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What the Bible says about Cultivate and Guard
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Genesis 2:15

Very simply and in a straightforward way, God states the purpose for which He created the garden, and begins to reveal foundational parts of the training program for Adam and Eve. Spiritually, this principle extends to His modern children as well.

Adam's job in the Garden was to "tend and keep" or "cultivate and guard." A deeper study of the words show that in combination, tending or cultivating is a form of keeping. Cultivation is the effort a farmer makes to ensure that he will produce as bountiful a crop as possible. He plows the ground, fertilizes it, plants the seed, then he promotes further growth by watering, weeding, and so forth. If the farmer is lazy, if he fails to cultivate his ground, if he does nothing to promote growth, then what occurs? Nature follows its course and the farm begins to degenerate!

This law can be illustrated by somewhat different examples. Suppose you own a new house, complete with a fresh coat of paint on the exterior. If nothing is ever done to maintain the house in good condition, the house will degenerate very quickly. The same applies to an automobile. If you never change the oil, never lubricate it, never inflate the tires to the right pressure, never wash it, degeneracy results. It is part of the law of the universe. If a thing is not maintained, if nothing is done to guard against decay, degeneration will surely occur. If nothing is done to cultivate, nature will take its course, producing degeneration.

In very simple terminology, God's purpose is accomplished because men and women cultivate and guard. They cultivate what is provided to them in terms of both physical and spiritual things. If cultivation occurs, it will guard against degeneration. So another principle begins to emerge: Not only must sound training come from pure doctrine, but we must make an effort to cultivate, producing more fruit and greater growth. If we neglect this great salvation, our spiritual lives are going to degenerate. The truths that we formerly held in high esteem will begin to slip away.

At the very beginning of the book, God warns of a natural tendency in everything toward disintegration.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Guard the Truth!

Genesis 2:15

The Garden of Eden was the environment that God created for a relationship with Him to take place. Adam and Eve's responsibility was to dress and keep it. They were put there, not to do nothing, not just to pluck fruit off a tree, not even merely to receive eternal life, but to take care of the Garden.

Dress means "to embellish." This may seem a little strange, but Adam and Eve were to take care of it so well that it would become better than it was when God gave it to them. We like to think of the Garden as being a place of absolute and perfect beauty. Instead, since God told them to "dress and keep it," it seems that it was not complete. It had only been started. What He had done was certainly beautiful, but He wanted them to carry on and finish it.

Keep means "to guard" or "to preserve." If they did not work to dress the Garden, God is telling them, it would deteriorate. That is the way of all things physical, they degenerate if they are not maintained and taken care of.

There are spiritual lessons here. We have been invited into a relationship with God. Like any relationship, it must be worked on to make it increasingly tighter and more productive. We are to "dress and to keep" the relationship. We are not in the Garden, certainly, but we are in the relationship. To do this, we must use and grow in the Holy Spirit. The relationship is the key to accomplishing this. If there is no relationship, there is no Holy Spirit working in and with us, no chance that we will ever grow in the Spirit, and no way we can be close to God. The relationship is the key.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Holy Spirit and the Trinity (Part Seven)

Genesis 2:15

In verse 15, God clarifies why he gave man powers. At first glance, it only appears to cover what is physical and material, but with God's spiritual revelation and other scriptures, it carries far greater implication.

In the King James Version, the word meaning "tend" or "cultivate" is dress. The Hebrew means "to work at." In 1611, when the King James was translated, the word dress meant "to set in order," but gradually, it was applied to applying decorative details, "to embellish."

Today, when we say that we are going to dress, we include both parts of that definition. We put ourselves in order and embellish how we look.

In modern Bibles, “dress” has been translated "tend" or "cultivate." They have subtle meanings that are slightly different from "dress." Tend means "to pay attention to" or "to serve." For example, “I am going to tend to the dishes.” It means "to apply oneself to the care of" or "to manage the operations of."

Cultivate, which is the best of the three definitions, means "to put through a finishing process," "to foster the growth of," or "to further or encourage." Neither "dress" or "tend" is wrong, but "cultivate" most accurately applies the Hebrew meaning of the original word.

There is the word "keep" as well. We are to "dress and keep." Keep means to "guard," "preserve," "be faithful to," and "maintain."

God has given man powers to carry out the responsibility that has been given into his hands: to have dominion. Man must do the following: Put what has been placed into his hands through a finishing process, watch over it, guard it, protect it, and preserve its beauty.

This was all given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, a beautiful place. God let them and us know that, as beautiful as the Garden was, it would not stay that way. It was subject to natural law and would degenerate. The Garden would need to be maintained, cultivated, dressed, and kept, requiring a great deal of work. Man was not only to preserve, control, and direct it, but also to strive even to ennoble the Garden of Eden through work.

It begins to become clear that God intends mankind to make more of his environment than he has been given. God has given the powers to do that. We are to understand this not only physically, but more importantly, spiritually.

Here in Genesis, God has shown the fact that a person works, the reason why he works, and the way he works all have a great deal to do with his spiritual development. It is important to note the difference between "salvation" and "development." We are saved by grace. But if there is going to be development from where God begins whenever we first receive His Spirit, then it requires something on our part to enable the fullness of development to take place. That involves work.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Right Use of Power

Genesis 2:15-17

Beginning in Genesis 2:15, God gives man two clear instructions. First, he must "tend and keep"—or as some translations say, "cultivate and preserve" or "adorn and guard"—the Garden. He would have to choose to work the Garden to produce food, as well as to keep it from deteriorating. Almost the very first things said to him involve Adam having to choose to do or not do. Did God instruct any animal to do anything remotely similar? They are not in God's image.

The second command involves an even greater responsibility to choose. God commands Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that was in the midst of the Garden because in the day they ate its fruit they would surely die. This represents God's first clear expression of His will for man involving a moral choice. It could not have been more plainly stated.

The story of the first sin in Genesis 3 involves four characters: God, who had instructed and set the standard; Adam and Eve, who have had the standard clearly taught them; and the Serpent, who arrived on the scene to test them. The outcome of the test is decided in a clash of wills: Satan's, who uses his ploys to persuade nascent humanity, and Adam's and Eve's, who choose to allow their desires for the fruit and to be like God to override their knowledge of the moral standard and to indulge in the self-expression of their wills. Conversely, animals cannot sin; they are not free to choose to sin. They truly are close to puppets on a string.

This is the eternal picture of man's moral life. God tells us what is right but then allows us the freedom to determine what we will do. There is no evidence at all that God tricked Adam and Eve into sinning. He did not stack the deck against them, nor did He overpower them. They were free to choose either way. The same act of creation that creates the possibility of moral character also opens the door to sin. Does not God say to Cain in Genesis 4:7, "If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it"?

The cause of man's plight is not ignorance of the right but his own desire, which leads him to substitute his will for God's. This simple story illustrates why man's relationship with God has run afoul. By deliberate choice, man separates himself from God, who created him and gives him the freedom to choose.

Nothing changes regarding the free-moral agency of the person called by God. When one is forgiven and receives God's Spirit, He does not overpower them. The right to choose freely remains, even as with Adam and Eve. To take away this privilege would truly make the individual a puppet on a string and destroy God's creation of him or her in His spiritual image. God is free to choose, and so is man created in God's image. It is this freedom of choice that opens the door for man, through redemption and conversion, to be like God in character.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Genesis 1 and Free-Moral Agency


 




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