COLLEEN TINKER
The moment is emblazoned in my memory. Richard and I were sitting in a classroom in an Adventist church in San Diego County one Sabbath afternoon in 1996. Richard’s second cousin, Dale Ratzlaff, was the guest speaker for an Adventist Forum Meeting, and we had driven with Richard’s uncle and aunt to hear Dale speak.
Richard and I were eager to hear Dale, but our uncle was “loaded for bear”. He was determined to argue with Dale before the meeting was over.
Dale presented two diagrams, one illustrating the Mosaic Covenant and God’s promises and demands on the nation Israel—complete with Israel’s naive promises to do all that God had asked. The second diagram illustrated the new covenant and its terms. Jesus, as the representative of mankind, kept every demand of the Mosaic Covenant, including its decree of death for sin, and broke the curse by rising from the tomb. The Father received Jesus’ sacrifice as sufficient payment for humanity’s sin, and when we trust Jesus’ finished work on the cross and His resurrection, we are placed “in Christ”. Then the Father credits all of Jesus’ fulfillment of the law’s curse and His shattering of death and His personal righteousness to US! When we are in Christ through faith in Him, the Father sees Jesus when He sees us!
As our Substitute, Jesus fulfills all the terms of God’s demands for human sin and propitiation and righteousness! God does not ask ME to keep the covenant with Him. Jesus keeps the covenant with the Father, and I am ushered into the new covenant in Christ, on the basis of Christ. My acceptance with God has nothing to do with my obedience to the law or with my own sanctification. I am reconciled to God when I trust Jesus—and it is ALL on the basis of HIM!
The silence in the room was electric; my eyes filled with tears, and I could tell every person present was overwhelmed with the palpable presence of the Holy Spirit. Dale had just clearly explained the gospel in terms which that roomful of progressive Adventists could not miss. Every Adventist supposition was stripped away, and the sufficiency of the Lord Jesus had been laid bare in front of every intellectual argument among those men and women. Even Richard’s uncle was mute.
That moment was the first time in my life that I had actually heard the gospel. Dale’s explanation shattered my Adventist paradigm, and I saw that the way I had been taught was false.
False gospel
I had always believed I had to keep “the covenant” with God. Israel had rejected Jesus, so I, as part of “spiritual Israel” and the true keepers of The Ten Commandments, had to keep the law through the power of Jesus. Jesus had shown us HOW to keep the law, and He was dedicated, I had learned, to doing whatever He could to help me keep it, too.
Of course, I believed that my commitment to the Ten Commandments was best measured by my commitment to the Fourth Commandment—the one that the world had forgotten. I had learned that most of Christianity was essentially apostate—daughters of Babylon (the Catholic Church)—because they had adopted the false Sabbath. Sunday worship was the proof that a person wasn’t really a true Christian—or hadn’t yet heard the full truth.
I believed that God would see my loyalty to the seventh day, and He would place His seal on me because of my Sabbath-keeping. Those who persisted in keeping Sunday would receive the mark of the beast. I also believed that those Sunday-Christians who sincerely honored the other nine commandments and who thought they believed in Jesus would eventually see the Sabbath truth and abandon Sunday. They, too, would accept the Sabbath message before the Time of Trouble, and they, too, would then receive the seal of God.
My eternal destiny lay in my sincere commitment to honoring God’s law. I believed that Jesus wanted to help me keep it, but I also believed I would fall out of God’s favor if my mental attitude or my hidden thoughts were self-serving or rebellious. I believed that only God could read my heart, and Jesus was working in heaven to apply His blood to my sins when I remembered to confess them. I had to trust that He knew my sincerity when I couldn’t remember all my sins, and I could only hope that, when I finally died or when He came again, He would “make up the difference” between my earnest attempts to be good and His righteous standards.
I could be quite certain, every time I confessed a sin, that at that moment I was right with God, but the next moment I sinned, I would be out of favor with Him. I had no assurance of my standing with Him; I could only know that I was committed to the Sabbath, and I wanted to be good. I would not know until Jesus returned whether or not I would actually be saved. Up until the moment of my death—or the moment when Jesus might theoretically review my name in the heavenly judgment—my salvation was in the balance. I was on probation, as Ellen White said.
Jesus was necessary for me to achieve salvation—only He could be my proper example or offer the proper help to obey—but I could fail to be faithful in spite of Jesus’ best efforts to help me. He couldn’t overrule my free will or my foolish choices. I had to remember to confess, and I had to overcome my temptations in order to show God I was fit for heaven.
After all, Ellen White said no one should be taught to say they were saved. A person who believed they were saved would likely begin to be lax in their behavior, and they would fail to persist in obedience. Indeed, one could not know until Jesus came whether one would be judged for eternal life or for the lake of fire.
We can know!
That Sabbath day in San Diego, I heard the essence of the gospel for the first time: Jesus accomplishes all righteousness for those who trust Him! The Mosaic Covenant was made with Israel, not with those who believe in Jesus.
