The Garden Of The Lord

by R. Armstrong, London, Ontario | Category: General | Jan 1974

"And the LORD God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed" (Gen. 2:8).

The word "garden" is from the Hebrew word "gan" which means fenced, and from "ganan" which means to hedge about, protect, defend. "The LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it" (Gen. 2:15). At the very dawn of human history God was teaching what He would repeat many times afterwards. Firstly, that man was prepared by God and put in a place which had an "inside" and an "outside", and secondly that Adam was given responsibility in a divine sphere. He was to dress and keep the garden of God, the place of fellowship, communion and service. It is significant that Eden was central in God's plan for His creation, and Adam's responsibility lay primarily in that centre.

In this place of unparalleled beauty and peace, the man was given authority and the power of choice. Whatever limits God placed in that sinless environment Adam was fully aware of: the trees he could eat of, and the one he could not eat of. God's requirements were not difficult, and yet became the test of obedience. God's will always involves both responsibility and obedience.

The two principles of separation and obedience emerge from this brief glimpse of God's earliest dealings with man. The apostle Paul surely had before him the illustration of Adam being brought by God from outside to inside the garden of Eden when he wrote to the Church of God in Corinth, "Ye are God's husbandry" (1 Cor. 3:9). Here again we have the figure of a place fenced off for cultivation. As Adam was of the first creation, "that which is natural", so the disciples in the Corinthian church were of the second creation, the new creation, "that which is spiritual". They were of the "last Adam, a life giving Spirit". "Wherefore, if any man is in Christ he is a new creature" (2 Cor. 5:17). They were taken out from the sinful society in which they lived, and planted by the Holy Spirit in God's tilled land. Corinth was a cesspool of sin and immorality, and Paul gives a long list of things which were a part of the life of that great seaport and commercial centre. He reminds them that "such were some of you: but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6:11). They too had been brought from the "outside" and placed on the "inside". They were in the house of God to worship and serve Him according to His word.

Every earnest seeker after truth will unite with what God unites, and separate from what God separates. The Scriptures abound in both principles and examples of physical and spiritual separation. "He that hath ears to hear let him hear".

R. Armstrong, London, Ontario | Jan 1974
General