The tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

[Lambano]

So don't you believe God's word is about: "Not I but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20)"?
Are you refusing your throne to Christ?

Then, I ask with Nicodemus, "How can these things come to be?"

 

[Lambano]

I should also ask, "What does 'Christ lives in me' look like?" Many claim it, but their lives show they don't really have it. We are told to test the spirits.

 

[stunnedbygrace]

I would add the nuance that babies are born without experiential knowledge of Good and Evil, but with a predilection for evil. (Babies are self-centered on their own wants and needs and to hell with anyone else, they want what they want when they want it, and they'll start screaming and crying if they don't get it.) In this I think I am in agreement with @Ziggy. Children gain experience in Good and Evil as they grow. They have to be taught to identify right from wrong, which is separate from the experiential knowledge of Good and Evil. Children also have to be taught faith in Christ, which often (but not necessarily?) goes hand-in-hand with being able to identify right and wrong.

Where do we want to go with that?

I don’t see the tree of the knowledge of good and evil like that. I see it as the tree of knowing both the blessing of God and the cursing of God. First they only knew being blessed by God. After disobedience, they knew being cursed by God too. (And their children were born into that futility once they were made to bring forth of their own kind).
It ties in to “I create darkness.” He does not create darkness by saying, let there be darkness. He creates darkness by turning away from disobedience/casting someone from Himself, from His light.

This is what makes me think where the earth was created was originally the place where He cast satan to and turned away from. In the beginning, He created a separation - heaven/where His presence was and earth/where His presence was not. If His presence was in that place, why did darkness cover the face of the waters? I did a word study once on the opening of Genesis and some of the words are hideous. Like…a pissing, a howling waste. And also, after He brought forth the Light/Jesus into the place, He made a separation again and called the darkness: a twisting away of the Light and the Light He called: glorious, luminous, everlasting. So that first darkness and light spoken of before sun and moon were created are very deep in meaning. And John gives us a clue-in with the beginning of his gospel book.

There are places where it does not follow the repetition of: and God saw that it was good, and those places are separations. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, yet there wasn’t the dry land of the earth yet, so earth there does not mean the dry land we walk on. And after He created heaven/where His presence and glory were, and earth/a place covered by darkness, it does not say, and God saw that it was good. It doesn’t say that in the places where He created separations.

This concludes my morning rambling.

 

[Lambano]

This concludes my morning rambling.

.צמצום

Good morning, SBG. Try the oolong tea.

 

[stunnedbygrace]

I should also ask, "What does 'Christ lives in me' look like?" Many claim it, but their lives show they don't really have it. We are told to test the spirits.

Remain in Me and I in you. These are two “remainings in.”
He remains in us even when we are untrusting, unfaithful.
We do not remain in Him when we are untrusting, unfaithful.
Christ remaining in you is the hope of glory.
You remaining in Christ is……?

 

[Jim B]

There are two trees of importance in the Orchard of Eden: "The Lord God planted an orchard in the east, in Eden; and there he placed the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil, every tree that was pleasing to look at and good for food. (Now the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were in the middle of the orchard.)" Genesis 2:8-9

When people decide for themselves what is good and what is evil based on their own knowledge they are bound to fail. When they have faith, depending on God for life instead of their own "wisdom", they will succeed.

It's not complicated.

 

[Lambano]

Are you doubting like Thomas, Christ can rule effectively in you, so you no longer have to worry about what's right & what's wrong?

No, what I asked was, "How can these things come to be?"

 

[Lambano]

How does Christ come to rule effectively in me?

 

[Lambano]

First don't you need to believe Christ has delivered you from the moral law as per Romans7:4,6?

What I do is trust Christ to save me. How He does that is just theological speculation.

How do you understand Paul's meaning of ὁ νόμος ("The Law") in Romans 7:4, Romans 7:6 and elsewhere in his writings, and particularly ἔργων νόμου ("works of the Law") as in Romans 3:20, Galatians 2:16 and elsewhere?

 

[stunnedbygrace]

First don't you need to believe Christ has delivered you from the moral law as per Romans7:4,6?
Galatians 2:20: "not I, but Christ liveth in me". Then doesn't He rule you & you trust His working through you?

