«　WEEK 1　DAY 3　»

　　John 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.

　　Rev. 22:2 And on this side and on that side of the river was the tree of life, producing twelve fruits, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

　　Nearly everything in Genesis 1 and 2 is a seed of the divine revelation. The two trees are such seeds…These seeds grow in the following books of the Bible and are reaped as a harvest in the book of Revelation. In Revelation 20:10 and 14 we see that death is cast into the lake of fire. In Revelation 22:2 we see that life abides in the New Jerusalem. At the beginning of the Bible we find death and life, and at the end of the Bible we again see death and life. Between the two ends of the Bible two lines are set forth—the line of death and the line of life. Both lines begin in the book of Genesis and end in the book of Revelation. Death begins with the tree of knowledge of good and evil and ends with the lake of fire. Life begins with the tree of life and ends at the New Jerusalem. Before we were saved, we were on the line of death. After we were saved, we were put on the line of life. (Life-study of Genesis, p. 162)

　　The tree of life signifies God as life to man…The tree of life issues in a dependent life… If man would take the tree of life, that would issue in a dependent life in man… All the matters related to life are matters of dependence. You cannot graduate from any matter of life. Eating is a dependent matter. You cannot say that you have eaten the best food and that you have eaten more than enough, so you do not need to eat anymore. The matters of drinking and breathing, of course, are also dependent matters from which we do not graduate.

　　This shows that to take God as our life issues in a dependent life. Knowledge, on the other hand, issues in independence. God is not knowledge to us. God is life to us. We take Him as our life, and this divine life right away issues in a kind of dependence within us. We have to depend upon Him all the time. He is the vine, and we are the branches. The branches have to abide in the vine (John 15:5). Apart from the vine, the branches become dead… All the branches depend upon the vine’s life.

　　Before we were saved, we were altogether independent of God. But when we repented to God and believed in God, we became dependent. Whenever we have been independent, that was the time we lived by knowledge. Whenever we lived by our spirit, by life, we were altogether dependent upon God. Thus, these are two kinds of principles issuing from two kinds of lives. The divine life makes us dependent, and the satanic life makes us independent. To be independent means to be rebellious. To rebel means to be independent from God.

　　God wanted man to receive Him as life by the way of eating…Eating is the unique way to receive nourishment organically…What you eat becomes your organic nourishment… Eating is the unique way, and God is the unique food to man… All the physical food we eat is a shadow. God is the reality of our food [cf. Col. 2:16-17]…To receive God by eating Him is to have God assimilated into our being metabolically… His new element replaces what we are, and our old element is discharged. (CWWL, 1979, vol. 1, “Basic Lessons on Life,” pp. 488, 490-491)

　　Eating indicates dependence. That God is our food, signified by the tree of life, means that we must depend on God continually. We must come to Him in order to feed on Him again and again… Taking the tree of knowledge makes us independent of God. In the eyes of God the greatest sin is independence. We must learn to depend on God continually. (CWWL, 1990, vol. 1, “The Triune God to Be Life to the Tripartite Man,” p. 233)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1978, vol. 2, “Life Messages, Volume 1,” chs. 26-27; CWWL, 1965, vol. 3, “The Enjoyment of Christ,” ch. 1