Seeing Jesus in the Gardener
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The
preincarnate Jesus is the One who put His own image in the paradise of God. “Then
the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend
and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). Just as there is a foreshadowing of the fall in the LORD
God’s threatening Adam with death as the penalty for eating the fruit that He
had forbidden him, so there is a foreshadowing of redemption in the LORD God
putting Adam in the garden. Adam being taken from outside the garden and put in
it foreshadows our transference into Jesus’s kingdom. “He has delivered us from
the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His
love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins”
(Col. 1:13-14).
We
read the following in Genesis 2:8, “The LORD God planted a
garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed”,
and the following in 2:15, “Then the LORD God took the man and put
him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” The Hebrew word for ‘put’ in
the former is different from the latter. Whereas the former has more to do with
conveying, the latter has more to do with depositing. We talk
about transferring money from one account to deposit it in another. Whereas
transference is the process, deposit is the result of the transference process.
When a spiritually bankrupt human being is converted by God’s grace, he or she
has the righteousness of Christ transferred to and then deposited in their
account.
Before
he became spiritually bankrupt, what was Adam the gardener commissioned by the
LORD God to do? He was to tend and keep His garden. Notice how the Lexam
English Bible renders it, “And Yahweh God took the man and set him
in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it” (Gen. 2:15, LEB). The use
of the word cultivate alerts us that Adam’s work in the garden was an
extension of and obedience to the Cultural Mandate of Genesis 1:26-28. “Then
God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the
earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of
the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Gen. 1:28). 
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The
last Adam’s Great Commission is His post-Fall fulfilling of the Cultural
Mandate by the power of His Spirit on earth working through the people He
has redeemed. Those who have been redeemed by Christ are to be about the
business of redeeming every sphere of society, be it family, church, state,
nation, school, college, university, stamp club, sports club, coffee club, or whatever.
Abraham Kuyper’s famous statement sums up the Cultural Mandate/Great
Commission,
The
connection between the Cultural Mandate and the Great Commission
becomes clearer when one begins to see Jesus in Adam the gardener. As was the
first Adam, so was the last Adam. The former prefigures the latter. For Adam
was created in Jesus’s image and likeness, to do what He was coming to do,
i.e., tend and keep the garden of God – forever! “Whereas the first Adam failed
miserably to tend and keep the garden, i.e., cultivate it, the second Adam
succeeds spectacularly in tending and keeping the garden city.”[2]
“And Yahweh
God took the man and set him
in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it” (Gen. 2:15 LEB). The word cultivate as
used here by the LEB lends itself to the whole pre-fall covenant of works with
Adam as mankind’s representative head. With Eve he was commissioned by God to “be fruitful and multiply; fill the
earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). He was to
expand the garden, yes, God’s Kingdom, throughout the earth. Other versions of
the Bible translate the Hebrew word עָבַד as dress KJV, tend NKJV, care for
NET, work it HCSB, ESV, NIV. The idea, then, was for Adam to serve God by
cultivating His garden. The other word is שָׁמַר, which means to keep, to
attend to, to hedge about, guard, to protect. Thus, Adam was to serve and
protect God’s Kingdom on earth, i.e., the expanding garden.
“To serve and protect”, and variations of it, is the motto of many police forces in Western nations. This essentially is the motto for what Adam was to do in the garden. It’s ancient history that he didn’t do a very good job of this. He produced only thorns and thistles and he failed to protect his wife from an unwanted intruder. So much for “to serve and protect”![3]
The
sword and the trowel image of Nehemiah rebuilding and defending the wall illustrates
what the LORD God employed Adam to do in the garden. “Those who built on the
wall, and those who carried burdens, loaded themselves so that with one hand
they worked at construction, and with the other held a weapon” (Neh. 4:17). Therefore,
in this “to serve and protect”, even pre-Fall, one can see a
foreshadowing of Adam beating his ploughshare into a sword and his pruning hook
into a spear! “Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into
spears…” (Joel 3:10a). Of course, the last Adam is in the process of reversing
this, “He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; they shall
beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation
shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore”
(Isa. 2:4; cf. Micah 4:3).
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Why
did the Word become flesh? He came “to serve and protect”. “For
this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of
the devil” (1 John 3:8). He came to serve, “just
as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life
a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28) and to protect, “I am
not praying that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from
the evil one” (John 17:15, CSB).
Having
seen then that the LORD God put the man in His garden to cultivate it as well as
guard it from intruders, and that this foreshadows what God was putting Adam’s
replacement, i.e., the Man Christ Jesus, into the world to do, let us now
briefly consider what Adam was like before the fall. Westminster Confession of
Faith summarises this for us,
After God had made all other creatures, He created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after His own image, having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfil it; and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto change. Beside this law written in their hearts, they received a command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; which while they kept, they were happy in their communion with God, and had dominion over the creatures.[4]
Let
us note that Adam had God’s Law written on his heart and that he was created and
endued with holiness, righteousness, and true knowledge. We won’t go too far
wrong if we keep in mind that we are talking about God’s Moral Law here,
i.e., the Decalogue a.k.a. the Ten Commandments, and not the Mosaic Law which
obviously came later during the time of Moses.
So,
Adam had inward commands, i.e., the Ten Commandments, and an outward command to
not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is what is meant by
“true knowledge”. It has to do with man being made in God’s image and likeness.
