The Golden Chain - Robert J. Wieland

sinless. Before the fall, the mind of Adam was also
sinless, as is the mind of all the holy angels and the
unfallen universe. But that sinless mind of created
beings was not the "mind ... which was also in
Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). There was an
infinite difference between the sinless mind of
created beings and the mind of the Creator-
Redeemer.
The mind of Christ was agape. No sinless
created mind in eternity had ever grasped the
dimensions of that kind of love until Christ
demonstrated it at the cross.
To compare the mind of Christ with that of the
sinless Adam therefore lowers the Creator down to
the level of His creature. Adam in his sinless state
could not have known how to die for the sins of the
world. He could not have known "the breadth, and
length, and depth, and height" of "the agape of
Christ ... which passeth knowledge" (Ephesians
3:18,19). He could not have known how to die the
second death in order to redeem his fallen race,
how to suffer the anguish of the lost in order to
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