The Tree of Life

 This week we finish the book of Revelation in Come Follow Me.  I decided to read Revelation 22 in Greek to finish off my year of exploring the New Testament in Greek. You have to understand that I am not at all fluent reading Greek.  I have an app (Bible Vocab) I use that defines each word in each passage.  As I am reading along and don't know a word, I just look down at the definition. In Revelation, I can read about 50%- 75 % of the words without looking at the definition. So I was reading along hit verse 2 and read about the ξυλον ζωης. I know that  ζωης means "of life" but I looked down at the definition of ξυλον and in my mind translated the phrase as the "staff of life".  Later I was reading from the KJV and saw they translated it as the "Tree of Life." I know why they translate it that way.  When the idea of a "tree of life" is first introduced in Revelation 2:7, they talk about people eating of its fruit so it is understandable for it to be translated as a "tree", but in most of the New Testament ξυλον refers to something fashioned of wood. It is the word used in Acts whenever they say that Jesus was hung on the cross. The cross is the ξυλον.  When they talk about the good tree bringing forth good fruit in Matthew 7:17 the word they use is "δενδρον" which is the normal word for a living tree.  As I began to think about why John called the tree of life a ξυλον instead of a δενδρον as one would expect, it kind of blew my mind. 

John wrote the Book of Revelation as an ending to the story that started in Genesis.  He uses a lot of images from the creation and fall: the sea as a symbol of chaos, the serpent, the garden with the river running out of it, and the the tree of life.  In Genesis, God creates the world and it falls.  In Revelation God takes the fallen world, purifies it and returns it and us to our paradisical state. If John is equating the Tree of Life with a staff and with the cross, it pulls a whole bunch of symbols together that I didn't realized where associated with each other. 

1. The Tree of Life in the Garden is Jesus on the cross. It is through the atonement that we can have everlasting life.  We learn from Lehi's vision that the fruit of the tree is the Love of God (1 Nephi 8:12).  If the tree is the cross, then the fruit of the tree is Jesus' sacrifice, which is a manifestation of the love of God, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son (John 3:16).  

2. Aaron's staff was a symbol of Jesus. Moses used Aaron's staff to do miracles that lead the Hebrews out of the captivity of Egypt.  Likewise, Jesus' sacrifice on the cross allows all to escape the captivity of sin and death. 

3. Later, when the people of Moses were murmuring about who would be the priests among the Israelites, Aaron's staff budded, though long dead, showing which tribe should be the priests. So, like the staff, Jesus died, and came back alive again. It is God's power, through the resurrected Jesus, that makes the temple ordinances efficacious. 

The Tree of Life symbol is ubiquitous in almost all cultures.  I just had never associated it with the cross of Jesus before.