Hi Formersda,
Let's consider this from a slightly different angle:
- Life comes from God.
- Our current life is sustained via eating food.
Is the life which God gave each of us somehow marginalized by the fact that that life is sustained by eating food?
Your questions indicate a desire to disengage from the topic and redirect focus from what you apparently cannot address. Either the Bible is contradictory in the different elements being discussed or your understanding is biased in favor of a preconceived idea. One must be willing to set aside personal bias and attempt to harmonize things they may perceive as being antithetical. In this case believing that a person has eternal life now obviously isn't taking into account that God
alone is immortal. So you are illustrating an unwillingness to provide an explanation how eternal life for humans--without benefit of an exterior source (i.e. the Tree of Life)--is in anyway substantially different from God's immortality. Either death is a current common occurrence for heavenly beings now, or there is some external way God has provided for heavenly beings to "live forever" without having the inherent, built-in, innate, inborn immortality which God has. Perhaps like say, maybe, oh, I don't know, something like a ... "Tree of Life"? ?
The Bible says that you can know that you are saved, but it also says that believers can become unbelievers. That they can be cut off (kinda like a branch on a ... oh, I don't know ... TREE!). That they can find themselves on the outside, looking in. That they can be unforgiven. So eternal life now is predicated on standing firm ... to the end. At which time the redeemed will be given access to the Tree of Life which will maintain and sustain their lives ... forever.
Questions for you:
- Is the Tree of Life a literal, real, actual, factual tree (as opposed to a symbolic, allegorical, figurative, emblematic tree)?
- If you said the Tree of Life is in any way symbolic, on what biblical basis do you come to this conclusion?
- If the Tree of Life is real and literal, what does its name have to do with its purpose?
- Why were Adam and Eve banished from the Garden?
- Why will the Tree of Life be reestablished on the new Earth?
- If eating from the Tree of Life would've allowed Adam and Eve to "live forever" then why would you suppose that on the new Earth it would retain the same name but be stripped of its life-sustaining capabilities?
- The Bible says the redeemed will be given the "right to the tree of life." If the Tree of Life serves no life sustaining purpose then why is this promise made?
I pray this helps.