Jesus is the True and Faithful Gardener Who Cares for Your Soul
Adam was called to guard and keep the Garden. This certainly included his need to protect his bride from the temptations of the evil one. When Jesus entered into his sufferings on the cross, he did so with His bride—the church—with him there in the Garden. As Adam should have warned Eve to “watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Matt. 26:41), so Jesus warns his bride—the Church—to do that very thing. There is a striking parallel between the events of the two Gardens—Eden and Gethsemane.
The Scriptures tell us that the Son of God began His sufferings in a Garden and brought them to a close in a Garden. That is an absolutely amazing display of God’s wisdom. After all, Jesus is the second Adam undoing what Adam did and doing what Adam failed to do (Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:47-49). He is the Heavenly Bridegroom, entering into his sufferings in a Garden for the redemption of his bride, the Church. He is the Heavenly Gardener, giving himself to the cultivation of the souls of his people through his atoning sacrifice and continual intercession.
When he hung on the cross, Jesus spoke of Glory under the name of “Paradise”—an evident allusion to the paradise in which our first parents dwelt and the paradise from which they fell. He is the second Adam who, by the shedding of his blood, secured the New Creation. As we consider the double entendres of the fourth Gospel, we come to those specifically concerning the biblical theology of the second Adam in the Garden. Consider the theological significance of the following two Garden settings in which Christ carried out the work of redemption.
1. Jesus began His sufferings in a Garden in order to show that He came to undo what Adam had done.
In his soul-stirring book, Looking Unto Jesus, Isaac Ambrose explained the theological significance of the Garden motif in the Gospels—both with regard to the beginning of Christ’s sufferings in the Garden of Gethsemane and at the end of his sufferings in the Garden where his body was laid to rest in the tomb. Concerning the first of these symbolic gardens, Ambrose suggested:
“Jesus went forth with his disciples over the brook Kidron, where there was a garden [John 18:1];” many mysteries are included in this word, and I believe it is not without reason that our Savior goes into a garden…Because a garden was the place wherein we fell, and therefore Christ made choice of a garden to begin there the greatest work of our redemption: in the first garden was the beginning of all evils; and in this garden was the beginning of our restitution from all evils; in the first garden, the first Adam was overthrown by Satan, and in this garden the second Adam overcame, and Satan himself was by him overcome; in the first garden sin was contracted; and we were indebted by our sins to God, and in this garden sin was paid for by that great and precious price of the blood of God: in the first garden man surfeited by eating the forbidden fruit, and in this garden Christ sweat it out wonderfully, even by a bloody sweat; in the first garden, death first made its entrance into the world; and in this garden life enters to restore us from death to life again; in the first garden Adam’s liberty to sin brought himself and all of us into bondage; and, in this garden, Christ being bound and fettered, we are thereby freed and restored to liberty. I might thus descant in respect of every circumstance, but this is the sum, in a garden first began our sin, and in this garden first began the passion, that great work and merit of our redemption.[1]
Since “a garden was the place wherein we fell…therefore Christ made choice of a garden to begin there the greatest work of our redemption,” Jesus is the second Adam. It is fitting, therefore, that his work of undoing all that Adam did should begin in a Garden. Charles Spurgeon drew out this same observation, stating:
May we not conceive that as in a garden Adam’s self-indulgence ruined us, so in another garden the agonies of the second Adam should restore us. Gethsemane supplies the medicine for the ills which followed upon the forbidden fruit of Eden. No flowers which bloomed upon the banks of the four-fold river were ever so precious to our race as the bitter herbs which grew hard by the black and sullen stream of Kedron.[2]
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A Mother in Israel
Jacob had waited seven years to marry Rachel. Now, decades later, she is gone. The pillar he erected over her tomb in her memory (Gen. 35:20) was a witness to the sadness and hope that surrounded his life. Sadness in the loss; hope in the covenant promises that now assured him of a love that will not let him go.
Jacob, the wily one, after ten or fifteen years, finally returns to Bethel. God has been at work in his life, drawing the wayward patriarch to himself. It has been a difficult journey. It invariably is so when our wills are set at variance against the Lord’s. From the perspective of hindsight, Jacob could now speak to his family of a God “who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone” (Gen. 35:3). Jacob had been sheltered within the orbit of God’s covenant faithfulness. Despite half-hearted commitment and questionable decisions made more out of fear than trust, Jacob had known the Lord’s providential goodness. Even now, as he returns, a path is opened up for him to return in safety to the place where God had first met with him. The promise God had made to him, then, must have haunted him through the years. He was to inherit the land and his offspring were to be as ”the dust of the earth” (Gen. 28:13–15), but he had left with nothing but the clothes he had been wearing! Now, as he returns to Bethel, he brings with him his twelve sons (his twelfth yet unborn in his mother’s womb) and considerable wealth. And Jacob does the only thing possible under such circumstances — the only right thing: he worships! He pours out his heart in gratitude to the Lord for all that he now knew of God’s grace.
