First, the tree of knowledge represents man living unto himself as an independent self, separate from God. The only way man can do that is to have his own knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. Paul says in Romans 7 that by the law is the knowledge of sin. But he also makes it clear in Romans 6 and 2 Corinthians 5 that sin is taken away by the knowledge of Christ. In Christ I do not know sin.

When I line myself up with the external commandments, no matter how successful I am at keeping them and no matter how much better my life might be outwardly, yet if I am honest, I must admit that I fail to keep them, and that in failing to keep one, I fail in them all. So by lining my life up with the commandments, I come to know that I am a sinner.

But that is not Christ. In Christ, I am free from sin and from the consciousness of sin.

But this is an issue that Fred Pruitt shines the light of truth on far better than I can, so rather than say any more, I refer you to his website: The Single Eye or his writings on Christ As Us. I would urge you to obtain his two books, Hearts of Flesh and The Axe Laid to the Root.

Second, we must distinguish between the law of the Old Covenant and the commandments of the New Covenant. They are two distinctly different things.

The Old Covenant is without hope. People who use the Old Testament wrongfully live in hopelessness. I know, I lived there for years. Here is one way I mean. David said in Psalm 51, "Create in me a clean heart, Oh God." But Jeremiah said in Chapter 17, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked."

Both of these statements are from an Old Covenant perspective. And so we sang, over and over with tears, "Create in me a clean heart, Oh God!" But then Jeremiah 17 swung in and eliminated any chance that we would obey one of the most important commands of the New Covenant - "Whatever you ask, believe that you have already received it." Did I ever believe that I had, fully and completely, received that new heart I had so earnestly asked God for? No. My Old Covenant theology did not allow me to. And so I chose to live in disobedience to the New Covenant because I had elevated the Old in an ungodly way.

More than that, any Christian who grubs around in the Old Testament to find commandments the Jews could not keep and drags them into the life of the church and tells believers in Jesus that they need to "obey" these commandments does not know the life of Christ who has redeemed them from the curse of the law. I found a website that had some good stuff on it. But these people had found the secret of Christ! - Anyone who had church on Saturday was found in the elect of God, and anyone who went to church on Sunday was anti-Christ and cut off from Christ's salvation. This is what I'm talking about.

But, most of the time when people refer to God's commandments in the New Testament, they have no idea what they are talking about and speak nonsense. People go looking for the least and the outward, commandments that are so obviously subordinate and limited, and they cannot even see the commandments of the New Covenant that are life.

Let me give you two similar NT commands that are grossly abused in Christianity: "Honor the king," and "Obey those who have the rule over you." Almost all the martyrs of Christ through the centuries who were burned at the stake or thrown to lions died precisely because they refused to obey these two commands when it was wrong that they should do so. Yes, they have their place, but no, they are not dominant. "Do not love the world" must always stand above "honor the king," and more evil has come out of "obey those who have the rule over you," down through the centuries than anything else found in the Bible. I will not go into that here, because it is not the purpose of this letter, but anyone who swings that command around like a billy club is someone I will keep a good distance away from. I receive them if they know Jesus, but that doesn't mean I have to come under their grip.

When I sat among the elders in Christian community, we had the need to review "God's order" for His people in the community. This was a Spirit-filled group of people who knew the power and presence of God and who believed in a Christ-in-us word. We had several meetings, totaling some dozen hours of deep discussion. We ended without any conclusions reached. Yet for all of those hours, we never once finished the topic of women's clothing.

And so it goes. You will find that most people who are concerned about "doing" all that God says end up dumping on women, keeping them quiet, submissive, unattractive, wore out, and pregnant. (The group I was part of was mostly innocent of this particular charge - yet you will find so many "holiness" Christians there.)

But, never once was the question raised, "What is God's order for His church, according to the commandments of the New Testament?"

What are the commandments of the New Testament? Most Christians have never considered such a question.

But after that experience, a few months later, I had the opportunity to do so. I typed out every single commandment in the New Testament, and then I retyped them again into categories, putting similar commandments together. I have them in my file.

I was astonished at what I discovered. You can count on one hand those NT commands that are external, performance, letter of the word commands, and most of those are mistranslated and/or confusing.  

The commandments of the New Testament are utterly different from the commandments of the law in the Old Covenant. I want to share with you the commandments of the New Testament, categorized into a group of TEN. Most Christians do not obey most of these commandments, especially the most important ones. And they despise the most important New Testament commandment and will claim you are of the devil if you take God seriously.

Before I go through that list of ten, let's look at the biggest commandment of the Bible. This is God in your face, sitting upon you, bony finger pointing right at your eyeballs.

"Be just like God."

"Be perfect, just exactly like your Father is perfect." "Love, just exactly like God loves." "Forgive, just exactly like God forgives." "Be holy, just exactly as God is holy." "Walk, in exactly the same way that Jesus walked."

Do you obey this most important command in the Bible? Most Christian's reject them and condemn anyone who takes them seriously. "Who do you think you are? You can't do any of those. In fact, God doesn't want you to do these things, and if you try, you are just being like the devil, who wanted to be like God, and God will bring you down for your presumption."

I have watched Christians run away from me (and I am the least such) because they had heard that I believed in the heresy of taking God seriously concerning these commandments.

Can you be just like God? There are two answers. One of them honors God; Caleb spoke it. "We are well able to do and to be all that God says." The others looked at themselves and cried, "Grasshoppers." And God said, "Why do they keep treating Me like dirt?"

Yet we cannot start with that largest of all commandments, and so I will place it last. We must begin with the tree of life. For all of these commandments are the tree of life and they are fulfilled in our lives only out of that tree. Some of them, in fact, can only produce life no matter how hard you "work" to perform them. You can "do them in your flesh" all you want, and all that will come out of your "performance" is the sweet river of Christ.

