your insides, Jesus’ blood washed you as thoroughly inside as His Father’s law had washed you outside. Jesus’ blood/wine/spirit was “shed for many for the remission of sins” Matthew 26:28. Not all – but many.
What’s strange though, is that John had already remitted their sins in Mark 1:4. Why did it need done again? Did one replace the other? No, John plainly said, he was preparing people for Jesus (Luke 1:17). Because until you bathed in the river, you could not bathe your insides in wine!
John baptized in the river (Matthew 3:5-6), and preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of external sins. And he did this, Luke told us, to turn the heart of the fathers to their children… all fathers!
To make the Father’s heart, the river of mercy, embrace His children! Which, when you think about it, is exactly what John the Baptist did – made the river embrace the children of Israel! And by getting them to repent, to turn their bad choices into the wisdom of the just!
But that was only the first step, which is why they had to be baptized again, later, with the baptism of Jesus – a very different kind of baptism (John 1:33, Acts 1:5). Because we all need both. But more on that in another lesson.
TOO MUCH WINE
So after the bathing of the river and having our external sins forgiven, we must drink of the fruit of the tree of life; Jesus’ blood, the wine, which pictures the forgiveness of internal sins. And we need this wine daily (1 Timothy 5:23, 1 Corinthians 15:31).
Which is why the Bible is clear in many places that wine is a good thing (Genesis 49:12, Deuteronomy 14:26, etc.). And we’ve established that wine is the fruit of the tree of life. And yet, if that’s true, how can wine ever be a bad thing? How can it be a bad thing to have too much Jesus? Habakkuk 2:4-5.
Because a little wine, enough to cover your sins or wash them away, brings you life. But drinking too much wine, or drinking it when you haven’t yet washed in the river, brings death. Why? Because wine impairs judgment! (Proverbs 31:4-5). It impairs your ability to choose WISELY from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil!
If you drink wine in excess, it makes you cocky, careless, and so when you then choose a fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you might just choose the wrong one… and die (Proverbs 20:1). Too much wine makes your SOUL fall asleep, in every sense of the word! (Proverbs 23:29-35).
But how does Jesus’ blood, in excess, impair your judgment? Remember, the metaphor must be true on every level. How can we overdose on Jesus’ mercy? Just ask any Protestant if their sins are paid for. “Absolutely!”, they’ll say, “All my sins, past, present, and future are already covered!”
They have such an abundance of forgiveness, they never need to worry about their choices again! Think about that! We are put here to learn to choose wisely from that tree. Jesus came to pay for our sins when we make a mistake.
But if all our mistakes, past, present, and future, are already paid for, and our forgiveness is assured… we have no real pressure to make a good choice, do we? Who worries about the effects of their choices… when they KNOW there will be no consequences for their choices?
And what Protestant worries about sinning, when he knows that all sins he will ever commit are paid for, just by “confessing that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior”? Which is why it is fair to say that all of Christianity is absolutely HAMMERED on Jesus’ blood.
TEN FEET TALL AND BULLETPROOF
A drunk man feels invincible; so his judgment is terrible. A Protestant feels invincible when it comes to sin… so his judgment is equally terrible. And it is only terrible because there is no fear and trembling when they try to work our their own salvation! (Psalms 2:11-12). Because drunks feel no fear!
We are dying of our sins. And we need that wine, desperately, to pay for them. So that we can try again, and make better choices next time. So that we can learn, in time, not to need the daily wine “for our stomach’s sake” (compare to Philippians 3:19).
It is that god, the selfish heart, which causes us to have “oft infirmities” or “frequent weaknesses”; and for those, we need wine daily. Knowing we have that wine to drink cheers us, for we no longer have to die forever; and it cheers God, for the same reason (Ezekiel 18:32).
But if we knew that every sin would be forgiven, whether we repent or not; whether we knew it was a sin or not (1 Peter 2:16), then we would be able to commit sin freely, knowing we would pay no consequences (Jude 1:4, Romans 6:1-2).
Which is exactly what the whore has taught people; that they can eat any fruit from that tree, and that it won’t hurt them because all their sins are already paid for, past, present, and future! The world believes that Jesus is achingly eager to forgive them, awaiting only their permission to do so!
