Gardens, Trees, and Brides

It’s a strange thing, God created this world with a man and a woman in a garden, and He will recreate it at the end with a Groom – Jesus – and a Bride – the Church, in the garden-city of the heavenly Jerusalem. The second Bride has her beginnings right here, in another garden, with the women following Joseph of Arimathea there to see where Jesus is buried.

God’s story is much the same, at the beginning, middle and end. There is a man in a garden with a tree of life, and a woman is made for the man. At this central point of the story, Jesus Christ, the second Adam, had the right to enter the garden and take the fruit of the tree of life, and eat. But instead He goes to the tree and dies there. He is put to sleep by His Father, because – and this is the mind-boggling part - even in the glorious fellowship of the Trinity, it was not good that the Son should be alone. Something else is going on, and God’s purpose involves us. As Nicodemus and Joseph bury Jesus, they are followed by the women. They symbolize the second Eve, the bride being knit together, bone of His bones, flesh of His flesh. Our frame was not hidden from God when He was making us in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Because of the blood-stained tree, there can be a bride. The bride can be pure and accepted by the Father and suited for the Son, in spite of her past sin, all because of the tree. Col 2:13-15: “And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.”