"She thought he was the gardener." John 20:15
Long before anyone on this earth put a spade in the ground, somebody planted a garden. Genesis says it without any fuss: “Yahweh God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Genesis 2:8). The Garden was already there, already producing, already laid out by the hand of God. And then Adam was placed there to cultivate and keep it (Genesis 2:15).
Paul would later tell us more about Who planted that garden. “For by him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth… all things have been created through him, and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things are held together” (Colossians 1:16-17). Every tree “pleasant to the sight, and good for food” (Genesis 2:9), the Tree of Life in the middle of it, the river and the four headwaters, all of it came from the same Christ who would one day walk out of a tomb in a different garden.
What He Planted It For
In the beginning, God created man and woman in His image and likeness, commissioning them to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and govern it. He placed them in Eden to cultivate and steward the land. Adam, the first gardener, along with his bride, was given the sacred task of expanding the beauty and abundance of the Garden to cover the entire earth.
But what were they to fill the earth with? More than just people. They were called to fill it with image bearers who carried His likeness and the knowledge of His presence into every corner of it. That promise outlives Eden by thousands of years. God is still saying it through Habakkuk to a nation about to be hauled off into exile: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Yahweh’s glory, as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14, and see Numbers 14:21). Humanity was designed to radiate His character, to be vessels of His love, wisdom, and authority.
Eden was a starting point, not a retirement home. Cultivate here, and keep cultivating outward, until the whole earth looks like Eden and is full of people who gloriously reflect the image of the One who made it all.
The Garden Became a Graveyard
Yet, as we know, the story took a tragic turn. Adam and Eve fell, failing in their mission and severing their communion with God. They were cast out of the Garden, no longer able to partake of the Tree of Life. Their choice to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil distorted their ability to reflect God’s image and obscured their understanding of His true nature.
Adam opened the door to death. “Therefore as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin…” (Romans 5:12).
Mankind wandered in darkness, disconnected from the source of life. “Knowing God, they didn’t glorify him as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart was darkened… and traded the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man” (Romans 1:21-23).
Athanasius pictured it as a defaced portrait: “For as, when the likeness painted on a panel has been effaced by stains from without, he whose likeness it is must needs come once more to enable the portrait to be renewed on the same wood” (On the Incarnation, 14).
All was not lost. From the foundation of the world, God had already set His plan of redemption in motion. Paul calls it “the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him, to an administration of the fullness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth” (Ephesians 1:9-10), and three chapters later, “the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ephesians 3:11). The cross was not an afterthought. It was the divine design for restoration.
Then Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, came to reveal the heart of the Father and to lead us back to the Garden. And listen to how He talks once He gets here. Seed and soil. Wheat and weeds. Mustard seeds, fig trees, vineyards, harvests, pruning. He tells more agricultural parables than any other kind, and He does not seem to be reaching for illustrations. He seems to be describing His actual work. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer. Every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit, he takes away. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:1-2).
The Father gardens. The Son gardens with Him.
The Garden Where He Said Yes
John does something with gardens that the other three Gospel writers do not. Matthew and Mark name the place Gethsemane. Luke calls it the Mount of Olives. John writes: “he went out with his disciples over the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, into which he and his disciples entered” (John 18:1). A garden. Then he says it again about the tomb: “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden” (John 19:41). And he sets the resurrection itself on that same ground. Three gardens in three chapters, from the same writer who opened his Gospel with “In the beginning.” John knew exactly what he was doing.
In the first Garden, Adam was offered fruit and took it, and his will and God’s will parted company. In another garden, the Last Adam kneels in the dark, sweating, asking whether there is any other road, and then says, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).
Luke says that as He prayed, “his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground” (Luke 22:44). God had told Adam, “the ground is cursed for your sake” (Genesis 3:17). I like the way Dr. Lynn Hiles puts it, and I am paraphrasing him here: as His blood touched that cursed ground, the curse began to go in reverse.
Days before any of it happened, He told them how it would work, and He told them in the only language that fits Him. “Most certainly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).
In John 19:41-42 we read that Jesus was buried in a garden. Of course He was.
On the third morning, the first person to meet Him did not recognize Him. She took Him for the man who kept the grounds. “She, supposing him to be the gardener, said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away’” (John 20:15).
She was not wrong. He is the Gardener, and He always was. Everyone else in this story has been working His land.
Just as Paul calls Jesus the Last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), He came to undo the curse of the first Adam. The first man was placed in a garden and lost it. The Gardener walked out of a tomb in one and took it back.
In the first Garden, sin and death entered the world. In the Resurrection Garden, sin and death were utterly defeated.
Because of Adam’s disobedience, the Garden became a graveyard. But through Jesus’ obedience, the graveyard became a Garden once more. He has opened the way for us to return, to eat from the Tree of Life, and to walk in fellowship with our Creator once again.
The Gardener’s Mission Is Now Ours
Now let’s look at the Final Garden, the New Jerusalem. In Revelation the Garden comes back, and it comes back inside a city. “Its gates will in no way be shut by day (for there will be no night there)” (Revelation 21:25). At the center flows the river: “He showed me a river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On this side of the river and on that was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruits, yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:1-2). Many theologians call this the Garden City, where heaven and earth are made one.
“Blessed are those who do his commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city” (Revelation 22:14).
Now, as the Bride of Christ, we have been given a mission. Alongside the Spirit, we cry out, “Come!” To all who are thirsty, “Come!” The gates are open. The invitation stands: come, eat from the Tree of Life, drink from the River of Life.
But before we invite others, we have to ask ourselves. Are we daily partaking of the Tree of Life? Are we drinking from the River of Life? Are we walking with Christ in the Garden? Are we reflecting His image to the world around us?
He was blunt about how this works. “Remain in me, and I in you. As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me… apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5). He does not say we produce a little less fruit on our own. He says nothing. A branch does not manufacture grapes; it receives what the vine sends up.
The commission Adam was given has not been revoked, it has been reissued by a Gardener who actually kept it. We are still image bearers, still told to fill the earth with the knowledge of God’s glory. “Go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19).
The Gates Are Open
The wedding feast is being prepared, and Jesus has commissioned us to go into the highways and byways, inviting all to come. “Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled” (Luke 14:23). The world is filled with thirsty image bearers, longing for living water. It is our privilege and calling to proclaim that the way back to the Garden is open.
Jesus, the Gardener, has made the way available.
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” He who hears, let him say, “Come!” He who is thirsty, let him come. He who desires, let him take the water of life freely. (Revelation 22:17)
The gates are open, and the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!”
A Prayer
Father, thank You for planting a garden before there was anyone to tend it, and for planting Your own Son in the ground after we had turned it into a graveyard.
Jesus, You are the Gardener. Keep me joined to the Vine. Teach me to eat from the Tree of Life before I try to hand it to anyone else, and to carry Your likeness on the patch of earth You have given me.
Holy Spirit, I join with You and the rest of the Bride and say, “Come!” The gates to the Garden City are wide open. Help me live with that understanding, and keep beckoning those still outside the gates: “Come!”
Amen.
Reflection Questions
1. Where in your life, now or in the past, have the Father and the Son been doing some pruning? What fruit have you seen come from it?
2. Paul says our reasoning went vain and our understanding of God went dark, until people traded His glory for images they made themselves. Where has your own picture of God been shaped by something other than Jesus?
3. Mary stood in front of the risen Christ and took Him for the gardener. Where might He be working in your life in a form you have not recognized?
4. The commission to be fruitful and multiply was reissued, not revoked. What ground has He handed you, and are you cultivating it or just standing on it?
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