What Does Jesus Do With Messy People? | Lisa Harper

Do you remember when the enemy tricked Eve into eating from the one tree God told her not to? God had said, “Don’t eat from that tree.” Last night, Emi and I were talking about it, and she asked, “Why that tree?” I explained that it was the tree of Good and Evil. Why do you think it was specifically that tree? Why not the tree of chips and queso, for example—something that would make you gain weight? Or how about the tree of evil lives? Why wasn’t it something like that? There were so many other trees that could have been more significant for God to warn against, yet the enemy tricked Eve into believing God was holding something back from her. The lie was that God didn’t love her as much as she thought, and that led her to eat the forbidden fruit. We’ve been struggling with that decision ever since.

Why that tree—the tree of Good and Evil? Have you ever met someone who thinks they have the right to judge everyone else? Don’t point them out if they’re around, but we all know those people with critical, judgmental spirits. Humans don’t have the capacity to perfectly judge the motives of others. Last night, I asked Avery, “If you were my boss and you told me to show up at 8 a.m., but I arrived at 7:55 a.m. on Monday, 7:58 a.m. on Tuesday, and 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday, then on Thursday I showed up at 8:45 a.m., would you consider me a bad employee?” She said, “Well, kind of.” I said, “Of course you would, because I wasn’t following your instructions as my boss.” But then I asked, “What if I explained that I was late because my son got hit by a school bus, broke his leg, and I had to rush him to the ER? Would you still think I was a bad employee?” She said, “No.” The point is, we don’t have the ability to judge the heart and motives of others accurately. We are quick to criticize, but we don’t see the full picture.

God said not to eat from the tree because He created us in His image, and He designed us for community. In Genesis 1:26-27, God says, “Let us make mankind in our image,” referring to the Trinitarian God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From the beginning, God intended for us to live in community with each other. A great theologian named Augustine said that only the Christian God represents a perfect community within Himself. God wired us for this community from the very start. God is good. He has always been good, and His goodness has always been meant for us. He’s not an angry, vengeful God in the Old Testament and a soft, forgiving one in the New Testament. He is perfectly holy, and His grace is as great as His holiness.

When God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of Good and Evil, He was not being cruel; He was protecting them. Eating from that tree would have disrupted the community He designed for them, leading them to become critical and cruel toward one another. So, He warned them not to eat from it. But when Eve was deceived and ate the fruit, God drove them out of the Garden of Eden.

This brings us to an important point: When God drove them out, it wasn’t punishment in the way we often think. The Hebrew word for “drive out” actually comes from the word garash, meaning to “herd redemptively.” God was guiding them toward redemption. After this, God introduced another tree—the tree of life. He told them not to return to the garden and eat from it. Why? Because if they ate from the Tree of Life while separated from God, it would have perpetuated their separation. They needed to be restored before they could partake in the fullness of life He had intended.