Colleen and Nikki talk about the new birth experience and the fact that humans have spirits. Podcast was published January 15, 2020. Transcription by Gwen Billington.

 

Colleen:  Welcome to Former Adventist podcast.  I’m Colleen Tinker.

Nikki:  And I’m Nikki Stevenson.

Colleen:  We’re so glad you’re joining us for this podcast today.  We are doing a topic that is very near and dear to our hearts, and we think it’s really a seminal thing in order to understand not only the new birth, but actually the meaning of Scripture.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  For any of us who have left Adventism, one of the first things we have to grapple with is the nature of man.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  Do we have a spirit that is separate from the body?  And if so, what does that mean, and what are the implications?  When I first met you indirectly about 10 years ago, Nikki, we had a phone conversation.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  Can you go back to that and talk to me about what was one of the first questions that you asked.

Nikki:  Yeah.  Well, I remember I prepared for that phone conversation with about three pages of notes, questions that I had, because I had read “Truth Led Me Out,” and I had spent some time on your website, and I just knew that I had to question everything at that point –

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  – because I didn’t know what was wrong and what was right.  And you decided to start with me at the very beginning.  You had me to go Genesis, and you wanted to know what I understood happened at the Fall, and we just began there.

Colleen:  It’s a really good question.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  And I think it’s where all of us former Adventists have to start because from that beginning we had a specific way that story was explained to us.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  And in the context of Scripture, the explanation we grew up with is inaccurate.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  Why don’t you all get your Bibles and just look at this passage with us, and while you get your Bibles, I’m going to say, let’s turn to Genesis 2.  We’re going to begin where God gives Adam the understanding and the command not to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, not to eat the fruit from it.  While you get your Bibles, I’m just going to ask you, Nikki:  What did you, as an Adventist, understand happened at the Fall?

Nikki:  That’s a good question.  First of all, I believed that Eve had wandered away from Adam, and that was her first mistake.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  Through the process of her eating the apple and then giving it to Adam, their eyes were opened, and they were disconnected from God because they knew good and evil, and that cursed the earth, and they began to die.  They would die.  They wouldn’t be able to live forever.  Yeah, a time would come when they would die.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  I guess they began to age.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  I’m not sure exactly.  I would have said that they were spiritually cut off, that they – I might have even used the words “spiritually died,” more of an emotional connection –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – you know, the ability to communicate with God and to live without shame.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  It wasn’t what I learned it really was through Scripture.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  Right.  [Laughter.]  And I was taught that when they ate, they began to die.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  That was fulfilling what God had said would happen, they began to die because clearly they lived, and the genealogy in Genesis has Adam living to over 900 years old.

Nikki:  Yeah!  And I used to think that the reason that all of that, like people lived longer back then, is, you know, they were closer to Eden.

Colleen:  The perfect gene pool.

Nikki:  Right.  And the further you got away from that, the more distorted the gene pool became –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – the more polluted the world became, the shorter our lives were.

Colleen:  That’s what Ellen White said.

Nikki:  Okay.  I didn’t know where I got it from, but that sure makes sense.

Colleen:  Yep.  It was how we were taught.  So let’s go to Genesis 2.

Nikki:  Okay.

Colleen:  And Nikki, read 15 to 17, and let’s just get the command straight from God.

Nikki:  “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.  And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'”

Colleen:  Okay.  What’s the little phrase in that verse that’s so crucial, that as Adventists we didn’t pay attention to?

Nikki:  “In the day that you eat of it” –

Colleen:  – “you will die.”

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  It’s not “begin to die.”

Nikki:  Right.

Colleen:  Then we move to chapter 3, and hear the description of what happened.  Why don’t you start with 3:6 and read from 3:6 to 3:7.

Nikki:  “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.  Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.  And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”

Colleen:  There are a couple things in there that are worth noting:  The position of Adam.  She gave him fruit to eat because he –

Nikki:  He was with her.

Colleen:  He was with her.  She had not wandered away.  And that’s really significant because the command not to eat of this fruit had been given by God to Adam.  Adam apparently is the one who had been made responsible for explaining it to Eve because Eve was not yet created when God gave Adam that command in chapter 2.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Adam had been responsible for Eve, and in front of him she talked to the snake and took the fruit.

Nikki:  And debated what God said because –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – if we had read verse 4, the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  She’s letting the serpent tell her what God said –

Colleen:  Yes!

Nikki:  – and she wasn’t there when God gave the command, but Adam was, and Adam didn’t correct him.

