This week I am continuing my study of Ephesians, showing how it contradicts Adventism. I am picking up then lesson with the beginning of chapter 2.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Eph 2:1-3).
The second chapter of Ephesians is a controversial one throughout Christianity. Rather than re-hash different theological views relating to this passage, this article will attempt to stick specifically to the content of the passage and examine Adventist teaching in light of it. In order to affirm that I am actually presenting Adventist teaching on the passage, I’ll quote the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, the most reliable source for “official” church teaching on the passage. The commentary refers the reader to Ellen White’s comments on 2 Peter 1:4:
Partakers of the Divine Nature—We must learn of Christ. We must know what He is to those He has ransomed. We must realize that through belief in Him it is our privilege to be partakers of the divine nature, and so escape the corruption that is in the world through lust. Then we are cleansed from all sin, all defects of character. We need not retain one sinful propensity….
As we partake of the divine nature, hereditary and cultivated tendencies to wrong are cut away from the character, and we are made a living power for good. Ever learning of the divine Teacher, daily partaking of His nature, we cooperate with God in overcoming Satan’s temptations. God works, and man works, that man may be one with Christ as Christ is one with God. Then we sit together with Christ in heavenly places. The mind rests with peace and assurance in Jesus.
The Clear Word isn’t an official Adventist document, but it does provide insight into Adventist thinking about passages. Furthermore, given its wide circulation and use within Adventism, The Clear Word is also actively shaping Adventist thought. It renders this week’s passage this way:
In the past you were spiritually dead in transgressions and sins. You used to follow the ways of the world by listening to the promptings of the prince of this world, the same spirit seen in those who are disobedient. All of us in times past felt Satan’s wicked influence. We lived to please ourselves and did whatever our sinful bodies and minds wanted us to do. We were no different than anyone else and deserved God’s punishment for what we did.
There doesn’t seem to be any disagreement that we were dead in our sins before conversion. This “deadness” is the reason we must be born again (Jn. 3:3). It is interesting that The Clear Word would use the phrasing “spiritually dead” (the SDA Bible Commentary uses the similar phrase “spiritual death”). I can comfortably affirm both of these wordings. It is obvious that we were breathing, moving, thinking, and acting before we were born again, so for the Word of God to be true, there must be a different way in which we were dead. If we are not just a physical being (a body with a working brain) but also have a spirit nature, then it would be possible to be physically alive, yet not have a living spirit. We could be spiritually dead.
However, that view isn’t possible within Adventist theology. In Adventist theology, humans are a holistic being, meaning that the body, mind, and spirit are one unified object. So, being spiritually dead can’t mean having a dead spirit that needs to be brought to life in the new birth (as mainstream Christians would understand “spiritually dead”).
What, then, do Adventists mean by “spiritually dead”? I’m not certain that this could be clearly and consistently defined by Adventists. The SDA Bible Commentary describes spiritual death as “lacking the living principle that is necessary for energy and growth”. This definition added some complex phrasing but still doesn’t seem to address what is missing or dead. The reason that the commentary doesn’t address this is simple: in Adventist theology, there is nothing that can be missing, lacking, or especially “dead” nor is there anything that can be “made alive”, “changed”, or “born again”. Instead of referring to realities that occur within the person who becomes a believer, these can only be vague euphemisms for the Adventist. This tampering with definitions becomes even more important as we continue forward with this passage and examine how Paul describes the conversion process.
In fact, this twisting of the meaning of “spiritual death” presents yet another case in which Adventism can carefully phrase its beliefs to sound the same as evangelical Christianity while, in fact, not meaning the same thing.
Walking in sin
The passage continues with the ideas that before being born again, we participated (walked in) in sin and in followed Satan. There is agreement between Christianity and Adventism on these concepts. The next phrase, however, causes problems for Adventist theology: the concept of being “by nature children of wrath”. In fact, there are actually two elements in this short statement that are difficult to reconcile with Adventist theology: that we are sinners “by nature”, and that God could consider someone a child of wrath.
Notice how carefully The Clear Word navigates this issue: “All of us in times past felt Satan’s wicked influence. We lived to please ourselves and did whatever our sinful bodies and minds wanted us to do. We were no different than anyone else and deserved God’s punishment for what we did.”
In The Clear Word (and in Adventist theology), God’s punishment is based on our actions (“what we did”), not on our nature. This phrasing is a subtle, but important, deviation from what the Bible states. In the scriptural account, we are dead in our sins as a result of our nature. This passage in Scripture plainly teaches the doctrine of original sin. Sin isn’t just something we do, we are born sinful (we are even conceived sinful—Ps. 51:5). As a result of being born sinful and separated from God, we are “children of wrath” and dead in spirit. In the Bible, we are born with a dead spirit and following Satan. In Adventist doctrine, we merely felt the influence of Satan.
This viewpoint isn’t unique to The Clear Word, although it is stated a bit more clearly there than in other Adventist sources. In the SDA Bible Commentary the condition of man is described as “disobedient in very nature” combined with the obfuscation that “Natural man is essentially antagonist to God”. Thus the SDA Bible Commentary carefully avoids the subject of original sin. In fact, this refusal to endorse original sin is made abundantly clear by the commentary’s description of what it means to be born again. In describing the change associated with the new birth, the commentary describes it as being “governed by new principles.” Nothing is mentioned about the nature of the person being changed. Nothing that was once dead is made alive. Instead, the person simply is following a new set of rules.
The typical Christian commentary links the condition of man referenced in Ephesians 2:3 to Romans 5:18 (see, for example, the New International Commentary on the New Testament) and concludes that all humans are inherently sinful and subject to the wrath of God because of Adam’s sin. The Adventist exposition of this passage, however, does not make this link. Instead, the Adventist understanding is based on vastly different concepts of sin and therefore requires a vastly different savior. This is one underlying reason why the Adventist gospel is so different from the gospel of Scripture; the theology of sin is directly linked to the theology of salvation.
In Scripture, God declares that He has the sovereign authority to “be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Ex. 33:19). The uniquely Adventist doctrines of the Great Controversy and the Investigative Judgment deny God this authority. In these closely linked doctrines, God must demonstrate His “fairness” particularly in regard to those to whom eternal life has been granted as compared to those who were cast into the lake of fire. It is unfathomable within the Great Controversy zeitgeist that God could ever have “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” (Rom. 9:22). As a result of this doctrine, it is much more comfortable for an Adventist to consider that they previously “deserved God’s punishment” for their sinful acts than to contemplate that every single person is born into a state that placed them under God’s wrath.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:4-7).
The contrast between the passage of Scripture and the description from Ellen White quoted in the SDA Bible Commentary couldn’t be more obvious. In Scripture the emphasis is on the actions of God: He “made us alive”, He “raised us up”, He “seated us”, all because He “loved us”. Ellen White has twisted this emphasis of Scripture into what we must do: “We must learn”, “We must know”, “We must realize”, “We need not retain one sinful propensity”, “we partake of the divine nature”, “we cooperate with God”, and finally “God works, and man works”.
Paul is building towards the inspired conclusion in God’s Word that God’s salvation of us is all about the gift of God, rather than our efforts, so that we have nothing of which we can boast. In contrast, Ellen White’s path to salvation is filled with the steps that we must do to accomplish this salvation. In Ellen White’s description, the saved person would have much to boast about: learning, knowing, realizing, partaking, cooperating, and, (sadly) working.
This short passage strips bare the “other gospel” that Seventh-day Adventism proclaims. †
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How Ephesians Contradicts Adventism #9
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