God loves a good garden — especially if that garden is on a mountaintop. In fact, God’s great story of redemption is largely a tale of two gardens. The tale begins and ends in the garden of Eden, which starts as an arboretum and ends as a paradisal city. But between the Bible’s bookends, we stumble into a very different garden: Gethsemane.

On this Holy Thursday, as we remember the agony of Jesus under the olive trees, what fruit might we glean by comparing Eden and Gethsemane?

Two Gardens

On the surface, the two gardens appear worlds apart. Eden was “the garden of God” (Ezekiel 28:13), full to overflowing with every pleasure imaginable (and perhaps many that are not). God had grown there “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Genesis 2:9). Multiple rivers meandered under that dappled canopy, watering paradise. It must have been a place thick with green and gold, heavy with the living aroma of spring, dancing to the music of water over rocks and wind in leaves. Eden was a world of yes — and but one no.

Lest we forget the real pith and pleasure of this garden — God met with man there. He was wont to walk with his people in the cool of the day. Adam and Eve experienced God with us not as a future hope but as an everyday reality. In Eden, we see God’s people in God’s place in God’s presence, a paradise of light and life and love.

Gethsemane opens onto something else entirely. It may indeed have been a lovely garden on any other day. But on Holy Thursday, Jesus arrived in the dark to do war with the dark. He came not to walk and talk with God but to fall on his face and plead with him. There was no sweet fruit to be eaten here, only a bitter cup to be taken up. Drops of blood, not crystal rivers, watered this ground. Gethsemane marked the gateway to darkness and death and shame.

Same Curse

Yet these two gardens are inextricably bound by the same curse. In the first garden, the first Adam and his lovely bride enjoyed paradise with God — until they didn’t. Satan, taking on the form of a serpent, tempted Eve to doubt God’s goodness and defy his will, seizing the forbidden fruit. And the husband of this fallen bride did nothing to rescue her but plunged mouth-first into death — and plunged all men and all creation in with him (Romans 5:12). The first Adam hid from God, scapegoated his wife, and was exiled from Eden. Because of this man, God laid a curse on all.

“What a man lost, the Man regained.”

However, in the second garden, the second Adam entered the final bend toward Calvary to take up the curse of all. And what a terrible path that was! The curse brought blood, sweat, and tears to mankind; Jesus mingled all three in Gethsemane. For he knew that his Father would soon “[lay] on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). So “sorrowful and troubled” was Jesus that he strained the web of language to describe his horror: “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26:37–38). What must sorrowful-even-to-death feel like?

And that ancient serpent was no less active here than in Eden. Satan entered into another snake to bring another Adam down (Luke 22:3). He began to sift Peter like wheat as he slept through his prayers (Luke 22:31). And it is hard to imagine the Dragon did not assault the Son directly. Jesus had proved himself to be the true Israel by reliving the nation’s temptations in the wilderness. Now was Satan’s “opportune time” to see if Jesus would prove to be the true Adam and triumph where the first failed (Luke 4:13).

Different Adams

Oh, and triumph he did! Where the first Adam defied God’s will from discontent, the second deferred to God’s will for joy (Hebrews 12:2). At last, Jesus utters the battle cry of obedience: “Not my will, but yours be done.” He has set his face to be “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8).

In Eden, we lament Adam’s failure; in Gethsemane, we marvel at Christ’s faithfulness. Adam betrayed God with the stolen fruit dripping off his beard; Jesus obeyed God with his own blood dripping off his. Adam stood by to watch the serpent accost his bride. Jesus laid down his life to crush the serpent and rescue his own. Adam hid from God. Jesus sought him out. Adam shifted the blame. Jesus took the blame. In Eden, a man stole from a tree, which led to death. In Gethsemane, a man steeled himself for a tree, which led to life.

The gardens’ outcomes could not be more different. “As by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). In the garden of paradise, Adam brought agony; through the garden of agony, Christ bought paradise. What a man lost, the Man regained.

Paradise Regained

The best good of the second garden is the pith and pleasure of the first — not merely guilt forgiven but paradise regained. “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Suffered for our sins — mine and yours. Adam may have started the whole thing, but between the gardens, we’ve merited our own exile from God. In the agony of Christ, we see the weight of our sin. That horror of bearing our sins starts in Gethsemane, but it will end in another garden — a garden with an empty tomb (John 19:41).

As we look forward to Easter, let us not forget Gethsemane. That dark grove recapitulates, reverses, and renews Eden. There we find the seeds of our hope that God will again dwell with man in Paradise (Revelation 21:3). Our King agonized in a garden that we might one day enjoy another.