Colleen:  Exactly.  And so this whole thing came from allowing an outside influence, a voice besides God’s voice, explaining to them another way to look at the problem.  I mean, this has implications for us today when we look at God’s Word.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  God’s Word is God’s Word.  Any extraneous voices, we cannot consider them to be ultimate truth.  She ate, he ate, and then this most amazing switch happens.  What do they notice first of all?

Nikki:  They were naked.

Colleen:  Did you ever learn as an Adventist what that meant?  I mean, do you remember what Ellen White said about Adam and Eve in the garden?

Nikki:  Okay, so I don’t remember what Ellen White said, but I do know that what I thought was true was what she said.  I found that out later.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  So I thought that they had, like, halos of light around them –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:   – and so they couldn’t see their nakedness because they were bathed in light.

Colleen:  Exactly.

Nikki:  And then the light went out.

Colleen:  Yes!

Nikki:  And then suddenly they could see, and they were ashamed.

Colleen:  But it does not say that.  There is nothing in Scripture, and it was shocking to me to find out that Christians don’t have any conception of Adam and Eve being surrounded in light that you couldn’t see through.

Nikki:  But it’s interesting, if you look at some of the Adventist art –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – you will see them surrounded in light.

Colleen:  Yes.  They try to portray what Ellen White said.  They can’t imagine that there was something real that was going on besides physical reality.

Nikki:  Yeah.  And I just want to say it’s very possible that my understanding of that came from gazing at those pictures as a kid –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – without ever really being taught it.

Colleen:  A lot of our understandings came from that art in those children’s books.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Okay.  They suddenly saw they were naked.  Now, the emotion that would be behind that sudden realization of nakedness would be – how would you describe it?  What would you feel if you suddenly realized you were naked in front of people?

Nikki:  Humiliated.

Colleen:  Exactly.  Shame, embarrassment, humiliation.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.  Run!  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  Run!  [Laughter.]  Hide quick!

Nikki:  Yeah.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  That’s what they felt, and they had been naked before but had not been ashamed.  So they suddenly were shamed.  They suddenly knew they were naked.  They suddenly tried to hide themselves, and then they started this interesting conversation with God.  Do you want to read 8 through 13.

Nikki:  Sure.  “And they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.  But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’  And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’  He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked?  Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’  The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate.’  Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’  The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.'”

Colleen:  As they discover they’re naked and try to cover themselves with fig leaves, God shows up.  Now, it’s interesting to me that they even thought they could hide from God –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  – but they tried.  And He called to them, and what did Adam do when God confronted him?  God says, “How do you know you’re naked?  Who told you that?  And have you eaten of the tree?”  And Adam’s immediate response was –

Nikki:  “The woman you gave me did this.”

Colleen:  Yes.  He wouldn’t own his own sin.  He blamed.  He blame shifted and refused to own that this was hisresponsibility, that his nakedness was his responsibility at this point.  And then God turned to Eve and said, “What is it you have done?”  And what was her response?

Nikki:  “The serpent deceived me.”

Colleen:  Yeah.  She wouldn’t own her sin either.  She blame shifted to the serpent.  Who was actually guilty?

Nikki:  Both of them.

Colleen:  They were all guilty.  The serpent was guilty, Eve was guilty, Adam was guilty, but the serpent isn’t part of the story of humanity except in the sense of his having been a tempter.  What really matters here for our benefit is:  Who were these humans, and what happened to them?  Both humans were guilty.  We learn in the New Testament that God holds Adam responsible for human sin – “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” – but both of them were guilty, and they experienced shame, they experienced denial, they experienced regret, but all of those things that they had not known before they ate the fruit.  So when we look back to what God had said to Adam in the first place, “In the day you eat of it, if you eat, you will surely die,” then what can we know these reactions of Adam and Eve, what can we know about them?  What did they mean?  They’re connected to what?

Nikki:  It’s all evidence that something, indeed, happened that day.

Colleen:  Yeah!

Nikki:  They died.

Colleen:  Exactly.  And if they died but they were still up and walking around, something died besides their bodies.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  I know that as an Adventist I thought of it all as metaphorical, and I thought of spirit as breath.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Did you understand it that way too?

Nikki:  At creation, yes.  When God breathed into them, I understood it simply as breath.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  But I always understood the spirit to be something other than breath.

Colleen:  I somehow thought it was connected to the mind as well, the attitude of the mind, the way we thought, the way we processed information, the way we heard from God.

Nikki:  Well, and I think that a tagalong with this topic really is:  What is it to be made in the image of God?  Because, you know, here we have Adam and Eve hearing God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.  Well, that’s an anthropomorphism.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  That is not the nature of God.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  But as an Adventist, I believed that being made in the image of God meant having a body, having a brain –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – and having a mind and being able to relate to people in relationship and to create –

Colleen:  Yes!

