21Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them. 22And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
23Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
24So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
After announcing Adam and Eve's "punishment", God made them clothes from the skins of animals. You should wonder why God would make them clothes, he did not tell them to be ashamed of their nakedness, they had come to that conclusion on their own, that knowledge. When Adam told God that he had hid because he was naked, God asked him who told him that, Adam did not say that God had told him to be ashamed. God then asked Adam if he had eaten of the tree because there were only two ways that Adam could have come to the understanding. We come into this world naked and vulnerable.
Verse 22 is particularly interesting. God says to other beings that humans had become like God because we knew good and evil. God then removes the tree of life so that we would not live forever. There are those who attempt to read this to mean that God did not want to compete with us; but, that is just silly. This verse can only be fully understood if one understands the New Testament and the trinity. There are those who have attempted to say that God was talking to angels because they also live forever; but, he wasn't, he was talking to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We were made in God's image, angels were not.
I asked earlier what would have happened if Eve had eaten from the tree of life rather than from the tree of knowledge. Would we become prisoners of this reality, of this world and never move onto heaven. This world is preparation for the next, this world is about learning manners and how to have proper relationships. In order to protect us, God prevented us from eating of the tree of life by removing us from Eden. What is interesting is that Jesus dies for our sins and constructively is the tree of life from which we may have eternal life. That means that God removed it for awhile; but, it is given to us when we die to this world.
We are here to live this life, to learn and grow and choose who we will be and how we will treat others. We are here to learn to grow up into people worth having a relationship with.
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