My church’s choir is singing “Jesus Christ, The Apple Tree” this year. It’s a beautiful, traditional song. I can’t remember where I’ve heard it before, perhaps the same place you’ve heard but can’t remember too.

The apple has been used in many works of art as a symbol for sin or evil. I’m told the reason we think of the forbidden fruit, that unnamed fruit of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, as an apple is the fact apple and evil are spelled the same in Latin, malum. So Adam is shown with the apple of sin in his hand or at his feet as he is driven from the Garden of Eden. But in this song, Jesus Christ is called an apple tree (cf. Song of Solomon 2) in part because he is the second Adam, the one who is taking sin away from us, the one who is bearing the burden of our curse in order to save us from ourselves. That’s why we can sing:

The tree of life my soul hath seen,

Laden with fruit and always green:

The trees of nature fruitless be

Compared with Christ the apple tree.

His beauty doth all things excel:

By faith I know, but ne’er can tell

The glory which I now can see

In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought,

And pleasure dearly I have bought:

I missed of all; but now I see

’Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I’m weary with my former toil,

Here I will sit and rest a while:

Under the shadow I will be,

Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,

It keeps my dying faith alive:

Which makes my soul in haste to be

With Jesus Christ the apple tree.