The Tree of Life by Obedience
The editorial uses Revelation 22:14 to say that the tree of life is won by keeping commandments. But eternal life is God's free gift, never the wages of obedience.
Por Rodrigo Custódio ·
The moment
On Thursday, April 14, 1881, the weekly Signs of the Times was circulating in Oakland, California, with issue number 15 of its seventh volume — and page 174 carried the editorial "Right Motives in Religion," signed "J. H. W.": J. H. Waggoner, the paper's resident editor.
The issue's masthead lists James White and J. N. Andrews as editors, with J. H. Waggoner as resident editor; the periodical came out weekly through the Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society. When the resident editor himself signs an editorial, there is no way to claim it is a marginal opinion: it is the paper's official doctrine, taught as "present truth" to thousands of readers.
The editorial's target is Christians who say that obeying commandments is "too low" for the Christian — that Christian service should be only that of love, without the language of obligation and duty. Waggoner responds with a battery of texts: "if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments" (Matt. 19:17), "here are they that keep the commandments of God" (Rev. 14:12), "Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man" (Eccl. 12:13). The thesis: service has value only when rendered in recognition of the obligation of the commandment.
And the ultimate proof comes from Revelation 22:14: "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." In the editorial's reading, the verse decrees a transaction: keep the commandments and win the right to the tree of life; enter the heavenly city by the merits of obedience. Eternal life becomes wages — and wages are earned by working.
A walled orchard in the 1880s, with a locked iron gate — the tree of life behind the padlock of obedience.
The absurdity
The editorial hangs on the gate of the heavenly city a sign reading "pay in obedience and enter": the right to the tree of life would be won by keeping commandments, and entry into the city, the prize of duty fulfilled. The gift becomes an acquired right — and grace that is earned ceases to be grace. Read the exact words of the printed page:
"Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." Rev. 22:14.
Source: Signs of the Times, vol. 7, no. 15, April 14, 1881 — p. 174.
Highlighted clipping from the printed page with the quoted passage, issue of April 14, 1881, p. 174.
Why this is serious
A right that is earned is not a gift — and the Bible calls eternal life a gift. "The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6:23). A gift is received with empty hands; a right is demanded with the bill paid. When the editorial turns the tree of life into the reward of obedience, it swaps the entire category of salvation: from the undeserved present to the deserved wage. And Paul is categorical about wages: "Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt" (Rom. 4:4). If the tree of life is wages, God owes the obedient — and grace goes bankrupt.
The editorial further contaminates all Christian service with the same logic. Nothing the believer does out of love would have value unless rendered "in recognition of the obligation of the commandment": spontaneous love is disqualified, and only accounted duty counts. It is Pharisaism reissued with an editorial varnish — the religion of "I did it because I had to" counting for more than that of "I did it because I love." Jesus, however, summed up the law in love (Matt. 22:37-40), and John declares that "we love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19): love is the source, not the defect, of obedience.
And there is the pastoral effect of this counter religion: the believer never knows whether he has kept enough. If the right to the tree of life depends on obedience, every commandment becomes an installment — and a single late payment is enough for the "right" to lapse. The assurance of salvation, which Scripture offers as a present possession ("that ye may know that ye have eternal life," 1 John 5:13), is replaced by endless anxiety: have I obeyed enough? No one under that yoke sleeps in peace.
Finally, the verse used as proof testifies against the use made of it. Revelation itself closes the Bible with an invitation, not an invoice: "whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely" (Rev. 22:17). Freely — the very two words the editorial erases. And the tree of life, in the same chapter, is planted for "the healing of the nations" (Rev. 22:2): a remedy offered, not a prize auctioned. To use Rev. 22:14 to sell what Rev. 22:17 gives freely is to preach against the very book cited.
A nineteenth-century greenhouse, amid glass and iron framing — eternal life cultivated as a hothouse product, not received as a gift.
The verdict of the Scriptures
Scripture knows no middle ground between gift and wages: "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast" (Eph. 2:8-9). If entry into the city depended on keeping commandments, the glory would belong to the keeper — and Paul wrote precisely to prevent that glory: "not of works, lest any man should boast." The tree of life has no merit turnstile at its gate.
And to make the law the way to eternal life is to choose the curse, not the blessing: "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them" (Gal. 3:10). The law demands everything — "all things" — and whoever stumbles at one point breaks the whole package (James 2:10). To offer the tree of life as the reward of obedience is to offer a prize that no one can win without condemning himself in the attempt.
Eternal life, in the Bible, is in a person, not in a performance: "And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life" (1 John 5:11-12). To have — present tense. The verb is not "to win," "to merit," or "to keep until obtaining": it is to have, because God has given. Whoever has the Son already has life; the tree is his by inheritance, not by purchase.
And Scripture's final invitation dismantles the editorial's counter once and for all: "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely" (Rev. 22:17). Whosoever will — with no prerequisite of commandments fulfilled. Take freely — with no coin of obedience. The city has its gates open for the thirsty, not for the deserving; and the tree of life belongs to those who come with empty hands to receive what only grace can give.