Nikki:  – and to me, that was what it was to be made in the image of God.

Colleen:  Exactly.  But we know that God is not physical.

Nikki:  Right.

Colleen:  And it’s a really good thing you brought that up, Nikki, because that is another implication that most Adventists have, is that God somehow has a physical manifestation, because Ellen White said that.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  And that being in His image means that we have a body and a face and hands and all that.  But in John 4:24 I remember years ago reading this kind of like for the first time, although it wasn’t the first time, but it really shocked me, and it’s interesting because it’s in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well that Jesus talks to, and they’re talking about the place of proper worship.  Jesus says to this woman, John 4:23-24:  “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshippers.  God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”  It’s really clear, God is spirit.  That’s something other than physical.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Hebrews 1:14 also identifies angels as ministering spirits.  It’s not human, it’s not physical, but we’re created in God’s image, even though we have human bodies.  To be in His image we must have a spirit.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  And that’s the part of us that worships Him with true worship.  So that had to be what died that day in Eden, and if they didn’t die that day, then God is a liar.

Nikki:  Right.

Colleen:  And He’s not a liar.  When He says something, it’s true.  He doesn’t fulfill His word with metaphors, or His word isn’t a metaphor.  He means what He says, and “If you eat that fruit, you will die that day,” meant they died.

Nikki:  I want to say, as an Adventist I would have said that we spiritually died in Eden, and I’ve heard Adventists say that what happened there was spiritual death.  But again, I thought it was spiritual disconnection, and I thought that the goal of every human born is to find their way back to God, to find a way to connect back with God.

Colleen:  Oh, yes.

Nikki:  And so that we’re born a clean slate, perfect –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – we sin immediately in infancy, and then it’s our job to seek after God and to try to spiritually connect with Him.  I didn’t understand that there was something that – that I was born with a dead spirit that needed life.

Colleen:  Right.  Yes.

Nikki:  And that it was life that I couldn’t provide.

Colleen:  And you couldn’t find your way back to it.

Nikki:  Right.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  They were just dead works; anything I tried to do was just dead works.

Colleen:  Very important.  Since this is such a jolting concept for most of us who’ve been Adventist, let’s look at a few places where we see that that is actually biblically true, that we’re actually born dead.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  One of the first, and I think for me most profound, is Ephesians 2.  Because I also believed that we were born with propensities to sin, we had inherited genetic things that led us into temptation much more easily than if we hadn’t inherited bad genes through the ages from Adam and Eve, but I did believe that I could find my way back to God.  If I prayed enough, committed myself enough, and read my Bible enough, I could find my way into relationship with God by doing the right thing.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  But the Bible is very clear that something else is wrong with us.  It’s not just genetic propensities to sin.  We are literally dead.  So Ephesians 2:1-3 is one of the places that has helped me understand this.  In fact, it’s really interesting when I think back.  The first time we went to a Christian church after leaving Adventism, that was the first time we heard Pastor Gary Inrig preaching.  It was in 1998 at the very end of the year, November, I believe, and he was preaching through Ephesians, and he started with Ephesians 2:4, which is right after the passage we’re going to read.  Ephesians 2:1-3 is so clear.

Nikki:  “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.”

Colleen:  Did you catch that phrase in verse 3?  I remember when I first saw that and really understood what it was saying, “We were by nature” – that’s who we are as natural born people:  “By nature children of wrath.”

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Whose wrath?

Nikki:  God’s wrath.

Colleen:  God’s wrath.  “Children of wrath, even as the rest.”  The rest of mankind, everybody, is by nature children of wrath.

Nikki:  It is interesting, we do have a picture here of the walking dead, because it says, “you were dead” –

Colleen:  Oh, yes.

Nikki:  – and then it says, “among whom we all once lived.”  Our spirits were dead.  We were born that way.

Colleen:  Exactly.  And I remember one time, it was a really indelible moment, after leaving Adventism, Richard and I were walking through our neighborhood, and he said, “Just look at all these houses and think of all the dead people living in them.”  It was a new thought for me, and it made me realize, kind of for the first time, why evangelism is soimportant.

Nikki:  Yes.  Yes.

Colleen:  As an Adventist, I didn’t understand that.

Nikki:  Uh-uh.

Colleen:  Oh, you know, you’re responsible for what you know, and if you don’t know, God winks.

Nikki:  And think about it, if we are born clean slates, we work to strive after God, and He knows our hearts –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – which is what I always heard –

Colleen:  Me too.

Nikki:  – then we’re all working and doing our best, and God judges if it’s good enough.

Colleen:  Yeah!

Nikki:  I remember a conversation I had with an Adventist who said, “I’m not that bad.  I didn’t go out partying, I didn’t go drinking, I didn’t get pregnant before I was married.  I’m a good person, you know, I make good choices.  I don’t understand this ‘deserving hell’ or even needing to be saved.”

Colleen:  Yeah.

Nikki:  She didn’t understand she had a dead spirit that needed life.

Colleen:  Exactly.

Nikki:  And when we understand that, then we know we have to proclaim the gospel –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – so that these people can come to life in Christ.

Colleen:  I know.  It kind of makes me emotional.  There are so many dead people among those we know.  There is one more passage that makes it really clear we’re dead.  It’s in Romans 3, and what I think is so interesting about this passage is that Paul strings together his argument by quoting various passages from the Old Testament, so this is not, like, brand new revelation, and Paul comes along and has new data for us.  He’s taking Scripture, Old Testament Scripture, and saying, “Look what the prophets, look what the Bible writers have said.  As long as God has been revealing His will, He has been saying this, and here’s what He says,” and in Romans 3:9-18, he has a whole list of Old Testament quotes that say the truth about humanity as we are born in Adam, starting with 10:  “There’s none righteous, not even one;” 11:  “There’s none who understands, none who seeks for God;” 12:  “All have turned aside, together they’ve become useless; there is none who does good; there is not even one.”  You know, I sometimes think about that.  I think about the great people of history who have not been Christian, but who’ve been huge philanthropists –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  – who’ve given money, who built wells in Africa.  They’ve done a ton of good, and that’s God’s common grace to humanity.  He’s saved lives with this.  But that is not pleasing to God if it’s done – it’s not gaining favor with God.  It’s not earning His approval if you’re not alive.  And then in verse 13, “Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving.  The poison of asps is under their lips.”  That’s really vivid, isn’t it?  The snake is under their lips.  Verse 14:  “Mouths full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths.” 17:  “And the path of peace they have not known.  There is no fear of God before their eyes.”  That is the picture of natural humanity, and that is the condition into which every one of us is born.  It’s death, but it’s not bodily death.  Something in us is dead and has to be made alive.

Nikki:  I remember reading that about “no one seeks after God” and thinking, “Oh, but I want to know God so much, I want to know Him.”  I really wanted to know Him as an Adventist, and I’ve understood since then that that desire to know God, that came from God.

Colleen:  Exactly.

Nikki:  That did not come from my own nature.

Colleen:  No.

Nikki:  That was His grace.

Colleen:  Yes.  That grace of God is the thing that changes everything for us.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  When I started understanding that we are literally born spiritually dead, that the essence of us is not alive when we’re born, because that is our legacy from Adam, I realized what it meant when Paul said in Colossians 1:13 that when we believe God, when we believe Jesus, God transfers us from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son.  So I kind of had to think through what that domain of darkness is.  Well, if we are all born dead, we are all born into that darkness.  According to Romans 3, according to Ephesians 2 we are born completely dead, children of wrath.  There is one other text that has shed some light on what that means, to be born into the domain of darkness, as well, and it’s, interestingly, John 3:18.  You know, it’s so funny to me that we all learn John 3:16, “For God so loved the world.”  You know that text.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Two verses later is this amazing insight into the reality of man, but as an Adventist I didn’t – I mean, I know I read it.  I never really saw it.  John 3:18 – well, actually 17 and 18 go together, so do you want to read it, Nikki?

Nikki:  “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.  Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

Colleen:  The natural condition of man is condemned because we haven’t believed.  We’re born not believing.

Nikki:  Well, 2 Corinthians talks about the fact that we were born dead because Adam died.

Colleen:  1 Corinthians 15.

Nikki:  Oh, 1 Corinthians.

Colleen:  1 Corinthians 15:21, “For since by a man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will made alive.”  It’s our inheritance from Adam that causes us to be born dead.  And you might say, as I did, “Well, how’s that fair?”  God doesn’t exactly explain the full implication of how that is fair, but the fact is that Adam was the head of the human race –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  – and he disobeyed the only command we have record of that God gave him that was a negative, “Do not eat.”  He broke that.  That meant that his sin became the prototype for all of his descendants.  He died, and we are born in him dead.  And there’s no escaping that.  That’s the truth that the Bible teaches.  We are born dead into that domain of darkness, and there is no natural door outside of that domain of darkness.  It’s like a friend of ours, Steve Pitcher, has said, it’s our communal grave.  We are born physically alive into a communal grave from which there is no natural way of escape.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  And that is where the miracle of Jesus’ incarnation comes in.  Because God finally, when the time was fully fulfilled, sent His Son, as Galatians says, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those of us under the law so that we might receive the adoption as sons.  Now, Jesus came physically like us, but He didn’t stop being God.  We’ve talked quite a bit about that in just the few podcasts we’ve done –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  – and that’s really important because what does that mean about that infant Jesus.  How was He different from us although the same?

