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.
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Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
Christ is the mystery of God revealed
63-0728 §198
Now remember, He is that tree of life contrary to the serpent's seed, you see. He's that seed, the woman's seed, the tree of life in the garden. And unless they put forth their hands and move this tree, they'd eat that tree and live forever. And He's the only tree that can be taken that you can live forever. His Word is life. And that'd be the Word then (the Word of God which Eve turned down in the Garden of Eden)--- then here's Christ the Word, made manifest. And when He come on earth, He was the tree of life. Do...
An Exposition Of The Seven Church Ages
CAB 3:E-113
And what did that tree produce? The Tree of Knowledge produced death. Cain killed his brother, Abel. The wicked killed the righteous. It set a pattern. It will keep that pattern until the restoration of all things as spoken by the prophets.
Satan's Eden
65-0829 §4
Now, tonight, we want to go to the Scripture, and read a portion of the Scripture out of Genesis, the third chapter; and just refer back a little bit to some things that we've been talking about in times past, and see if the Lord Jesus will give us a little bit more to what we will know when we go out. I pray that He will. Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the wom...
Paradox
64-0206B §30
There's a tree in the garden. And one of them was, if you touched it... Now, we have our differences on that, so I won't go into it. But let's say it was a tree of disobedience. And as soon as they touched that tree, all people was to die. And they had to put them away from this other tree. 'Cause if they eat this tree of life, they would all live knowing right from wrong. That's right. You know that as ministers. We have our ideas on that, and we probably differ what the tree was. But we can all know that Christ i...
Church Ages, part 3: The Ephesian Church Age
60-1205 §106
Notice, three times the Bible speaks of the tree of life in Genesis, three times in the book of Revelation. The other day we had that. Remember? Sunday, yesterday... The devil hates every bit of scripture there is. But he hates worse Genesis and Revelation. He attacks Genesis because ... the authenticity of it, because he wants to make people believe that it wasn't so---Genesis didn't come about the way that God said they did, that something else caused this creation and things. He attacks it that way. And he takes...