BibleProject | Holy Week & EasterSample

Choosing Life or Death in Two Gardens

On the surface, Bible stories might suggest that God wants people to obey him. But getting into the details helps you realize that God never wants people to blindly obey him. Instead, God is forming people who want to obey him.

God doesn’t program us like computers or train us like animals, but he does provide us with decision-making tests. Today’s video shows how these trials build a pattern that drives every biblical story, with two tests in two gardens standing out most.

In the garden of Eden’s lush orchard, God gives Adam and Eve a choice: “From any tree of the garden you may freely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” (Gen. 2:16-17).

Seems simple enough, right? But there’s a twist.

Adam and Eve see the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as nourishing, beautiful, and desirable (Gen. 3:6). So they must choose: trust their own will or trust God’s will? They take the fruit and soon find themselves expelled from Eden to a place where life returns to dead dust (Gen. 3:19). Rejecting God’s will, they learn, means rejecting life itself.

Then comes the next standout garden, Gethsemane, where we find Jesus praying while Roman soldiers close in. It’s one thing to love all people like God instructs; it’s a whole other thing to love people bent on murdering you. Like anyone, Jesus desires survival, so he first prays, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matt. 26:39). He’s saying, please let there be any other way.

“Yet not as I will, but as you will,” Jesus concludes (Matt. 26:39). The pattern Adam began is finally broken.

The next night, Jesus’ dead body looks like proof that this trust has totally failed. But three days later, his resurrected, living body shows how choosing to trust God’s will is choosing a life that even death cannot stop.

Reflection Question

• When in your life do you most often face “the test” to choose between operating on pure human instinct (doing whatever looks best in your eyes) and operating according to God’s will? What did you learn, and how might today’s reading help you during the next test?