The Two Laws – The Stratagem of Our Salvation

A Series of Musings on the Book of Esther - Part Two

Just after the very beginning of the beginning of time...

In a garden - in the midst of that garden...

Were two trees.

"...The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." (Genesis ii.9, esv)

There were two laws that governed the garden. Two laws that concerned these two trees and the man and woman God had placed in the garden where they grew.

Now, it just so happens that those two trees and those two laws also concern you and I and, in fact, the whole human race. For the very eternity of all mankind rested solely upon those two laws.  

The trees were both fruit-bearing trees and the laws that governed them had to do with the eating of that fruit. The law for the tree of life was eat and live. The law of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was just the opposite - eat and die.

Now before we continue, we should pause to consider how those laws came to be. They were the laws of God - the God who had created the garden and the trees, the man and woman, and you and I. But they weren't just a whim or a fancy of His. But rather a statement of fact. They simply explained how things were - nothing more and nothing less. They explained something about God, something about the trees, and something about the people. They explained the relationship that existed between them all. So, we see that the law wasn't a matter of preference, or a list of rules, so much as a manual. Like that which one has for a car, or for a computer. A manual that tells one how a thing works and why. This is what the two laws were.

The woman, in a story that could be a story all on its own, took of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and ate of it and gave it to her husband who was with her and he ate of it also. Now, you can probably guess what happened. Though you don’t really have to guess at all for the law had stated it quite clearly and the law was a statement of fact.

The man and woman died. But it was not the death we would expect. They didn’t fall down right there and breathe their last. Yet die they surely did. They died in spirit. They died for, like a rose that is cut, they were separated from that which had been their source of life – God Himself. They were bound by a law and that law could not be changed.

Why couldn’t it be changed? Why couldn’t God, in His mercy, make an exception to the law?

To understand that, we must understand God. God was. He is. He always will be. God cannot change. It is simply His nature. It is how He is. He cannot change and He cannot lie and therefore He could not alter the law. Thus, the law was, and is, and always will be. Which was not good news for the man and woman, and is not good news for you and I.

But there was another law - the law of the tree of life.

…

In the days of a king - a king who was very great in his day…

In the land where he ruled, in the palace where he lived…

Was his queen in great distress.

“Then Queen Esther answered and said, “If I have found favour in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request. For we have been sold, my people and I, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated.” (Esther vii. 3-4, nkjv)

There was a law in place in this king’s kingdom, a law that sentenced the queen and her people to death.

It was a law, like the law of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that could not be revoked. For even the king, in all his great power, could not alter or recall the law - the law that had been sent out in his name. Thus, despite the queen’s pleadings, the law was.

And yet, the queen and her people did not die but lived. How?

Because there was another law - another law sent out in the king's name.

This law cancelled out the effects of the first without removing it or changing its nature. It was like the law of aerodynamics which cancels out the effects of the law of gravity while leaving it intact.

 It was this second law saved the people from the death that had come by the first.

…

While a King hung upon a cross - a King who was greater than any king had been since the very beginning of the beginning of time…

In the land where He was ridiculed, on a hill that was very near to a garden…

Was a tree. 

A tree that did not look much like a tree anymore, for it had been hewn and cut into two beams of wood.

That tree was the tree of life. The man upon it was God Himself. He was its fruit and the law that governed it remained the same as it had been long ago in that garden of old. The law was this: eat and live. And the law was.

“If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” (John vi.51, nkjv)

The second law alone could save from the first. The first had condemned mankind for eternity. The second eternally saved them. In this the mercy of God was shown - mercy from the God who could not change, could not lie, and could not alter His law.

"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death." (Romans viii.2, nkjv)

In Christ

quiana