God’s Ten Commandments are an internal revelation of God’s character. All of
this is summarised in Jesus’s command, “And you shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your
strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is
this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment
greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31). This is what Adam was mandated to do. In
the Triune Godhead each Person loves God and loves His Neighbour as Himself.
Adam was commissioned to reflect this character of God on planet Earth.
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What was God’s pre-Fall Law like? The Ten Commandments, as we know them, presuppose sin. However, Adam, before the Fall, was without sin. Adam, the image and likeness of God, was created to expressly image the character of God in creation. In short, he too was to love God and His neighbour as himself. The Ten Commandments add more detail to the summary, the first four of which express how we are to love God, and the last six how we are to love our neighbour as ourselves. What are the Ten Commandments in positive form?
1.
Worship
God exclusively.
2.
Worship
God spiritually.
3.
Worship God sincerely.
4.
Worship God as He will be worshipped.
5.
Respect authority.
6.
Respect the life and rights of others.
7.
Be pure and loyal.
8.
Be honest.
9.
Be truthful.
10. Be happy and content.[5]
These
are the Ten Commandments before the fall that were written on Adam’s moist
‘clay’ heart. After the fall, God wrote the same Commandments in negative form
on tablets of hardened clay, (i.e., stone, metaphorically like Adam’s heart
after he had fallen). So, true knowledge has much to do with knowing God, of
which His Ten Commandments is very much a part of.
It doesn’t take a theological genius to see that holiness and righteousness are inward and outward expressions of God’s Moral Law. Adam was to serve God by setting Him apart in his heart inwardly (holiness) which would be expressed outwardly by his works (righteousness). No, to be sure, Adam was not trying to earn salvation before the Fall, as he had not yet fallen. However, his commandment keeping was through doing righteous works. Let us return to the Westminster Larger Catechism to illustrate this,
Q. 98.
Where is the moral law summarily comprehended?
A. The moral law is summarily comprehended in the ten commandments, which were delivered by the voice of God upon mount Sinai, and written by Him in two tables of stone; and are recorded in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. The four first commandments containing our duty to God, and the other six our duty to man.
Notice that the first table contains our
duty to God and the second, our duty to our neighbour. Though you cannot have
the one without the other, the former table has much to do with holiness and
the latter with righteousness.
Notice
where we are to set apart, i.e., keep holy as in sanctify, the LORD God, “But sanctify
the Lord God in your hearts” (1 Pet. 3:15a). The heart is to be like the holy
of holies in the temple – set apart. Our
duty towards God is to Worship God exclusively, spiritually, sincerely,
and as He will be worshipped. This is what holiness means and this is what it
means when we say that Adam was created in holiness. It pertains to the first
four commandments of the Decalogue. In negative terms and in abbreviated form they
are: 1. You shall have no other gods before Me, 2.
You shall not make idols, 3. You shall not take the name of God in vain, 4. Remember
the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
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Whereas
these Commands have to do with loving God, the last six show us how to love our
neighbour. Here they are abbreviated: 5. Honor
your father and your mother, 6. You shall not murder, 7. You shall not commit
adultery, 8. You shall not steal, 9. You shall not bear false witness, 10. You
shall not covet.
The
first four Commandments pertain to holiness and the last six to righteousness.
Adam, therefore, was created with true knowledge, holiness, and righteousness.
This is what he lost when he sided with Satan against the LORD God and ate the
forbidden fruit thereby breaking all the commandments.
True
knowledge, holiness, and righteousness is what is recovered by the last Adam,
Jesus Christ. He does this by writing His Law on our hearts, “I will put My
laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and
they shall be My people” (Heb. 8:10b). We are to “put on the new man who
is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him” (Col.
3:10) and we are to “put on the new man which was created according to God, in
true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24b).
What Adam the gardener lost for
us in the garden is regained for us by the new Gardener, viz., true knowledge
of God, holiness, and righteousness. “Therefore, just as through one man sin
entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men,
because all sinned … For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the
one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as
through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in
condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free
gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one
man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many
will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:12, 17-19).
Who does the better job of
tending and keeping the paradise of God? Gardener Adam or Gardener Jesus? Here’s
some of gardener Adam’s work,
The earth mourns and fades away, the world languishes and fades away; the haughty people of the earth languish. The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants, because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore the curse has devoured the earth, and those who dwell in it are desolate. Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men are left. Isaiah 24:4-6.
And here’s some of the work of
Gardener Jesus,
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of
life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down
the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the
tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.
And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will
there be any curse. Revelation 22:1-3a.
[1] James D Bratt, Abraham Kuyper:
A Centennial Reader, (Eerdmans Publishing, 1998), 488.
[2] Neil Cullan McKinlay and D. Rudi
Schwartz, The Kingdom: Every Square Inch, (Weemac Publishing, Brisbane,
Queensland, 2024), 480. See also Neil Cullan McKinlay and D. Rudi Schwartz, Gods
Kingdom: What! On Earth?, (Weemac Publishing, Brisbane, Queensland, 2026),
283.
[3] Ibid., The Kingdom, 250-251,
God’s Kingdom, 162.
[4] Book of Forms, Reformed
Churches of Australia, (Reformed Churches Publishing House, Geelong,
Victoria,1991), 154.
[5] Francis Nigel Lee, (quoting
Yost), The Covenantal Sabbath, (The Lord’s Day Observance Society,
London, 1966), 24.
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