I don’t understand the first line of your post, which you keep repeating. I do understand that it’s only through trusting Him that we become truly lawabiding inside our cup and I do understand that after we have suffered and struggled with sin (hungered and thirsted for the righteousness that is by trust) in us for awhile, He will strengthen, confirm and establish us. But I do not understand what you keep repeating.

 

[farouk]

I mean, I use the Bible all the time for all kinds of reasons. Research, History, Geography, moral lessons, etc.
I even get to learn a little Greek and Hebrew along the way. Added bonus seeing I only know English.

@Ziggy

Anne Steele's words come to mind:

"Divine Instructor, gracious Lord,
Be Thou for ever near;
Teach me to love Thy sacred Word
And view my Saviour there."

 

[stunnedbygrace]

Were Adam & Eve law-abiding by staying unclothed in God's most holy presence?

Tsk. You need to be able to better explain our struggle and help us in it to be heard by men IN that struggle. Just continually repeating that there is no morality for us does not help us. We want to actually BE good in our heart, in the inside of our cup. We KNOW that anger and resentment inside is to have already murdered a person, so to keep repeating to us that there is no longer a law that says do not murder will just get you scoffed at. I think you have a piece of something but what we don’t yet know is whether or not you are just repeating what you have heard from a man or if you have something to actually help us in the building up of our trust to help us to press into the kingdom.

 

[Lambano]

First don't you need to believe Christ has delivered you from the moral law as per Romans7:4,6?
Galatians 2:20: "not I, but Christ liveth in me". Then doesn't He rule you & you trust His working through you?

I think you've got the order backwards. The Spirit of Christ needs to rule in me first before I can consider myself dead to choosing between good and evil. Otherwise, I'm just left with a vacuum. How do these things come to be?

 

[Jim B]

Were Adam & Eve law-abiding by staying unclothed in God's most holy presence?

What??? God created them without clothing -- naked -- and they were fine until they gained the knowledge of good and evil. Do you think that God is embarrassed by nudity? What happens when you shower? Can't God see your nudity through walls?

 

[marks]

Some of my thoughts . . .

Two trees in the garden, one the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, one the Tree of Life. We live according to one or the other. Either we are surrendered into our trust in Jesus to lead us in righteousness and holiness, or we withdraw into our own choosing, according to that other tree.

The thing is . . . we require maturing for the most part so we aren't deceived about what actually is that Tree of Life, and what is our deceptive fleshy lusts. The Bible trains us in that.

Once we recognize what Godly love is, once we taste that light, we will simply want more of that light. Trying to parse light and darkness becomes a poor excuse to look back into the darkness. I prefer the Light.

Much love!

 

[marks]

I don’t see the tree of the knowledge of good and evil like that. I see it as the tree of knowing both the blessing of God and the cursing of God. First they only knew being blessed by God. After disobedience, they knew being cursed by God too. (And their children were born into that futility once they were made to bring forth of their own kind).

I happen to think that @Saved Christian is on the right track. That God does not intend Man to be deciding for himself what is right for him, that Man should receive everything from his Creator.

So when Man choose to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he took upon himself that responsibility to choose for himself, and a whole new vista of possibilities opened up.

Until that moment, there was only, receiving what God gave, but that choice led to a new paradigm, that there was an alternative to God's way. Man had discovered evil.

The mind of the religious person is according to that way, trying to be suffuciently "good" to be accepted, but in Christ, we are removed from that humanity, into a new humanity, with the new way, the original way, living according to Life, the life Chrsit gives us, not in some alternative.

The renewing of our minds it to get us away from that old mindset of choosing for ourselves the details of our lives, though there is a part for us in that, I hope you understand what I'm saying, but to get rid of that now obsolete paradigm, stop living our lives as if it were still true for us, and start living according to the new reality. To find that this is in fact the new reality.

Another way I like to describe this is to say living according to a complete reconciliation to God. No more concerns over good or evil, only to bring ever errant thought to Christ to be submitted to Him. And to recognize when we've stopped walking in the light of Christ's life.

Much love!

 

[marks]

How does Christ come to rule effectively in me?

By renewing our minds so we stop diverting onto the old paths. Otherwise, as we trust in Him, like, really be trusting Him, SBG can describe that well, Christ WILL be effectively ruling in us.

Much love!