And by casting Jesus as a needy Savior desperate to save, they have taught the world that He is a bottomless source of free wine. By giving them so MUCH wine, guaranteeing them SO MUCH forgiveness, she has made them DRUNKEN with the oldest lie… “thou shalt not surely die”!
It is GOOD to drink some wine for our “oft infirmities sake”. But to drink more than that tempts you to be careless with your choices. Because we can become just as drunken on the true wine of the grape as on the false wine of the blackberry!
It is good to know that God has your back; it is good to make the best judgments you can, without fear of God punishing you for an honest mistake; knowing that if a calculated risk backfires, God will help you up (Psalms 86:2-8).
But it is very bad to believe that He’ll have your back, no matter what. Because He really, really doesn’t (Ezekiel 18:24). Jesus didn’t die so we could make hasty choices without worrying about tomorrow; He was hung from the tree of the knowledge of good AND evil so that you could learn the difference between them…
And He will only take away the bitterness of the fruit if He feels that you CARE which was which!
AN ABUNDANCE OF CAUTION
Obviously, the safe thing to do is to mind your own business; say “yes, Sir!” to everything God says. Don’t think, don’t ask, don’t wonder, just obey. Eat the tree of life and live happily forever. To be, in other words, a spirit forever but never a woke soul.
But what does Paul say? 1 Corinthians 13:11. And what was he talking about, in context? 1 Corinthians 13:12. Childhood isn’t meant to last forever. And none of us would really want to live the rest of our eternities as 12-year-olds – maybe we’d like to vacation there now and then, but there is clearly no future in that.
And that’s why, sooner or later, you must eat almonds. Sooner or later, you will pick a bad one and earn death. You must look at a law that’s in your way, and say “I don’t think that applies here, because this is different”.
And because you’re barely more than a child, sooner or later you’ll make the wrong judgment; if you hide your sins when that happens, you really will die forever. But if you repent, and submit yourself to the Father’s law, and wash in the river, you will be symbolically dead and God is satisfied – until your next sin.
But you are only externally dead; internally, you’re obviously quite alive but just as “dead in your sins” as you were before. So after the external washing, you need to be washed internally by Jesus’ blood, which, thanks to your bath, you’re now allowed to drink.
And yet the purpose of that wine is to kill you (Proverbs 23:32). Burying you in the water does not bring you back to life. Embalming your insides with alcohol doesn’t make you live again. It just makes you thoroughly dead to sin!
In more practical terms, when you decide to go against the letter of the law, you may later realize you were wrong. When that happens, you realize that act was wrong. That is the external sin being repented of. But the larger, and far more important issue, is… why did you make that choice in the first place?
What part of your judgment process erred to bring you to that conclusion? What fraction sinned to cause you to choose it? Did your heart lust too much? Did your spirit fail to properly research the law? Did your eyes fail to see the obvious? Find this, and then repent of the internal sin. Repent of the process that led to the bad judgment. Then judge again – hopefully better this time.
LIFE AFTER DEATH
So even – no, especially – after drinking the blood of Christ, you’re still dead. Clean, yes, inside and out – but dead. And that’s why you need the leaves of the tree to make you alive again (Revelation 22:2). This lesson is summed up neatly in…
Titus 3:5 Not by works of righteousness [almonds from the tree of judgment] which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us [baptism in the river], by the washing of regeneration [drinking the wine of the tree of life], and renewing of the Holy Ghost [eating the leaves from the tree of life];
You’d be tempted to see three actions in this verse, but as I’ve highlighted, there are in fact four. We are not rewarded, as we should be, for the evil fruits we chose from that tree. Rather, we are rewarded for the washing in the river of mercy, and the internal washing of regeneration by the blood of the tree of life.
So that, once again innocent, we can receive life from the leaves of the tree of life. Thus, there are four steps seen here; you eat the fruit of the Father, and bathe in the Father; then you bathe your insides in Jesus, and eat the fruit of Jesus (John 6:45-46).
First, the Father draws you to His fruit. Draws you in with the dream of being able to make good choices for yourself. Then you hear the law by eating the fruit, and learn by dying for your sins in the river (Romans 7:13). Then you go to Jesus, to drink His wine, who will then raise you up out of the grave/river.
