What began as a fall is beginning to seem more like the triggering of an avalanche. In these past weeks, we've tread methodically through Genesis 3, watching in slow-motion as everything precious comes undone. Hearing the serpent engage the woman with his cunning, we observed a case study in how we could be deceived into doubting the goodness of God's will. Drooling with her over the forbidden fruit, we felt the pull of how desires can be preyed on to tempt us toward sin. And then, as she reached out, plucked, bit, we saw how intellect and will led to the action that constituted sin. But once both had sinned, immediately a whole host of psychological and social consequences began to crop up: guilt and shame, fear, blame, the fracturing of relationships. And so we learned that our decisive failure would frustrate the whole creation's aspirations of rushing into God. Up to these verses, though, we've still been safely sheltered in God's garden of delights. The time has come, though, for that to change. For by our sin, we've forfeited the bliss we once briefly knew as home.
I suppose our first question is, “Why? Why did we have to leave the garden? Why wasn't all this enough as it is?” And by my count, there are five reasons why we had to leave the garden. Reason #1 is punitive: as sinners, we just don't deserve to enjoy all the good things of God's garden any more. “Shall I not punish them for these things? declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 5:9). God is Justice, and justice has a problem with sinners reaping a life of bliss. “Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” (Jeremiah 12:1). In the end, the solution God's wise justice provides has to be what's written: “The wicked will not dwell in the land” (Proverbs 10:30), “the wicked will be cut off from the land” (Proverbs 2:22). “There is no greater punishment than to be cast out of paradise.”1
If the first reason is punitive, Reason #2 is purgative: we are now unclean through sin, and for the good of the garden, we can't be allowed to stay in the holy place. Remember, Genesis pictures the first sin as involving an unclean beast getting humans to gulp down unkosher food, and so to take all that defilement within ourselves; and as a result, humans have become ritually dirty, potentially staining anything we touch.2 “Can mortal man be... pure before his Maker?” (Job 4:17). The image of God has been desecrated, his priests have been defiled.3 “We have all become like one who is unclean..., we all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Isaiah 64:6). But “who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false” (Psalm 24:3-4). Once that's not us, we cannot stay.
If the first two reasons are punitive and purgative, Reason #3 is restrictive: it would be bad for the world for us to have access to the Tree of Life. At this point, we've become, the LORD God says to his heavenly host, “like one of us, to know good and evil” (Genesis 3:22). That is, they've attained divine wisdom, divine power. Now, I'm inclined to think God's speaking a bit sarcastically: if there's anything the pitiful cowards having a meltdown in their fig leaves hardly look like, it's sages or mages.4 Still, divine knowledge and divine life – the things represented by the two trees – add up, in the eyes of Israel's neighbors, to what makes something a god.5 If we've stolen the first, can we take the other step? This isn't, as some think, as if God fears us. No matter what, it's nonsense to picture any threat to the Almighty. But this is heavenly horror at our hubris. We couldn't be trusted even with what we'd been given, let alone with godhood!6 Full of ourselves, we'd do limitless damage.7 So we can't be allowed to be like deranged gods roaming the world. We must be humbled by a limit.
On the other hand, it isn't just for the world's sake that we mustn't live forever. It's for ours, too. Reason #4 for us to leave the garden is medicinal: it's for our own good that we not live forever. Think about it. What would the world be like if we had a way to keep ourselves alive indefinitely? Picture Adolf Hitler's fifth millennium in power, with no prospect of an end.8 Or imagine if torturers could keep their victims alive for a thousand years of agony! The truth is, even shy of those dramatic cases, life is hard, and if we're honest, we struggle to tough it out for seventy, eighty, ninety years before we say we want off this crazy ride. If the man and woman “eat while they were clothed with a curse,” they would thereafter “remain in lives of eternal suffering,” as St. Ephrem put it; they'd “live as if buried alive..., tortured eternally by their pains.”9 Not just that, but the more we sin, the more attached we get to sin. If it's hard to break a bad habit now, imagine if you were set in your ways for four thousand years and then tried to quit? To live forever as sinners would literally be hell on earth.
