The Threefold Pattern
It’s a curious story—the fall of man. The Garden of Eden has many trees but only two are explicitly named—the Tree of Life (Genesis 2:9, Genesis 3:22, 3:24) and the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:9, 2:17, 3:3).
It is the latter that the serpent draws the woman’s gaze toward in temptation (Gen. 3:1-5). Scripture goes on to describe what lures Eve to this tree in a threefold way:
Its fruit is good for food (lust of the flesh), pleasant to the eyes (lust of the senses), desirable to make one wise (pride of life) (Gen. 3:1-6).
And this isn’t the last time we see this threefold pattern unfold within Scripture.
St. John names it explicitly:
“For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father, but is of the world.” (1 John 2:16)
It’s important to understand these aren’t merely moral categorizations. This is, rather, the spiritual anatomy of temptation itself.
We see this again in the very next chapter… in the very next recorded sin—Cain killing his brother Abel. Cain’s offering is rejected by God. His jealously stirs a craving for satisfaction and validation (lust of the flesh). Cain fixes his gaze on his brother’s favor before God, desiring Able’s blessing (lust of the eyes). Cain rises up to kill his brother, attempting to assert dominance and control over life itself (pride of life).
“Sin is crouching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” — Gen. 4:7
We see this pattern again in the story of the sons of God and their desire for daughters of men, in the Tower of Babel, with David’s desire for Bathsheba, and Nebucadnezar’s boast.
It is perhaps most explicitly paralleled to the Genesis language in Achan’s sin, which is detailed in Joshua 7:20-21:
“I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar, and 200 shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels; then I coveted them and took them.”
Story after story, we see this pattern unfold. But where the first Adam and his descendants fall under the weight of these three, the Second Adam resists and reverses them.
The New Adam
Centuries after Eden, a Second Adam stands not in a garden, but in a desert—the place of demons (Matt. 4:1-11 / 12:43). Hungry, alone, and surrounded by the silence of death… Christ faces the same adversary and is tempted by the same design.
He is tempted to turn stones to bread (lust of the flesh), leap from the Temple to be seen and caught by angels (lust of the eyes), and bow to receive all the kingdoms of the world (pride of life).
As St. Irenaeus writes:
“For as by the disobedience of one man who was originally molded from virgin soil, the many were made sinners… so was it necessary that by the obedience of One, who was also born of a virgin, many should be made righteous.” (Against Heresies, 3.18.7)
Eden was lush. The desert is barren. All of Eden’s trees were full of fruit. The wilderness offers only sand and stone. Lucifer is offering the same wager again—the same fruit. Yet, here, Christ refuses to grasp. It’s in this moment that the reversal of the fall begins.
Another Garden
The story does not leap from wilderness to Cross. Instead, it passes through another garden—an olive grove named Gethsemane (Matt. 26:36). Here, the reversal of the New Adam continues.
In Eden, Adam’s will was tested and he said, “Not Thy will, but mine be done.” In Gethsemane, the Second Adam’s will was tested and He said, “Not My will, but Thine be done.” (Luke 22:42)
In Eden, Adam heard the sound of the Lord and hid among the trees (Gen. 3:8). In Gethsemane, Christ heard the approach of soldiers and stepped forward to meet them (John 18:4).
In Eden, Adam sought to cover his shame with death—first by tearing fig leaves from the living vine, then by wearing the skins of slaughtered animals. He literally clothed himself in what had been killed, using death to cover his weakness, his mortality.
In Gethsemane, the Second Adam strips Himself of every earthly protection and is clothed instead with obedience, even “to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8). And through that death, He does not cover Himself. Rather, He clothes others.
In the words of St. Ephrem the Syrian:
“He clothed Himself in our mortality, and in that garment He descended to the grave, that in the same garment He might robe us in glory.”
As St. Gregory the Theologian writes:
“He is stripped, for He stripped off the old man; and in this stripping He clothes us with the new.” (Oration 45, On Holy Pascha)
Even the gardens’ trees speak. In Eden, the trees bore fruit for food. In Gethsemane, they are olive trees. Their fruit yields oil, the ancient sign of kingship and priesthood (1 Sam. 16:13). Here, the true King is “anointed” not with fragrant oil but with His own sweat like drops of blood (Luke 22:44). He will be crowned not with gold, but with thorns.
The Place of the Garden
John tells us that Golgotha (trans. The Place of the Skull) was near a garden (John 19:41). There, Christ’s Cross stands like a tree—dead wood taken from the earth, stripped of leaf and life.
But when the New Adam is lifted upon it (John 3:14), the dead tree flowers. The withered wood of fallen Eden becomes the new Tree of life.
Here the great reversal is complete: the True fruit—His Body and Blood—is placed upon the tree, not to be grasped in disobedience, but to be received in love. This fruit is then sacramentally offered to his bride (the Church). As Christ says, “Take, eat… Drink of it, all of you” (Matt. 26:26–28).
The Church Fathers spoke of this as “the medicine of immortality, the antidote against death” (St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians, 20).
And when He rises from the tomb? Mary Magdalene mistakes Him for the gardener (John 20:15) because that’s what He is. The Gardener has returned to tend the earth once more, to robe humanity not in garments of death, but in the garment of light (Gal. 3:27).
The tree that once bore death now brings life, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations. (Rev. 22:2).
So good. May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering.