Try to think about what it must have been like to live before the fall. Of course that is impossible to do because all of our experience has been one of an acute sense of corruption, depravity, evil, and loss. We do not know anything else. We simply cannot relate to a world that is without these things, a world that is not filled with heartache, frustration, suffering, pain, hatred, turmoil, and disintegration. In a word, we have no idea what it is to live without the presence of sin.

When Adam stood in the Garden of Eden before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he was confronted with the absolute authority of God. The command from God could not have been more clear, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16b-17).

As Christians we worship the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. According to the Nicene Creed the Son is very God of very God and is of the same substance as the Father. And the Spirit is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and Son. In the same creed we also confess that the Son was incarnate and was made man. That is, he took to himself our creaturely human nature. But this seems to present us with a theological difficulty.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of addressing a chapel full of students on the subject of their spiritual lives. The title which I was assigned was taken from an address given over 100 years ago by B.B. Warfield, “The Religious Life of Theological Students.”