And so the earliest Christians all saw that it was for our own good that humans were sent away from the Tree of Life, “that they might not continue forever as a transgressor, and that the sin that had them surrounded might not be immortal, nor their evil interminable and incurable; so he checked their transgression by interposing death, and he made sin cease by putting an end to it through the disintegration of the flesh.”10 Paul says that “one who has died has been justified from sin” (Romans 6:7) – that is, there's something about dying and suffering that lets us repair our sins. Without it, our sin could never let up or lessen. “God conferred a great benefit on man: he didn't let him remain forever in a state of sin but... cast him out of paradise, so that through his punishment he might expiate his sin in a fixed period of time.”11 Thus, “he who had been harmed in the leisure of the garden might be aided by the toil of the earth” as a penance,12 and at the end of it, “death is healing.”13
Our removal was a punitive, purgative, restrictive, and medicinal measure. But it was also missional. Back in the beginning, Genesis identifies a gap in the creation: “there was no human to work the ground,” as a result of which, the ground couldn't reach its fullest potential (Genesis 2:5). It was partly to solve that problem that God made us two verses later (Genesis 2:7). Now, the human leaves the garden “to work the ground from which he was taken” (Genesis 3:23). In chasing us back to the ground where we began, God is coupling our survival to his service. We won't eat unless we're working, but it's somehow the very work we were made for. We're being sent out, despite our fall, on mission. (The Latin Bible even uses emisit here, from the same root as missio.) As much in exile as at home, we have a purpose for our lives!14
So “the LORD God said, 'Behold, the human has become like one of us, to know good and evil. Now, lest he send out his hand and take also of the Tree of Life and live forever...,' therefore the LORD God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the human” (Genesis 3:22-24). The remedy for us sending out a hand to take the fruit is for us to be sent out. But we aren't just sent out. We're driven out, pushed out, forcibly evicted from our special home. And that was God's own doing. It says so right there: the LORD God is the one who sent out, drove out, humanity from the garden, for the five good reasons we mentioned. One ancient reader pictured the scene: “The Immortal became angry with them and expelled them from the place of immortals..., and they immediately, going out..., wept with tears and groans.”15
“And he placed, to the east of the Garden of Eden, the cherubim and a flame of the sword that whirled, to guard the way of the Tree of Life” (Genesis 3:24). Genesis is written as if we're already supposed to know what this is talking about. And maybe those old Hebrews did. The countries around Israel all had traditions about spirits with human heads, lion bodies, and eagle wings; we actually have pictures of them even from Israel.16 While the Greeks called them sphinxes, the Assyrians called some of them kurību. In inspiring Scripture, the Holy Spirit used this “poetic imagery,” as “a concession to the nature of our own mind,” to portray one of the sorts of spiritual creatures God made for his heaven.17 Generally, Christians have taken these cherubim, alongside the seraphim and thrones, as the tip-top, cream-of-the-crop angels, the ones who are “God's immediate neighbor..., receiving the primal theophanies” so that they “contemplate the divine splendor in primordial power.”18
But everybody in Israel's neighbor-world knew that kurību had a job to do, and it was to serve as guardians of holy spaces – basically, they were bodyguards for the gods and their temples.19 So they'd be portrayed at temple gateways and in front of holy trees, always in pairs, to mark a boundary between sacred and profane. Genesis up until here has made that our job, to “guard” the garden as its keepers (Genesis 2:15). But now we've lost the job, gotten canned, been replaced by these alien entities from a realm not our own.20 Now the cherubim are put at the eastern gates of the garden-sanctuary, defending it from our trespass.21
With them is an added protective measure – as if the cherubim weren't enough!22 It's probably best translated as “Flame of the Whirling/Thrashing Sword” (Genesis 3:24).23 Some of Israel's neighbors thought that their gods made supernatural weapons that had minds of their own, and they also worshipped a god they called 'Flame of the Arrow,' so Genesis might be borrowing that language to picture a fiery member of the LORD's heavenly army who is now stationed at the garden gate to fiercely intercept and destroy anything that intrudes.24 The point of all this is that the garden is locked down tight. There's no going back, not with the burning blade at our backs!
And so we, humankind, were “thrown out into this world, condemned as though to prison.”25 Made homeless, we confronted a darker and less pleasant world than we knew.26 The world outside is an as-yet-uncultivated land that's neither the haunted desert nor the vivacious garden, but a space in between that'll become what they – we – make of it. It's a wild world out there, no longer the comfortable refuge of the garden.27 It comes with “many dangers, toils, and snares,” as the hymn has it.28 But the good news is that we're sent out neither naked nor in our skimpy fig-leaf girdles. Instead, God himself manufactures a remedy for our intense vulnerability: “the LORD God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins, and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21).
Outside the garden, with access to the Tree of Life cut off, we come to a world where “our deaths are assured, though not immediate.”29 “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and death spread to all humans” (Romans 5:12). Sooner or later, everybody's battery runs out, and God took our charger away. So, “through fear of death,” we all become “subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:15). But here's the good news: “the human called his wife's name 'Eve' because she was the mother of all the living” (Genesis 3:20). In faith, Adam announces God's promise that life will roll on in the face of death, generation after generation.30 It isn't eternal life, but the continued ebb and flow of natural life. Death is here, but death won't keep life down.
