“Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Several astounding things happen in quick succession as Adam and Eve are removed from the garden of Eden. Consider these things:
God said the man has become like one of us. Who is the us? The easiest explanation is a use of the “majestic plural,” which is just the replacement of a singular pronoun with a plural one. This is typically done in the cases of royalty, where the whole of the royal line (or even as spokesperson for the country or empire) is wrapped into the current monarch. Thus, when a king, queen, or emperor speaks from the throne, we (instead of I) embodies something larger than the individual saying it. This goes deeper as God continues to reveal himself to humanity, and it can be summed in the term Trinity. God the Father is God (Genesis 1:1), God the Son is God (Genesis 1:3, John 1:1), and God the Spirit is God (Genesis 1:2). These are not three gods but one God (Deuteronomy 6:4).
This Triune God reveals that humanity has attained something of God’s own knowledge: the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Sadly, that’s where the attaining ends. Humanity now lacks the wisdom needed to maneuver this knowledge (Proverbs 9:10). Because of that, the choice humanity makes is a wrong one (Romans 1:21-25). Moreover, because of the lack of wisdom and wrong choices, humanity becomes quickly enslaved by sin and the world (Romans 6:15-23)!
In mercy, then, God prevents these first two humans from partaking of the tree of life, for to live forever out of relationship with God would be worse than never existing in the first place. In love and patience and mercy and grace and preparation and beginning, the LORD God sent him out. What sadness! What lament. What finality! There was no going back. Sin had entered the world. Relationships had been broken. The way to the tree of life had been barred in the most extraordinary of ways—angels with flaming swords!
But so also begins the path straight to the full revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. God was not through with Adam, Eve, and the generations that would follow. Adam was to work, humanity was to survive, and God’s purpose was (is) to reveal himself. The way to the tree of life was barred, but many years later, Jesus would proclaim, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6).
And there’s the Way humanity has been waiting for. The same Way that became another term for followers of Jesus (Acts chapters 9 and 19, for instance). The same Way that has come to be known as Christianity in the centuries following.
The Way was never barred, it was always Jesus, and God was beginning to show Adam, Eve, and all that would follow exactly what that meant.
“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.”