There is a common biblical principle: you must give back what you steal. In the Bible, restitution is repayment with interest. If you rob someone of their money, you have to pay back double what you stole. A thief must pay back fourfold if he steals a sheep, and if he steals food, the thief has to make it good by repaying sevenfold (Prov 6.30-31). Theft is no minor infraction in God’s economy. The seventh word in the Ten Commandments is clear: “do not steal.” 

The first heist recorded in the Bible is a heist of food, and God demands complete (sevenfold) repayment. This first larceny occurs in the Garden of Eden. God created the world; the world and everything in it belongs to him (Ps. 24.1). We do not serve a stingy God, as he offered all his glorious food to his creation to enjoy. 

However, there was one thing he had not yet given to Adam: the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Like all the fruit of the Garden, that fruit belonged to God, and God told Adam not to eat it. They could eat anything they wanted; it was all good for them, it was all delicious and delightful, but they had to wait to enjoy the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. However, Adam did not want to wait. He stretched out his hand, took God’s fruit from the tree, and ate it. 

Adam stole from God. And herein lies the problem: How is Adam to repay God sevenfold for the food he stole? How does Adam put the fruit back when he has already consumed it, and it has become part of him? The only way to return the stolen fruit is for Adam himself, who is now one with the fruit, to be nailed back onto the tree. This repayment was impossible for Adam, for his sin caused rot to enter his bones. The fruit of his body is no longer delightful nor pleasing. In other words, the complete sevenfold repayment of Adam’s life still does not work because the cursed fruit cannot replace the perfect fruit that he stole. For this sevenfold repayment to be made, Adam, and all his children, need a new Adam, a perfect Adam to offer restitution. 

Jesus enters this world as King, as Savior, as the Way the Truth and the Life, and he also enters this world as the new sinless and perfect Adam. Only Jesus, the perfect God-Man, the greater Adam, could repay the sevenfold restitution of our first father’s theft. Christ comes into this world as the embodied perfect fruit. And the perfect fruit was nailed to that tree, and there he paid our sevenfold debt in full.

Now that our debt has been fully repaid, Jesus calls us to come to the tree of his cross and feast on the perfect fruit of his body. This fruit is no longer withheld but is offered each week in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Table.

— Kyle Lammott, “The Tree, the Cross, and the Supper” Theopolis Institute blog