Mankind has a tendency to look backwards, to perceive things in a nostalgic light. This is characteristic of those who talk about the 1950s as "the good ol' days," romanticizing the post-war period as the way things should be. It was a decade of innocence, prosperity, and family values. Of course, historical studies will quickly demonstrate that such a naïve perspective is rather unwarranted.

Similarly in theology, people sometimes wonder what life would have been like had Adam not sinned and cast the curse of sin over the rest of humanity. We look back to the Garden of Eden and life before the fall as the perfect example of what life should have been like. But this is simply inaccurate. We must not look back, but look forward. Herman Bavinck says the following:

Adam did not possess the highest kind of life. The highest kind of life is the material freedom consisting of not being able to err, sin, or die. It consists in being absolutely above all fear and dread, above all possibility of falling. This highest life is immediately bestowed by grace through Christ upon believers. They can no longer sin (1 John 3:9) and they can no longer die (John 3:16) since by faith they immediately receive eternal, inamissible life. Theirs is the perseverance of the saints; they can no longer be lost. Hence, Christ does not [merely] restore his own to the state of Adam before the fall. He acquired and bestows much more, namely, that which Adam would have received had he not fallen. He positions us not at the beginning but at the end of the journey that Adam had to complete (Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. II: God and Creation, 573).

We must not, therefore, look back in longing as to what we could have been, for that type of thinking ignores grace and destroys hope. To sentimentalize the past and to always be looking back leaves us yearning for that which cannot and will not be again. What Adam could not and did not do, Christ did for us (cf. Romans 5:12-21). Therefore it is only through Christ that we have the hope of achieving the ultimate destiny that God intended for mankind.

But our hope is not yet fully realized, for although Christ has been victorious over death, he has not yet consummated his Kingdom and his rule, and so, to use Augustinian categories, we remain in the third of four stages---posse non peccare (able not to sin) but not yet non posse peccare (not able to sin). Thus a proper understanding of man must be progressive, not regressive. So we look forward and anticipate the return of Christ, the restoration of all things, and the glorification of man. Here is found the highest kind of life, and only here do we find our hope. And so we can say with the Psalmist, "Now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you" (Psalm 39:7).