We know only what God has told us about the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the tree of life, and the Garden of Eden. I don't think that we have any revelation on what happened to the tree itself. We do know that, ever since partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, mankind has been plagued with an over-active sense of what is right and what is wrong. We can judge wrong-doing in each other very well. Of course, we are never fully right in our judgment.

With the power of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the religionists of Jesus' day were able to turn God's spiritual law into something ugly. Jesus said, "... except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." They had a righteousness that was from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was the kind of righteousness that motivated them to bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves would not move them with one of their fingers. Matthew 23:4 They were hypocrites, judges with evil thoughts. They were self-righteous, so they found that they could not accept the free gift of real righteousness from God--the gift that is only available through Jesus.  Real righteousness is by grace through faith.

Even with this higher level of righteousness, we know that it is wrong with someone strikes us on the cheek, but we turn the other cheek. We know that it's wrong when people curse us, but with this higher level of righteousness is the we bless those who curse us. We pray for those who despitefully use us. How can we do this? We cannot, but Christ can do the work in us. Love and righteousness are synonyms and come from God.

We see this tree-of-knowledge judgment exercised by the religious people in John 8:3-11. They had caught a woman in the very act of adultery, a capital offense under the Law of Moses. Of course, they were laying what they thought was a clever trap for Jesus. However, Jesus was operating by a righteousness that far exceeded the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. He told them that the one who had no sin should throw the first stone. Of course, they all left, and no one threw a stone. Then, Jesus told the woman not to sin again or a far worse thing would happen to her. It would have been cruel had He not told her to sin no more. Jesus actually died for us to deliver us from our slavery to sin.