Notice in Titus 3:5 again, both of the things Jesus does are “re” words. Our works killed us internally; God’s mercy killed us externally. But Jesus’ washing regenerates us, and His leaves renew us. And yet, as great as that is, it’s just restoring us to what we were… not making us BETTER than we were!
Adam and Eve, had they played by the rules, could have kept eating the tree of life and living indefinitely, but not forever. Because Jesus’ job is just to keep you alive… long enough for the Father to give you life! (John 5:26).
This is a job which the Father has delegated to Jesus, but He retained the choice of which people deserve it (John 17:1-3). So the Father finds people; brings them to His tree; inevitably, they disappoint Him and must die in His heart.
But God’s heart that demands “thou shalt not kill” also demands “thou shalt make alive”. So the Father then has Jesus wash them inside, and feed them His leaves to raise them up again as they were, granting them temporary life… so they can try again to merit ETERNAL life which can ONLY come from a full knowledge of the Tree of Good! (1 Timothy 6:16).
Jesus cannot give us that… He can only help us to pluck that fruit from the Father’s tree for ourselves! (John 17:6-11). Which is why He prayed to the Father to keep us from the evil fruit on His tree (John 17:15).
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
I’ve said many times that the 1-2-10 law represents the most basic nature of God. It is, if you’ll forgive the characterization, the lust of God; this is the alignment of His moral compass, the deepest desires of His heart.
We are made in His image; but the words written on our coronary tablets are not the same as the words written on His. It is only by immersing ourselves in that law, in every sense of the word, that we can erase the selfish words written there, and have new ones written with the finger of God.
And that is why, in the same river that kills us, our new selves are formed; Job 26:5-6. For it is out of those waters that we are born again (John 3:3-5). Because we are carried from the womb to the grave (Job 10:19), which is to say… back to the womb again (Job 1:21).
Remember that word “planted” in Romans 6:5. That passage shows that when we, the branches of the grapevine (John 15:5) are hung on the tree of judgment with Him (Romans 6:6), we also symbolically die with Him (Romans 6:3-4).
Like Him, we must make our own choices; we must, at the proper age, eat of those fruits. Being realistic, we’re not likely to choose as well as He did at first, so we’re going to choose some deadly ones from time to time. But we still must choose, for learning from the Father’s tree is the only way to ever be alive forever, as He is.
Jesus was Lord and Master over the disciples; because they were, by definition, disciples. Followers. Apprentices. Servants (John 13:13). But when His death was nigh, He told them they were no longer disciples; they were friends (John 15:14-16).
Just as Moses told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 30:15, Jesus was officially telling His disciples they were adults, and it was time for them to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for themselves! Because He could no longer be their king!
This is important, and very different from what you’ve been told before; if we are Jesus’ friends, He cannot be our King! He IS a king to others; king of the Jews (John 19:19). King of the Old Covenant people. King of those too young to be grownups, too immature to judge for themselves!
WE are being judged today (1 Peter 4:17). Not on our ability to obey Jesus, but on our ability to walk as He walked – to judge as He judged! In other words, we are being judged on our ability to follow the TRUE King, the one who is invisible to us… the Father (1 Timothy 1:17).
Contrary to Protestant hymns, Jesus is never called our king in the Bible; brother, apostle, high priest, bishop, yes; but not our king. Because the whole point of having a king is to have someone who judges for us (1 Samuel 8:19-20)!
And if He were judging for us, how can we be judged for our own judgments?? Which is why, when asked in metaphor to be a king in Judges 9, Jesus refused because it would defeat the purpose of our being alive in the first place! To learn to judge righteous judgment!
And so when we sin, when we fail to judge righteous judgment, it is the Father’s heart which must forgive us (Matthew 18:35). For we are learning to act as He acts (Matthew 5:45-48). Which is what it says in the one verse for this lesson, Proverbs 21:1-2.
The KING’S heart, the FATHER’S heart, the river of mercy, is in Jesus’ hand! All of us think we’re doing the right thing; at least, “a good enough thing”. But the Lord, Jesus, looks on our hearts, and decides whether to pull us back out of the waters… whether to intercede on our behalf, whether to turn those waters to help us… or just to let His Father’s nature take its course and bury us forever.