Nikki:  Well, He was born spiritually alive.

Colleen:  Exactly.  How was He conceived?  He wasn’t conceived by a man and a woman.  He was conceived by a woman and the Holy Spirit.  He was born spiritually alive from the moment of conception.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  And when He was born as a human baby, He did not have a dead spirit.  He’s the only way God could bring life back into the domain of darkness, and he smuggled it in through a normal human baby.

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  A normal human baby who was also God, and He grew up just like all the people around Him who were born dead in sin, but He wasn’t born dead in sin.  That meant He could grow up, He lived a perfect life before the Father, but most importantly, He never had sin.  Not because He didn’t sin.  He never had sin because He had life, spiritual life.

Nikki:  And that’s an important point.  So often we think we’re sinners because we sin, but the truth is, we sin becausewe’re sinners.

Colleen:  Very important.  And Jesus did not sin because He was not a sinner.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  So that enabled Him to be the prophesied Messiah, the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world.  God sent Him as the fulfillment of those prophesies, and Jesus grew up and died the death of a sinner, taking our sins imputed into Himself, but He Himself was not a sinner.  And because of that, His sacrifice was accepted by God as sufficient for all human sin.  It’s hard even to understand that, but that’s what the Bible teaches.  And because of that, God raised Him from the dead on the third day, and here is where the miracle happens for us.  His resurrection – and we were not taught this as Adventists.  His resurrection is what shattered out one side of that wall of the domain of darkness and gives us a way of escape.  Because He died a perfect human death and shed His blood as payment for our sin and rose from the grave, that fact opened up a way out of the domain of darkness, and when we trust Him and receive His blood as the payment for our sin, God transfers us out of the domain of darkness and puts us into a newkingdom, the kingdom of the beloved Son.

Nikki:  And it’s a work of God.

Colleen:  Totally.

Nikki:  It is not by the will of man or the will of the flesh.  It is by God.  It is by the will of God.  I love the passage in 1 Peter.  It’s 3 through – well, I love all of 1 Peter, but –

Colleen:  I know.

Nikki:  – but 3 through 5, I will just say.  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.”  Our new birth was a work of God alone –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – through the resurrection life of Jesus.  This is why we rejoice at Easter!

Colleen:  Absolutely!

Nikki:  I never really, truly got that as an Adventist.

Colleen:  I didn’t either!

Nikki:  I mean, it was a fun day, but I didn’t get that that resurrection life is what has resurrected my spirit.

Colleen:  Exactly.

Nikki:  And it took some time in Scripture to actually understand that I had a human spirit, and I know I wanted to test everything I was told and everything I read as a new believer, you know, after Adventism –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – and it all holds up, it all holds up.  So if you’re just reading Scripture after leaving Adventism, really pay attention when you see words like “live” and “life” and “death” and “die,” and –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – consider what we’re saying here.  It will hold together.  I remember reading John 3 –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – just after leaving Adventism, where Jesus tells Nicodemus that flesh gives birth to flesh –

Colleen:  Yes!

Nikki:  – and spirit gives birth to spirit, and He says, you know, Nicodemus, “How is this possible?  Can a man enter his mother’s womb a second time?”  And Jesus asks him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and you don’t understand these things?”  And I always used to think, “Oh, you know what, that’s kind of harsh –

Colleen:  Totally.

Nikki:  – because you never told us this in the Old Testament.”

Colleen:  I know!

Nikki:  And I remember looking at my footnotes, and it took me to Ezekiel.

Colleen:  What a shock!

Nikki:  Yeah.  Ezekiel 36.  I would love it if those who are listening would actually turn their Bibles to Ezekiel 36.  Okay, Chapter 36 beginning in verse 25.  “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”  I read that, and I thought, “Wait a minute.  You will put a new spirit within me?” –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – “And  you will put Your Spirit in me.  Wait a minute.”

Colleen:  That’s two things.

Nikki:  That’s two spirits, and I loved discovering the interlinear Bible.  I’m not a Greek student, I’m not a Hebrew student, but those Bibles make it pretty easy to look up and see, “Is the same word used?”  And it is.  It’s the same word for spirit when we’re talking about God’s Spirit and the spirit He’ll put in us.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  And I saw there, you know, in the context of spirit gives birth to spirit, God Himself gives us a living spirit –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – and then He seals us with His Spirit.

