What Is the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis 3?
1) Direct Answer
- The tree of life is Christ—God’s own Life and Word offered to man.
- The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is Satan’s perverted wisdom, offered through the serpent, mixing truth with error and bringing death. It was not an apple tree; it was a channel of union with unbelief that produced a corrupt seed.
2) Scriptural Explanation
- Genesis 2:9 places both trees “in the midst” of the garden, making them central to man’s choice.
- Genesis 2:17 says, “in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” After partaking, death set in (Genesis 3:19; Romans 5:12).
- Genesis 3:1-6 shows the serpent ministering a message contrary to God’s Word, and Eve receiving it. 2 Corinthians 11:3 confirms, “the serpent beguiled Eve.”
- Genesis 3:7 says “they knew that they were naked” and covered their loins, showing moral shame, not a stomach issue from fruit.
- Genesis 3:15 declares enmity between two seeds: the woman’s Seed and the serpent’s seed. That speaks of a real lineage. 1 John 3:12 says, “Cain was of that wicked one,” revealing the serpent’s line through unbelief.
- Genesis 3:14 curses the serpent “upon thy belly,” showing a creature brought down—once upright, now degraded.
- The tree of life points to Christ: “In Him was life” (John 1:4). He said, “I am the life” (John 14:6), “I am the living bread” (John 6:51). Overcomers are promised to eat of the tree of life (Revelation 2:7), and in the New Jerusalem it appears again (Revelation 22:2). God barred the way to it (Genesis 3:24), so fallen man wouldn’t live forever in sin. Access opens again by redemption.
3) Simple Clarifying Logic
- Literal fruit cannot give a conscience of good and evil, nor does it make one ashamed of nakedness. But receiving a wrong word and entering a wrong union brings moral shame and death.
- God speaks of “seed” in Genesis 3:15. Fruit doesn’t beget a lineage; reproduction does. That’s why sorrow in conception and childbirth was multiplied (Genesis 3:16). The issue touched the womb and the life stream.
- If Adam and Eve had then taken the tree of life, they would have lived forever in a fallen state. Therefore the tree of life is eternal life in Christ; the other tree brought death by mixing good and evil—religion without revelation, truth mingled with a lie.
4) Reinforcing Statement
Now notice: to “eat” is to receive and become one with what you take in. Receiving Christ, the Word and Spirit, is partaking of the tree of life today; receiving the serpent’s reasoning is partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Stay with the pure Word, and you live. Mix it, and you die.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
The Pillar of Fire
53-0509 §25
When I was a young Baptist preacher baptizing my first converts, five hundred of them down on the river, my first revival. I had about three thousand attended the revival. And my education was so poor, till my girlfriend read the Bible while I preached. That's right. It's not much better tonight. But God's not known by education. God's known by faith. God's not known by knowledge. There was two trees in the Garden of Eden. One of them was the tree of knowledge, the other one the tree of life. Man left the tree of l...
The faith that was once delivered to the saints
53-1129A §42
Then, I was thinking as we was passing along there, of those wonderful thoughts how Eden must have been. And then when man sinned--I have my thought, my conception of it. You can have yours, but God drove them out. An Angel stood at the gate, and begin to guard the gate, and no one could come in, or out of that gate to keep them away from the Tree of Life. Now, the Tree of Life, I believe, was Jesus Christ. "He that eats My flesh and drinks My blood has everlasting life." He is the Tree of Life. God was guarding it...
The uncertain sound
62-0714 §56
Now notice. Jesus... There was two trees in the garden of Eden. One of them was life, and one was death. One of them was the woman; the other one was the man. And life that come by the woman dies. But the life that come by the man lives. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life that come from God out of heaven." The angels ... the seraphims guarded the tree of life, which was the bread of life that come from God out of heaven. And notice that they wouldn't take it without an atonement. And the atonement had to be made,...
God's Provided Way
61-0516M §33
When he invented gun powder, kills his brother. When he invented an automobile, science, what did he do? Kills more than the powder does. Now he's got hisself an atomic bomb, a hydrogen bomb. See, he drives hisself farther away from God. In the garden of Eden there were two trees. One of them was a tree of life, the other the tree of death ... the tree of knowledge. And when man left the tree of life to eat from the tree of knowledge, the first bite he took he separated himself from his maker. And every time he bit...
Seeing God
62-0609M §35
If you'll notice, God testifies every day of our life. Of a morning the sun is born. At ten o'clock it's in its teenage. At noontime it's in its full strength, and it sets in the evening (Is that the end of it?), only to come up again---birth, life, death, resurrection. Constantly, God testifying in life. The tree goes back down, the sap into the roots, to bring forth life again next year. We're ... you and I are hanging on the tree of life. We are the fruit of that tree. The old man, after he sat there a little bi...