God created man in His image; to become like Himself, capable of holding fellowship with Him in His glory. Man was to be a temple for God to dwell in ; he was to become the home in which God could rest, this was what the Holy One longed for, and looked forward to. In Paradise two ways were set before man for attaining to this likeness of God. These were typified by the two trees: that of LIFE and that of KNOWLEDGE. God's way was the former, through life would come the knowledge and likeness of God; in abiding in God's will, and partaking of God's life, man would be perfected. In recommending the other and deceiving him, Satan assured man that knowledge was the one thing to be desired to make us like God. And when man chose the light of knowledge above the life in obedience, he entered upon the terrible path that leads to death. The desire to know became his greatest temptation; his whole nature was corrupted, and knowledge was to him more than obedience and more than life. Under the power of this deceit, that promises happiness in knowledge, the human race is still led astray. And nowhere does it show its power more terribly than in connection with the true religion and God's own revelation of Himself. Even where the word of God is accepted, the wisdom of the world and of the flesh ever enters in; even spiritual Truth is robbed of its power when held, not in the life of the Spirit, but in the wisdom of man. Where Truth enters into the inward parts of the spirit (intuition, conscience and communion), as God desires, there it becomes the life of the Spirit. But it may also only reach the outer parts of the soul (the intellect and reasoning) and while it occupies and pleases there and satisfies us with the imagination that it will thence exercise its influence, its power is nothing more than that of human argument and wisdom, that never reaches to the true life of the spirit. For there is a truth of the understanding and feelings, which is only natural, the human image or form, the shadow of Divine Truth. There is a Truth which is substance and reality, communicating to him who holds it the actual possession, the life of the things of which others only think and speak. The truth in shadow, in form, in thought,was all the law could give; and in that the religion of the Jews consisted. But the truth of substance, the Truth as a Divine life, was what Jesus brought as the Only-begotten, full of grace and truth. He is Himself THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE, no man has access to God except through Him. Indeed all knowledge of Divine Reality without Christ’s Revelation remains veiled to the Truth.


Andrew Murray  (Excerpt from The Spirit of Christ)