Colleen:  That’s right.  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  That was an incredible moment.

Colleen:  And truly, Nicodemus should have known what Jesus meant because he was the scholar of Israel, the teacher of Israel, and he knew Ezekiel.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  It was kind of interesting to me also to discover that it was such a given for Jesus, the Jews did understand that they had spirits.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  It was all through the Old Testament, and Jesus just kind of chided Nicodemus, “You know this.”

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  But you have to have a new spirit, you have to be born again.  Spirit gives birth to spirit, which is not a metaphor.

Nikki:  And He says here, He makes it very clear, “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Colleen:  How did you understand “born again” as an Adventist.

Nikki:  I think the best way I can describe it is kind of a do-over.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  If you talk to a lot of Adventists and ask them, “When were you born again?” a lot will say at their baptism.

Colleen:  True.

Nikki:  And they do believe in being re-baptized.

Colleen:  Yeah!

Nikki:  In Adventism, you can be re-baptized, and so you can be born again and again and again and again –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – every time you recommit your life to God, and so for me it was, like I said, you’re born with a clean slate –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – and then when you’re born again you have a clean slate, and if you mess that up and you walk away from the church and you come back, you can be baptized and have a clean slate again.

Colleen:  Yes!

Nikki:  Almost like the footwashing idea, even, that they do before communion.

Colleen:  Oh, that’s a great comparison.

Nikki:  Yeah.  So for me, the born again, it was definitely a metaphor.

Colleen:  Yes, it wasn’t literal.

Nikki:  I certainly didn’t understand that I had a dead spirit that needed life.

Colleen:  No.

Nikki:  When we’re talking about the new birth according to Scripture, that also destroys the Adventist understanding of the seal of God.

Colleen:  Yes.  Oh, my goodness.  Adventism teaches that Sabbath is the seal of God.  Modern Adventists, knowing that they’re saying something that can be easily disproven by Scripture, will say, “Oh, no, no, it’s the sign that we have the seal of God.”  But that’s just not true.

Nikki:  Well, and even if they’re saying that the Holy Spirit is the seal of God – because it says it in Ephesians – their understanding of grieving the Holy Spirit is not causing the Holy Spirit grief because He’s indwelling you and you are sinning in His presence.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  That’s not how they understanding grieving the Holy Spirit.

Colleen:  No.

Nikki:  When they talk about grieving the Holy Spirit, they talk about Him leaving you.

Colleen:  Yes, exactly.

Nikki:  He leaves.  “If you grieve me, I’ll leave you.”

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  And so the seal isn’t actually a seal, because it comes and goes.

Colleen:  But let’s just read Ephesians 1:13 and 14 because this was another seminal passage for me.  When I figured this out, I realized that everything I had been taught about the Sabbath was somehow flawed.

Nikki:  “In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory.”

Colleen:  So when we believe the gospel of our salvation, there is only one way to receive the Holy Spirit.

Nikki:  And there is only one gospel by which you can be saved.

Colleen:  That’s right.  And what is it?

Nikki:  It’s the gospel of Jesus Christ.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  Yeah.  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  That He came, that He was born a man –

Colleen:  Uh-huh.

Nikki:  – and lived –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – and died and was buried and on the third day resurrected, and all of this was according to Scripture.

Colleen:  Yes.  That’s the gospel.  That’s it.  And when we believe, we are given a new heart, a new spirit, and God sends His Holy Spirit to seal us.  Now, that is permanent.  We can’t undo that.

Nikki:  And I think it’s important to say that, while that summary of the gospel is simple and that believing in the gospel is simple, that “according to Scripture” is a huge caveat –

Colleen:  That’s true.

Nikki:  – because there are a lot of cults who will say, “Oh, yeah, He came, and He was born and died, but what did that all mean?”

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  Who’s interpreting that?  Is it Scripture or is it your prophet?

Colleen:  That is a very good point.  It has to be what Scripture says and what the prophets said He would do, and that is what He did.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Yeah.  He died for our sins.  Another way that once we have been born again, once we have trusted Jesus and have been passed out of the domain of darkness by God’s own doing into the kingdom of the beloved Son, that is what constitutes our new birth.  That is the moment of our belief when He gives us a new heart and a new spirit.  We’re no longer children of wrath.  We’re no longer unable to please God.  Having the Holy Spirit sealing us, having God give us a new spirit, makes us a new creation, and we’re no longer dead in sin, and we get evidence of that.  I think it’s so amazing.  It’s not just a mind game that we play with ourselves, going “Well, I think I’ve done that, then that must mean this.”  No!  God gives us actual evidence that this happens.  I love Romans 8:15-17:  “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’  The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”  But do you seethat?  God’s Spirit testifies with something in us that has the same name.