Let me give you the short list first, then I will expand and explain. The first commandment stands over all in absolute importance. Obey it and all others will follow, disobey it and all others fail.

1. Abide in Me and I in you.
2. Speak what God says you are.
3. Ask, believing that you have already received.
4. Give thanks for all things.
5. Give.
6. Love one another.
7. Watch out; take heed; beware.
8. Cleanse yourself from all filthiness of flesh and spirit.
9. Do not love the world.
10. Be just like God.
    

1. Abide in Me and I in you - walk in the Spirit; walk in the light (which is Christ), with the blood cleansing you from all sin.

The first commandment is the tree of life. It is the source of all that is God in our lives. We abide in Christ by faith; He abides in us by faith. We do not go by what our eyes see, but by what God says. It is especially my sinfulness that I must place in Christ. If I cannot believe that He carries all of my human lack inside of Himself right now, how can I believe that He took my sins upon the cross 2000 years ago? It is easy to see ourselves in Christ when we are feeling wonderful; but to abide in Him, we must see ourselves in Him when we are feeling our worst. It is easy to see Christ in me when I am doing what I call "good," but it is essential that I see Christ in me when I have failed, messed up, and even when I have sinned.

2. Speak what God says you are -"Christ is my life; I have no other life."

The second commandment is how we fulfill the first. Yet the second is possibly the least obeyed commandment in the New Testament. If we will not obey this command, why should we pretend to be Christians? Here are some of the forms that it takes: "Reckon that you are already dead to sin." "Reckon that you are alive to God." "Deny yourself - declare that you are not a 'self' separate from God." "Acknowledge the good things of Christ in you." "Hold fast the confession (keep on speaking) of your hope (that you are just like Jesus - 1 John 3: 2-3) without wavering." Hebrews 10: 23.

This last phrase means almost nothing to almost everyone who reads it, yet I place it as second in importance and the means by which we know the reality of abiding in Christ. To put it into simple English, it should be paraphrased this way: "Speak what God says you are."

Speaking what God says we are does not make us what we are. There is nothing "magical" in declaring "Christ is my life; I have no other life." What such a vocal declaration does is it opens our eyes to see Christ, the One who fills our hearts, that His light might fill every part of our understanding. Where does this phrase come from? It comes from combining obedience to Romans 6:11 with Paul's declaration concerning us in Colossians 3: 3-4.

I have been speaking this word, "Christ is my life; I have no other life," now, in all that it means, for over 3 years. By speaking this word in obedience to the command of the gospel, my eyes continue to open, I continue to awake out of sleep. I see Christ; I see Him in me and me in Him.

I do not disobey this second commandment by rooting around looking for sin, or digging up selfishness in my heart. I do not defy God by declaring that I have a sinful nature - two hearts, two minds - that I "walk in the flesh"; God says no such thing about me. I do not "weep" over sin; neither do I wallow in it, nor wear it as a badge. Sin becomes such a meaningless discussion in the presence of the Majestic One who fills my heart and in the presence of His BLOOD that flows over me at all times.

3. Ask - all that God speaks - ask and keep on asking, but ask in faith, believing that you have already received all that you ask for.

If I have asked God to fill my heart with His love, then in obedience to the commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ, I must believe that God has fully given me that which I have asked for. I do not groan and cry in unbelief. I know that the love of God abounds in my heart. How do I know? Because I asked according to what God speaks (Romans 5:5).

If I ask God to conform me to the image of His dear Son, then I believe that I have already received what I ask for. If I ask God to fulfill His perfection in Me, according to His command, then I believe that I have already received all that I ask for.

I can ask anything God speaks and God has already fulfilled it in me. I believe it. Why do I believe it? Because Jesus commanded me to believe it, and I obey His command.

Jesus' command to us to ask was a big deal to Him. You can hear the urgency in His voice in John 16: 23-24 as He closes out that which is most important in His heart for His disciples to grasp and to know.

Yet how many Christians pull away from this command because it is too overwhelming to obey. Paying tithes is easy; anyone can do that. Asking God to fulfill in me all that He speaks and then believing that He has already done so - that's  too big of a requirement for most people.

Do you see how the tree of life works in our lives? These first three commands stand over all other commands in the Bible. All that is God flows out of obedience to the first commandment of the New Testament. And we know the reality of that first commandment by our obedience to the second and third.

Listen, if your ear rings are too showy, or you drink a bit more than one glass of wine, or you mow the lawn on Sunday afternoon (or, God forbid, Saturday morning), what is that?

But if you fail to speak what God says you are; if you disobey the urgent command of Jesus to ask all that God speaks and to believe that you have already received what you ask, then you fail to abide in Christ and you cannot know His life in you as it really is.

The other seven commandments in this list and all that God speaks and all that Christ is in our lives flow out of our obedience to these first three commandments.

The obedience of faith is critical for life. Yet when you see what is most important to God, that which is the tree of life, you see how little that has to do with what most people think when they hear, "Obey what God speaks."

Most of what God actually commands us in the New Covenant is buried under the massive weight of 2000 years of Christian unbelief and most of what Christians call "obedience" ends up being nothing different than the doctrine of the Pharisees, making stuff up and calling it God.

The commandment of obedience that we were stuck on in Christian community that required many hours of deep and anointed discussion and prayer? A most important commandment of God, central to His heart. (I speak facetiously.)

"Thy women shall not wear pants."

And so it goes.

I will need to continue the discussion of the other seven commandments of the New Covenant that I have put into this list in another letter.

They are life and they are Christ in us.