Sadder than death, though, this “curse is fundamentally excommunication,” distancing us from our former fellowship with God and his angels.31 The loss of the garden signifies “a motion away from fellowship with God” on our end,32 but also “a divine retreat from humanity” so that God and his angels are less visible now.33 In the garden, the realities we call spiritual would've been as matter-of-fact as fig leaves; to exchange quick pleasantries with Gabriel in the orchard might've been a perfectly typical occurrence. But now God honors the relational distance between us by allowing a perceptual distance – that is, he's increasingly hidden from our view, harder to see. He interacts with us through symbols and messengers to mediate his presence in ways we seldom recognize or understand. Although God is always close by, it's rarer to see his closeness in this darkness.
Between this distance we discern, the difficulties we endure, and the definite demise we face, deep inside we all feel a homesickness we struggle to put a finger on. Even when our thoughts aren't on the garden, our hearts are! And to that end, God doesn't let Adam and Eve get very far. They live their hard lives on the cursed ground in the garden's shadow, provoking them to lives of grief in this world. Why would God do that? Because “godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret,” the Bible says (2 Corinthians 7:10). It may not restore them to paradise in this life, but it keeps God's friendship and gives them hope beyond life's exile.34
Fast-forward to Israel camped out in the desert. They built a tabernacle, positioning it with its entrance on the east side. Not only does it have a replica tree as a lampstand (Exodus 25:31-36), but its most sacred furnishing is a box whose lid is flanked by two gold cherubim (Exodus 25:17-22). The box is kept behind a veil decorated with images of the cherubim (Exodus 26:31), and in fact all ten wall curtains of the tabernacle are decorated with cherubim (Exodus 26:1). The whole camp faces in towards it as the heart of their life (Numbers 2:1-31). What they have here, out in the desert, is an artificial Eden. So, Moses says, the “camp must be holy” (Deuteronomy 23:14).
For that reason, anyone who became unclean – from leprosy, discharges, touching corpses, whatever – they were to “send... outside the camp, that they may not defile their camp in the midst of which I dwell,” God said (Numbers 5:2-3). Just as Adam and Eve were banished from the garden, unclean Israelites were banished from the camp which was one body, one land, with the Tabernacle of the LORD.35 The good news is, this expulsion wasn't permanent. Those excluded for uncleanness only dwelled “outside the camp” until they could be clean again (Leviticus 13:46). That called for bathing, rituals of restoration, and time (Leviticus 14:8; Numbers 19:12-19; Deuteronomy 23:11). The way they kept their exclusion so limited was that, once a year, they chased a scapegoat out of the camp, making it a substitute for their own exile from the garden (Leviticus 16:20-22).36
Unlike Adam, who failed to drive out the serpent, Israel is given divine help to – (mostly) – drive out the pagan nations squatting in the land God promised them (Exodus 23:30-31). And this land takes the place of the camp as their new Eden. They had been warned in advance, though, that if they defiled the promised land, they'd be sent away as surely as Adam and Eve were sent away. Sadly, Jeremiah then heard the bad news: “When you came in, you defiled my land. … I will hurl you out of this land … I will thrust you out, and you will perish” (Jeremiah 2:7; 16:13; 27:10). As a national community, they were exiled from the land of promise, from their new garden.37 It was punitive to respond to their sin, purgative to cleanse the land, medicinal to humble them, even missional insofar as they should've proclaimed the LORD among the nations to which they were scattered.