Nikki:  It’s the same Greek word.

Colleen:  Yes!

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  God’s “pneuma” testifies with our “pneuma.”

Nikki:  And it’s not our breath.

Colleen:  No!  It’s who we are.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  It’s the essential us.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  And He lets us know we belong to Him because His Spirit gives us the knowledge, the certainty, the trust, the conviction that we are His children, made alive through the blood of Christ.

Nikki:  Both by birth and by adoption.

Colleen:  Isn’t that so wonderful.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  What’s the significance of that?

Nikki:  Well, that’s security.

Colleen:  That is.

Nikki:  You can’t be unborn.  You can’t be un-adopted.

Colleen:  Uh-uh.

Nikki:  We are His children.

Colleen:  Adoption is a legal transaction that makes your parentage new.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  So when we’re born of the Spirit, that means we receive a new family, we receive a new identity, and the adoption makes it legal.  We are legally transferred.

Nikki:  And in 2 Corinthians 5:17, it says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” or a new creature.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  We are altogether new.

Colleen:  That’s an amazing thing.  That new creation phrase is so interesting.  I’m going to just tag-team with you from that Corinthians text, Nikki, and go to Galatians 6.  I just – again, not new, but just saw it with new eyes for the first time this week.  Galatians 6:15.  After this entire epistle, in which Paul makes a very big deal about not submitting – the Gentile converts not submitting to the law because they will be severed from Christ and fall from grace if they hope to be justified by the law, after this entire thing he says, in verse 15 of chapter 6, “For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision.” – in other words, Jew, Gentile, it doesn’t matter, this is irrelevant – “but a new creation.”  So when we trust Jesus, we are literally new.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  We’re transferred from Adam into Christ.  We have a new Father.  In John 1:12, John writes that we have, really – to everyone who believes, we have one right given to us.  To those who believe, those who believe have the right to be called the children of God.  And this happens not by the will of man nor the will of a father, but by God Himself.  We are born of God, adopted by God, transferred by God out of the domain of darkness, which is our natural inheritance, transferred into the kingdom of the beloved Son, with a new heart, with real spiritual life, with His Spirit sealing us, and as John 10 says, nothing can take us out of His hands.

Nikki:  And when we understand all of this according to Scripture, Scripture comes to life.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  Suddenly we read things like, “You have been made alive in Christ” –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – and we can understand what’s happening in us, what’s happened to us.

Colleen:  Yes!

Nikki:  Scripture tells us what’s going on.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  It does.

Nikki:  And I remember reading even just something like the man who came to Jesus and – I just read this recently in my Read Through the Bible – he came to Jesus, and he said, “First let me go bury my father,” and Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead.”

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  Well, his father wasn’t dead yet.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  It opens up Scripture.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  You understand things, Jesus talking about those who believe in me will never die.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  Well, we know their bodies are going to die.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  But He said in John 11, “If you believe in me, you will never die.”

Colleen:  Right.  And in John 5:24 Jesus said, “Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears my word, and believes Him who sent me, has” – present tense – “eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”  So then people say, “Well, what if you sin?”  Well, of course, we will sin.  You know, we still have mortal bodies, and that’s the really interesting thing about this.  We still have brains that have been programmed by our sin.  Paul says in Romans 7 that we have a law of sin in our members, in our flesh, and it causes – he was mourning about it.  He was saying, “Why do I not do what I want to and do what I don’t want to?  Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  But he was saying, “In my mind I love God’s law and want to do what’s right,” and then he says, “But thanks be to God, there’s now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  So even though our bodies have a law of sin and we’re still tempted, we are not condemned if we have been born again.  Now, God doesn’t leave us sinning without His Spirit convicting us and nudging us and leading us to repentance and to trusting Him in deeper and deeper ways.  But we are secure when we have believed in Jesus and have been born again and given true spiritual life.

Nikki:  And it’s only in that place of being spiritually alive that any of our good works could ever please God.  In that same chapter in – well, I guess it’s the next chapter, in Romans 8, Paul tells us that “those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  I remember thinking as an Adventist that being in the flesh was doing wrong.

Colleen:  It was about behavior!

Nikki:  It was about behavior.

Colleen:  It was a metaphor.

