Redeeming Fruit

Yesterday in church, for the first Sunday of Lent, we read from Genesis 2 and 3, and the pastor focused on God's question to Adam and Eve from 3:8,

But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?"

This question comes in response to the man and woman hiding from God among the trees of the Garden, which is a direct response to discovering their nakedness, which is a result of eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God commands in genesis 2:16-17, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

The crafty serpent comes into the garden, tempting the woman and convincing her that God is not really good.  And "when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.  She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.  Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves." (3:6-7)

Our pastor said that we've been hiding from God ever since.  And just like Eve, we've been buying into the serpent's lies that God doesn't really love us or know what's best for us.  His encouragement was this: stop hiding!  We are not a victim of sin, but a participator in sin.  When we drop the fig leaves and stop hiding our sin from God (and ourselves) and repent of our sin, we receive more love and grace than we could ever imagine.

There was something my pastor said in the course of his sermon that really got me thinking about fruit in a new way, hence the title, Redeeming Fruit.  He said (and this may also be a quote from Keller?), "Disobedience is a fruit of unbelief - every sin stems from unbelief."  So disobedience is a fruit of unbelief, and original unbelief came into the garden via the serpent and out of our hearts through the act of eating fruit - real, tangible fruit.  Forbidden fruit.

In the very beginning, the man and woman choose a lie over freedom, and by eating the fruit they experience a death of sorts.  They see their nakedness (sin?) and try to take care of it on their own (by sewing fig leaves and hiding from God).  That obviously doesn't work, and when God confronts them he dishes out some pretty serious consequences for their sin, and to Adam he says,

"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.  By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food..."

Those abundant fruit trees of the garden must have looked pretty good at this point.  From what we can tell, Adam and Eve had all the fruit they wanted whenever they wanted - it seems as if there was no real "working for food" before the curse.  Yet after the curse growing food becomes an all-consuming, painful toiling, sweat of your brow kind of job.  There is a shift from the idyllic garden setting to an agrarian farming setting, and a shift from freely eating and enjoying God's presence in the cool of the day to hard work - both in toiling the ground and in relating to God.

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Skip ahead to the new testament after Christ has died and was raised from the dead.

In Sunday school we are studying the book of Galatians and talking about how Christ redeems the law, and how the Gospel unites all Christians - Jews and Gentiles.  We are all equally in need of a Savior, because the law was never meant to save, nor was it able to do so.  Paul says in Galatians 2:19, "For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God."   We skipped over to Romans 7 where Paul uses an illustration from marriage to flesh out what Paul means by, "through the law I died to the law".  In this illustration, he says, "So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God." (7:4)  This is in contrast to when we were controlled by the sinful nature and were only able to bear "fruit for death." (7:5)

The Law reveals God's holiness and exposes our sin, for how else would we know that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" if it were not for the standard of the Law?  Yet Paul says even he was only capable of bearing fruit for death in his efforts to uphold the Law because he was controlled by the sinful nature.  In order to bear fruit to God he must first die to his old master (his sinful nature which is exposed by the Law) and be united to another, Christ.

I love the way the new testament talks about bearing fruit, as if we are trees.  And the lifeblood of the tree dictates the fruit that is produced by the tree.  If we belong to Christ, then it is his lifeblood that lives in us, and we are able to bear fruit to God.  I was thinking about this beautiful picture of redemption, and how even the fruit is being redeemed.  Disobedience is a fruit of unbelief, man's original unbelief is acted out by eating forbidden fruit, and now through Christ we can bear fruit to God.  We are like the tree of the garden we ate from in disobedience - the tree that opens our eyes to the difference between good and evil.  We are able to bear fruit for death, or able to bear fruit for God... depending on our lifeblood...