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.
An Exposition Of The Seven Church Ages
CAB 5:E-96
Not only was ancestor worship originated in Babylon but so also was the worship of nature. It was in Babylon the gods were identified with the sun and moon, etc. The chief object in nature was the sun which has light giving and heat giving properties and appears to man as a ball of fire in the heavens. Thus the chief god would be the sun god whom they called Baal. Often the sun was depicted as a circle of flame and soon around that flame there appeared a serpent. It wasn't long until the serpent became a symbol of...
An Exposition Of The Seven Church Ages
CAB 3:E-75
Now to get the real meaning of what we are about to go into, I must caution you to ever keep in mind that religion (spiritual matters if you like), is composed of two parts that intertwine but are as opposite as black and white. Religion and the spiritual world are made of those two trees which had their roots in Eden. Both the Tree Of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil stood in the midst of the garden and no doubt their very branches intertwined each other. Thus in the Ephesian Church is that same...
Joseph meeting his brethren
56-1230 §40
Therefore, science could come to there, and their tree's knocked down. Notice now, as soon as the woman seen that she... Now, she was deceived. She didn't bring sin. She was deceived. She thought it was right. ? But, "Adam was not deceived," said the Bible. He knowed it was wrong. And she had him to do the same thing that the beast had done, and she brought forth her first son, which all the traits of the devil was in that boy. He was a murderer; he was jealous. How could it come from that pure stream of God? It ha...
Faith in the Son of God
52-0715 §8
"Well," I said, "Doctor, you excuse me for talking to you like this, for you're a smart man." But I said, "You know, when the trees, in the garden of Eden there were two of them, and one of them was the tree of knowledge, and the other One is the Tree of Life. And man left this Tree to bypass of this tree," and I said, "when he took his first bite off the tree, let it be whatever it was... (I got my idea of that.) So whatever it was, when he tooken his first bite, he separated himself from his Maker. And ever since...
The anointed ones at the end time
65-0725M §34
Now, you can graft it in there, you see? Every grapefruit, lemon, tangelo, tangerine, whatever the citrus fruits they are, every one of them can live in that tree, but bearing false witness of the tree, living by the tree. You see it? They are living and thriving on the genuine life that's in that tree! Now, there's Matthew 24:24. Living by the same life, but they wasn't right at the beginning. They're bearing false witness of that tree! It's an orange tree! Yet it's a citrus tree. And they say, "This church, this...