Nikki:  Yeah.  This whole passage is clearly talking about being alive in the Spirit, being alive in Christ and living by the Spirit.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  So that would be the answer to your question.  As you look all down through time at all of those people who’ve done wonderful things –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – but it didn’t please God if they weren’t alive in Him.

Colleen:  That’s right.  It’s interesting that 1 Corinthians 3 has a passage that talks about rewards, that God will reward us for what we’ve done in the flesh, whether we’ve done things that were building onto the foundation of Christ with gold, silver, and precious stones or whether our works were wood, hay, and stubble.  And as an Adventist, I only could read that one way, that the reward for gold, silver, and precious stones would be salvation, but that being punished or unrewarded for that would be losing salvation, but that’s not what it says.  It’s interesting that in that passage, it’s 1 Corinthians 3:10, “According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it.  But each man must be careful how he builds on it.  For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.  Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.  If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward.  If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet as though through fire.”

Nikki:  And this is written to Christians –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – to born-again believers.

Colleen:  Yes.  It’s written to born-again believers who he has to chastise because they’re behaving badly.  But he is saying, “If you have been born again, if you have truly trusted Jesus, you will be saved, even if your works are burned up.”  And we don’t know exactly what that will look like.  Clearly there is some eternal consequence that we will be aware of, but we’ll still be saved if we know Jesus.

Nikki:  So when we understand this nature of ours that we’re born with and this new creation that God gives us –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – and this new birth, it changes the way that we approach Scripture.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  It changes our understanding of why Christ came.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  He did not come and keep the law to show us how to keep the law –

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  – He came according to God’s will that He be born under the law, and He lived under the law, and He came to bring us life.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  He came to save us from our death.  He wasn’t our example.

Colleen:  No.

Nikki:  He was our Savior.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  And understanding the new birth touches everything else that we can talk about on this podcast.

Colleen:  That’s correct.

Nikki:  When we talk about how we’re understanding Scripture or what is sanctification or what about the security of the believer?  So many of these issues that we have to wrestle with as former Adventists, they come into better focus when we understand the new birth.

Colleen:  So true.

Nikki:  We were talking earlier about, understanding the new birth isn’t what causes us to be born again.

Colleen:  No.

Nikki:  We can be born again without understanding how this works.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  We’re born again by faith in Christ, by putting our trust in the gospel according to Scripture.  But when we understand our nature and the new birth according to Scripture –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – suddenly all of Scripture starts making a lot more sense.

Colleen:  Absolutely.  And related to that, Nikki, one other thing I’ve come to understand about Jesus fulfilling the law, it wasn’t just that He came and kept those 10 Commandments.

Nikki:  Right.

Colleen:  That was a small thing.  The law was a manifesto that displayed human sin, made it very clear that we could not avoid knowing – for Israel.  I shouldn’t say “we” because it was given to Israel.  They knew, because of the law, that they were sinners, and they knew that they could not approach God without a blood sacrifice.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  That was implicit in the law.  And when Jesus fulfilled the law, it wasn’t primarily about Him being good.  Hefulfilled the law by being the curse of the law.  He fulfilled the law by being the sacrifice that paid for the curse, paidfor the sin of humanity.  He fulfilled the curse of the law because He was righteous, because He was spiritually alive.  So when we say that Jesus fulfilled the law, we’re not just saying He came and kept all those moral commands.  He tookthe curse of the law, nailed it to the cross in His flesh, relieved us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for usand gives us new life when we trust in Him, and we’re no longer under that curse, and we’re no longer under the curse of death.  We have living spirits.

Nikki:  And there again is Romans 8.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  That’s Romans 8:3, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.  By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement” – that’s singular – “the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.”  That’s death for sin.

Colleen:  That’s right.  It’s not about managing to avoid sin.  That’s about Jesus fulfilling the law by becoming a curse for us and fulfilling the requirement – singular – of the law.

Nikki:  Our propitiation.

Colleen:  Yes.  If this is all leaving your head spinning, we just encourage you to read 1 John and read Romans 8 and ask the Lord to impress you with His truth in His Word.  His Word is sufficient.  His Word gives us what we need for all life and godliness, as Peter says.  And as we bring this podcast to a close, we just want to remind you all that you may contact us, write us with ideas, remarks, reactions at formeradventist@gmail.com.  There is still time to sign up for our conference this February, where we will be focusing on the topic, “Jesus, The New Covenant Lawgiver.”  You may sign up for the conference or donate to Life Assurance Ministries by going to proclamationmagazine.com.  And thank you for joining us.  We’ll talk to you again next week, and we hope that in the meantime you will be encouraged by what the Bible says about your spirit and about the life that you have through the blood of Jesus. †