Would Jesus have come if man had not sinned?

I took a class that dealt with the doctrine of Christology last spring. In that class, the prof, Dr. Bounds asked us the question, "Would Jesus have come to earth if there was no fall?" I'll admit my first response was to say "why?" It seemed to me that there was no purpose to it, I mean he came to forgive sins right? So I reasoned to myself that no, Jesus would not have come to earth, and he especially would not have come as a human.

I believe that there is nothing God cannot do (outside of sin). This means that nothing is beyond the power of God. He spoke the world into existence, why didn't he fix the whole sin issue by just commanding it? It God wanted to he could solve the sin problem without involving man, yet He chose to involve His creation in the solution.

The tradition of the Church dictates down to us today that Jesus is still fully human; thus humanity has been introduced into the Trinity. What does this mean? It means that Jesus' life on earth has united God with his creation. There could be no better way for God to show how important humanity was to Him than to bring humanity into the Godhead.

God is omniscient. Omniscience means that God knows everything. His omniscience means that nothing can be taught to him, he cannot discover anything, and nothing catches him by surprise. So the result of Jesus incarnation did not catch God by surprise, He knew the result of the incarnation would be before the dawn of creation.

While God knew the result of the incarnation before the beginning of creation, He also knew that man would sin, and that He would find a resolution to the problem. If God could restore man in any way possible, nothing would be done without a purpose. All of God's plan's work, and all of the results of God's plans work; there's no other option.

Thus God's plan involves more than just the redemption of sins. Otherwise His plan would have looked different. Yes, sin was a big issue, it was a road block in the way of reconciliation of God and man. But God's plan involved more than just the a plan of redemption than back to Adam's level; he wanted it to go further. But where does the level of God's redemption plan lead to? I believe that it is to go participate in community with the Trinity.

So what? All of this may seem to have absolutely no relevance in your life today. But think about it, salvation in this light means more than just our sins being forgiven and we can have a relationship with God. Not only does God fix the problem of the lack of relationship, but he gives an extra sign of how important that relationship is by using a solution that goes above and beyond the problem.

This is the level that God places on having a relationship with you. He wants you to see just how much he cares about you! His whole plan is more than just freeing you from sin, but creating a route for as deep a relationship as possible. That's my God and his plan for salvation.