Even before it happened, though, King Solomon had prayed that, should they ever be sent out from their garden, “if they repent with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies,” God might have mercy (1 Kings 8:48-50), just as Moses had promised God would (Deuteronomy 30:1-5). So the LORD tells the exiles, “You will call upon me..., you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart..., and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from... all the places where I have driven you..., and I will bring you back” (Jeremiah 29:12-14). But once back in the land, they now know it's no lasting garden yet (Ezra 9:13-15; Daniel 9:24). Still they're left hoping for a future Savior who “shall open the gates of paradise,” who “shall remove the sword that has threatened since Adam,” who “will grant to the saints to eat of the Tree of Life.”38
Fast-forward again, and there's a man dying on a cross. He turns to one of his neighbors and says words that should wake up the world: “I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43)! On the third day, that middle man has risen from the dead. And in the light of Jesus' resurrection, we get a fascinating scene. What happened in the beginning? Two humans in the garden listened to the serpent teach them false knowledge and open their eyes (Genesis 3:1-7), and therefore they were sent to walk the 'way' out of Paradise, away from the food that is life; the 'way' back in was blocked (Genesis 3:22-24). Now, we find two humans walking along a way, when the risen Jesus comes among them and teaches them true knowledge by opening the Scriptures to them (Luke 24:13-17). As they walk on the way of his teaching, their hearts burn within them, almost as if passing by the fiery sword (Luke 24:32), and at their destination, their eyes are suddenly opened when Jesus breaks the bread and gives them the food that is life: his body and his blood (Luke 24:30-31).39
The road to Emmaus became, to those two disciples, the way back into Paradise! And ever since, Christians have faithfully believed that God planted the Church itself as a new Garden of Eden on the earth.40 They saw that “the things of the garden refer to the Church of Christ,”41 where every week in their liturgy the Christians would eat knowledge from Scripture and then, in the second half, eat Life from the altar. And “the grace of the Holy Spirit does not ever cease from decorating and crowning with fresh flowers the Paradise of the Church.”42
But could the tragedy of Adam and Eve be repeated here, too? It's an uncomfortable question for us. Modern America tells us community is too vital, everyone should feel welcome, come as you are, love means radical inclusion. At a denominational level, let me tell you, I've heard boasting about how many decades it's been since anybody's been treated with any kind of disciplinary measures. Maybe the truth is that we've gotten so desperate to see butts in the pews that we've traded away holiness for consumer satisfaction – a devil's bargain.
Paul, though, tells the Thessalonians that if any Christian doesn't live by what he, as an apostle, teaches, “take note of that person and have nothing to do with him” (2 Thessalonians 3:14). And when he hears of a man in the Corinthian church whose very grave sin is tolerated by the rest, Paul thunders with the voice of God: “Let him who has done this be removed from among you! … When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present, with the power of Jesus you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 5:2-5).
So “someone who has condemned himself to his own destructive fall... is cast out in exile from the fountains of Paradise.”43 Early Christians said that just as Adam “became an outcast of the garden,” so a Christian “who has believed but has not kept the commandments... has become an outcast of the Church,” and so “no longer receives.”44 As St. Augustine observed, Adam had been, “in a way, excommunicated” from Paradise, and in just the same way “nowadays, in this Paradise which is the Church, people are commonly barred from the visible sacraments of the altar by church discipline.”45 But the Church always emphasized that “the aim of excommunication is healing and not death, correction and not destruction.”46 “When we are judged,” St. Paul says, “we are being disciplined by the Lord so that we may not be condemned along with the world” (1 Corinthians 11:32). That implies that if the Church fails to judge, it risks condemning its members to hell. But those who are disciplined, excluded, can be so freely restored to the Paradise of the Church through repentance and reconciliation!47
But let me end by pointing ahead from here, to what the seer saw in a vision: “The angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the Tree of Life, with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month … No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him” (Revelation 22:1-3). In the end, in the very end, there is a Last Garden waiting. The cherubim finally step aside with joy. The burning blade backs down. The way is open, never to be shut again (Revelation 21:25). And on that open way, Adam and Eve will at last come home, for, as earlier Christians believed, after being driven out, “those first human beings afterward lived righteously, and for that reason we are right to believe that they were set free from final punishment by the blood of the Lord.”48
There may, horrifyingly, be other people who remain outsiders to this Last Garden: “Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (Revelation 22:15). Tragically, that is a choice someone could make: to refuse to be set free, to deny themselves entry. For “nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable and false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life” (Revelation 21:27). Those who prove to have chosen to return to the defilement of deadly sin, those who will to not repent and be cleansed of it in even their final hour, those who finally display no faith toward the Lamb who bade them follow... this Last Garden can never receive such.
Here, though, is the good news, the very, very, very good news: those who endure in faith, those who enter and remain in Paradise here in hopes of Paradise there, will on the last day be saved to the uttermost, confirmed in perfect righteousness: “I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses,” God promised (Ezekiel 36:29). The Last Garden looms ahead, and those who dwell in it have no need for any punishment, they are too pure to need purged, their humility transcends all restrictions, they need no further medicine, and their mission will at last be complete. “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the Tree of Life and that they may enter [the garden] by the gates” (Revelation 22:14)! With Adam and Eve and all the saints, they shall never, no, never, no, never be driven out from the Eternal Garden of the LORD our Light! Thanks be to God for an undying hope, that our homesickness now shall be answered by an immortal homecoming ahead! Amen.