Joe: Hi everyone, welcome back. My name is Joe and I'm joined again by Tom Smith. Today
we will be discussing Chapter 1 in volume 3 of the "Basic Elements of the Christian
Life." The title of this chapter is "Two Principles of Living." Tom, to begin our discussion today,
can you tell us where in the Bible these two principles come from?
Tom: The two principles that we're speaking of today come from the first book of the Bible,
in Genesis chapter 2 verse 9 and it says that, "Out of the ground Jehovah God caused to grow
every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, as well as the tree of life
in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
Joe: Okay, so here in Genesis 2 is where these two principles come from and it's related
to these two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Can you explain to us and define these two principles?
Tom: Well, the two principles, the principle
the tree of life and the tree of knowledge relate to really two persons. The first, the
tree of life, relates to God. God wants to be life to man. And with the tree of life
we can see that God in Christ came to be life. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil
is really, if you go a little further down to verse 17, is related to death. And we see
that Satan is the one who has the might of death.
Joe: So the source of these two principles are the two trees in Genesis 2, the tree of
life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. How would you explain and describe
the two principles to someone who's never heard it before?
Tom: Well, I would just say it this way Joe, that these two trees as two principles are
kind of a parable for us, for our living today. This is a wonderful picture to us to show
that God wants us to receive Him as life to live by the tree of life and not to live by
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or the tree of right and wrong. This is a
very crucial matter for our Christian life that we have either the choice of being people
of good and bad, right and wrong, or we can be people who live by God as the tree of life.
Joe: So most people are familiar with the story in Genesis 2 of God placing Adam and
Eve in the garden and then it says that he place them in front of these two trees, so
we're familiar with this. But how do these two principles relate to us in our Christian experience today?
Tom: Well, the two trees are very practical to our present Christian experience because every day we have to make decisions.
We can either decide to just do things according to an outward standard of, is this a good
thing to do or is this a bad thing to do. Or we can come to the Lord and by contacting
Him find out that this is something that's according to the life of God that we have received.
I think we'll have to get into that a little bit later on, but this is very practical
to our experience today. We should always be coming to the Lord who is the source of
life to us and in this way we will remain on the tree of life.
Tom: Thank you all for joining us today for this segment. In the next session we will
continue on this topic by discussing how this relates to our Christian experience today.
Thank you all for joining us.