Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
2 3 2025

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The meaning of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil can be understood by the serpent’s promise:

“By eating from this tree, you will be making your own decision. You will be like God, determining for yourself what is right and what is wrong.” The fall of humanity was all about women and men assuming the posture that they don’t need anyone to tell them what to do. They would decide for themselves what’s good and what’s bad. They would be self-sufficient and self-determining.
Of course, what was ignored in that whole discussion is the tree of life.

God wanted humans to eat from the tree of life. Eating from the tree of life meant receiving the uncreated life of God into oneself.

The tree of life was God’s own life made accessible to human beings.
Today, the tree of life is the Lord Jesus Christ. I am the true vine John 15:1 . . . . As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.
When we receive Christ, we receive the life of God. Divine life becomes ours.

Receiving Christ is simply taking the first bite from the right tree.
Living by God’s life is very different from living by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A person who is living by the tree of life doesn’t sit back and say, “Let me try to do good and avoid evil.” Instead, he allows the life of God to flow within and through him. He yields to the instincts, promptings, and energy of that God-life.

You see, “good” is a form of life. And only God is good.
Here are the two choices before you today:

1. The choice to intellectually know good from evil and to try to do good = the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
2. Living “by the life” of God, which is goodness itself = the tree of life.
Mark it down: the knowledge of good
is the accepted counterfeit to living by life.

Too much of the Christian religion is built on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Christian religion can be studied using the same categories of thought used to study any other world religion. It can be analyzed just as Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism are analyzed. The difficulty with the Christian religion (like all religions) is that it makes its adherents think that they have now found the real knowledge of good and evil.

Religion gives people the notion that they have God under control. Religion says that we can understand God absolutely and completely. We can predict what the Almighty will do tomorrow. The Christian religion teaches that the Bible answers virtually every question that’s brought to the sacred text. The problem with this line of thought is that the true God cannot fit into anyone’s box.
God will always end up breaking out of our human expectations and understanding.
(But he will never contradict his written word.)

 Every attempt to capture God and cram and ram Him into a system will ultimately fail. (Discipleship programs) The true God is an untamed lion. He cannot be controlled. The true God is sovereign/the controller. Yet many Christians have turned the Bible into a form of the knowledge of good and evil. They approach the Bible as raw material by which they can gain control over their lives, so life can be more understandable and under control, less unnerving and unpredictable. (I pray you are listening.) This is a profoundly grievous misuse of the Bible. Jesus didn’t misuse the Scriptures to gain control and predictability in His own life. To Him, the Scriptures were simply the joystick on the Father’s controller.

They were the instrument through which He got to know His Father better
and to discover how to live out His mission.

Christians are taught that being a disciple means imitating Jesus. So “follow me” gets translated into “read what Jesus did in the Bible, and then do the same thing.” But this is all external. It’s like saying, “Here’s an orange. Now create one yourself out of whole cloth.” That’s impossible. An orange is an organic thing. One must plant a seed, water it, watch it grow, and behold, an orange will eventually come forth. Just as one must be born again of the Spirit to enter into God’s kingdom. External efforts and the work of the flesh will never get you there. 

When Jesus said “follow me,” He wasn’t just talking about imitating what He did. He was talking about duplicating the engine that drove His own life and ministry. “Follow me,” not only means, obey my teachings. But more, it means “get a hold of the same source that I relied upon to live my life. Imitate what I did to get in touch with the one who indwelt me.”

To follow isn’t about trying to imitate the fruit. It’s about tapping into the root.

The only way you and I can truly imitate Jesus’ external lifestyle is to imitate His internal relationship with His Father.

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It is Well – Kristene DeMarco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNqo4Un2uZI&list=RDkdxMgmN9NpA&index=11

Excerpts are taken from Frank Viola blog Discipleship in Crisis