Copied from Facebook from a minister friend of mine: Lynn Hiles. If you would like further studies of his, he can be found on YouTube and several other types of media and books.

Humanity’s first temptation was not toward immorality but toward independent morality. The tree was the knowledge of good and evil. Ever since Eden, religion has often repeated Adam’s mistake by trying to produce righteousness through the correct knowledge of right and wrong. But God has always desired something deeper. The Tree of Life comes first. In Christ, we no longer begin with the knowledge of good and evil; we begin with union. As we partake of His life, our senses are exercised, our minds are renewed, and discernment emerges as the fruit of communion rather than the product of self-determination. The mature believer does indeed know good and evil—but unlike Adam, he knows it through participation in the life of the Son, not by grasping at autonomy.

That, to me, is one of the grand narrative arcs of Scripture: Eden, Sinai, Calvary, and the New Jerusalem all revolve around the same question—will humanity live from the Tree of Life, or from the independent knowledge of good and evil? The New Covenant announces that in Christ the Tree of Life is once again open, and from that life flows the wisdom, discernment, and love that the first Adam sought by another path