As Jacob worships, wonderful things happen: God renews the covenant that he had made (Gen. 35:9–15), reminding Jacob of the significance of the new name he had received at Peniel. Others may call him Jacob, but God has named him “Israel.” Some of the things God says to him must have reminded him of similar words used by his father Isaac so many years before, especially when he heard God say, “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 35:11; see 28:3). But a new promise is made, “kings shall come from your own body” (35:11). Imagine! Jacob’s pitiful attempt to buy a piece of the Promised Land at Shechem (33:19) is answered by God, saying, “I’ll give you and your descendents the whole of it!” Covenant mercies! Covenant grace! Covenant faithfulness!
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Beware the Natural Ways
We unnecessarily cause anguish and further strengthen the hold of the devil on our hearts by heeding his wish that we forget the promises our holy and righteous God has made to us, His special people in the Covenant of Grace. He has made a claim on your mind and soul. Rest and trust in His attributes and the assurance of His word. For in it is power to handle even the hardest of trials. The gospel is always the answer for our troubles.
The Puritans are blamed for everything from burning witches to being the original no fun police, but the reality is far from that caricature. Largely they were men engaged in the hard work of reconciling the Church of England of the 17th century with the teachings of Holy Scripture, who saw in the Lord Jesus Christ the sweet savor of life itself. Nothing in their mind compared with what was revealed unto them by the Holy Spirit about what the Redeemer had done, and was doing, in their hearts and souls through grace. They were in many ways mesmerized by the bounty of salvation. It was to them like the richest chocolate cake, melt-in-your-mouth barbeque pork, or a Tony’s shake (without the lid). One of my favorite Puritan writers is Jeremiah Burroughs. He was a member of the Westminster Assembly, and an assistant to another of my personal heroes, Edmund Calamy. He in many ways writes the clearest on dealing with suffering and the way to find hope in the midst of trial. For today’s prayer and worship help I want to start us off with a quote of his in order to help us think about how best to handle those dark providences in the power of the Lord’s grace and mercy. Here is the word:
Ordinarily when we are burdened with outward afflictions, we only think of natural helps and comforts. Whereas the way for us to sanctify God’s name, to do what is acceptable to God when any outward affliction comes, is to exercise our faith in the great promise of God in Jesus Christ, upon the great Covenant of Grace that God has made with us in him.
Burroughs’ point here is pretty straight-forward. The unfortunate reality is when we are drawn low our first recourse is often to what he calls “natural helps”, those things which are material, whether they be destructive like the bottle, or innocuous like binge-watching the Office or whatever. We get back from a difficult day at work, run to a different part of the house after a hard discussion with a spouse, or just try and find a quiet place to be alone, and what is our first move? To doom scroll the phone searching for a meme or a distraction. In any of these cases why is it a problem in the eyes of someone like Burroughs? What’s wrong with just spacing out and forgetting for a moment? Or more importantly what does the Bible have to say that might echo the concern of this godly pastor?
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The Difference between the Apple and the Worm
Complementarianism neither stands nor falls on EFS. Those who think it does have confused the essence with an accident and raise questions whether they even know what the doctrine is.
As I have observed popular debates about complementarianism over the years, I have noticed how people often confuse what the doctrine is with other associations that have little or nothing to do with the teaching. In short, folks confuse the essence with the accidents.
What do I mean by confusing essence with accidents? An essential property of any object is a property that it must have, while an accidental property of an object is one that it happens to have but that it could lack (source). You may bite into an apple that happens to have a worm in it, but you would be painfully mistaken if you were to conclude that worms are part of the essence of an apple. The apple may be worse for the wear because of the worm, but an apple is an apple with or without the worm. Likewise, you may bite into an apple dipped in caramel. In that case, you can be sure that the apple has been greatly improved. But still, you know that the improvement is an accidental property of that particular apple. The apple is an apple with or without the caramel.
A similar dynamic is in play when we think about biblical doctrines. For example, I am a pastor in a Baptist church. Many Baptist churches across the country have Sunday School every week. Mine does, in fact. But it would be a mistake to conclude from that fact that Sunday School is a part of the essence of being a Baptist. A church can be Baptist with or without Sunday School. Being a Baptist neither stands nor falls on whether Baptist churches have Sunday School. If you think otherwise, then it’s likely that you don’t know what it means to be a Baptist.
This kind of confusion seems to be at the heart of many of the debates about complementarianism that I have observed over the years. Critics of the doctrine make much of the fact that some complementarians espouse essentially literal Bible translation, conservative politics, the eternal functional subordination of the Son (EFS), etc. Other critics point to abuse or misogyny carried out in the name of complementarianism. It is a profound mistake, however, to conclude that any of those things comprise the essence of complementarian doctrine. None of those things are definitional of the doctrine in any way. Some of those things arguably may seem like improvements to complementarianism. Some of them are obviously no improvement to any doctrine. And some of them are in fact in opposition to the essence of the doctrine (e.g., abuse, misogyny). But no matter how you rate them (improvement or detriment), none of them are complementarianism. The doctrine neither stands nor falls on any of them.
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