Five Types in the Garden of Eden

Paradise, and Paradise Lost

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1). In six days He made the world and filled it, and when He was finished He saw that it was very good (Genesis 1:31). Then the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden and put there the man He had formed (Genesis 2:8). The name Eden means delight, and the Greek translation of the Old Testament calls it the paradise of delight.

It was a real place. Trees grew there that were pleasant to the sight, and good for food. In the midst of the garden stood the tree of life, and beside it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river went out of Eden to water the garden and then parted into four heads, two of them named Hiddekel and Euphrates (Genesis 2:9–14). God put the man in the garden to dress it and to keep it (Genesis 2:15), and He gave him one command: of every tree he could freely eat, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (Genesis 2:17).

Genesis 3 tells how it was lost. The serpent questioned God's word, Yea, hath God said?, then flatly denied it: Ye shall not surely die (Genesis 3:1–4).

“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”GENESIS 3:6–7 · KJV

Their eyes were opened, and the first thing they saw was their shame. They sewed fig leaves together to cover it, and when they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden, they hid among the trees (Genesis 3:8). God called, Where art thou? (Genesis 3:9). Judgment followed, the ground was cursed, and death was pronounced. Yet in the same breath God promised that the woman's Seed would crush the serpent's head (Genesis 3:15). Then He clothed them with coats of skins, sent them out of the garden, and set cherubims and a flaming sword to keep the way of the tree of life (Genesis 3:24).

Five Types

The story told by the Old Testament is full of Christological significance, and it begins here. In this account five things point forward to Christ and His work:

1. The heavens and the earth are a type of the new heaven and new earth.
2. The garden of Eden is a type of the New Jerusalem.
3. The tree of life is a type of Christ's work on the cross.
4. The coats of skins are a type of Christ's propitiation.
5. The exile from the garden is a type of Christ's abandonment by the Father as He bore our sins.