Jesus came as a perfect Israelite, and He kept that covenant that no one else in the history of the nation had been able to keep perfectly. He not only never sinned, but He took our sin in Himself and fulfilled all the Mosaic Covenant’s demands for sin’s payment.
The new covenant is NEW; it is not merely a restatement of the old one. Because Jesus took the covenant’s curse, because He paid the price the law demanded, God accepted His sacrifice, and the power of death was broken.
Sin no longer claims those who trust Jesus’ propitiation in His blood!
God does not ask me to keep the law. The law was given to Israel, but even Israel was unable to keep it. Romans 3:20–22 says this:
For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
Do you see that? No human being will be justified before God by works of the law—not even by Sabbath-keeping!
Furthermore, God made His righteousness up close and personal when He sent the Lord Jesus incarnated in a mortal body. Jesus had no sin—He had all the righteousness of God in Himself as He walked the earth. In fact, He was spiritually alive all through His life, from the moment of His conception by the Holy Spirit, and He had no tendencies to sin inside Himself as we do.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about that text, though, is what is says the Law does: it, along with the Prophets, bears witness to God’s righteousness. It doesn’t say that it instructs us in righteousness or teaches us to be righteous. Instead, it says the Law is a witness to the righteousness that is IN JESUS CHRIST.
The Lord Jesus came to us as a man, but in Himself He had the full righteousness of God—He was the only human who wasn’t condemned by the Law. In fact, the Law revealed Jesus. When He came, every demand of the Law was met in Him, and when He hung on the cross and gave up His life for our sin—and when He rose from death three days later—He revealed that He was the One whom the Law foreshadowed!
Only Jesus is righteous!
Astonishingly, though, when we believe in the finished atonement that Jesus effected through His death and resurrection, God credits US with that perfect righteousness of God!
When we admit that we cannot please God and that no matter how hard we try, we fail to keep His Law and we fail to have proper motives and we fail to overcome sin, when we throw ourselves on His mercy and ask the Lord to forgive our sins by His perfect blood which He sacrificed for us, God changes us!
It is that moment of belief when we are changed in every way. As Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3, when we believe in Him we are born again. God gives us a new spirit as He promised He would in Ezekiel 36:26, and he puts His Spirit in us!
Paul said it this way:
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 (Ephesians 1:13–14).
We are sealed by the Holy Spirit when we believe and trust in Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. We are not sealed because of Sabbath-keeping; no! God Himself is our permanent seal, and we receive the indwelling Holy Spirit on the basis of trust and belief in Christ ALONE.
When we believe in the Lord Jesus, we literally receive eternal life at that moment, and we pass from death to life. Jesus said it this way:
For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life (John 5:22–24).
In fact, we who have been Adventist likely can relate to the Jews who asked Jesus,
“What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:28–29).
Jesus does not tell the Jews that they must keep showing their loyalty to God by keeping the Sabbath or by tithing or eating kosher food. No! He tells them the most shocking thing: the only thing necessary to be doing the work of God is to believe in Jesus Himself!
Jesus is the One who did everything necessary to fulfill all righteousness. He is the One who took our sin into Himself and paid in full for our offense against God by shedding His innocent human blood. His sacrifice was sufficient to propitiate—to satisfy God’s wrath against sin (Rom. 3:25–26). Because of His sacrifice, He is the One who broke death, and it cannot claim any human being who trusts Jesus.
It is finished!
Jesus has pleased God. Jesus has satisfied God, and Jesus has revealed God’s own righteousness. When He hung on the cross and cried, “It is finished!”, He was not merely saying His righteous life and His horrific suffering were over.
He was saying that every requirement of God was fulfilled in Him. Every righteous demand of the Law, every offense against God—every legal penalty for sin was fulfilled in the person of the Lord Jesus. Atonement for sin was complete.
Jesus did not merely complete the sacrifice for sin and usher in a second phase of atonement in heaven. No! Jesus FINISHED the atonement! His work is done.
In fact, He is seated at the right hand of the Father. He is a seated high priest; He is not puttering around heaven sprinkling blood and perusing records of our sins.
The levitical high priests never sat down; they stood through every assignment in the Most Holy Place. Jesus, however, is a seated High Priest, and He has been in the Most Holy Place—heaven itself—since the day of His ascension recorded in Acts 1. The author of Hebrews tells us:
We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 6:19–20).
In fact, not only is Jesus seated in heaven as a forerunner on our behalf, anchoring us to God as we live our lives on earth by faith in Him, but Jesus also made the Law obsolete and gave us a new and different law! Look what else the author of Hebrews tells us:
Now if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need would there have been for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek, rather than one named after the order of Aaron? For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well (Hebrews 7:11–12).
The Law with its Sabbath command no longer applies! Because Jesus fulfilled it, because He is a high priest of a different order—Melchizedek instead of Aaron—we have to have a different law. The Ten Commandments were the words of the Mosaic Covenant (Ex. 34:27–28), and they were based on the levitical priesthood. That old law cannot exist without the levitical priesthood. We have to have a new law—the Law of Christ—because we have a new priesthood.
The old covenant is over. It was completely fulfilled in Jesus, and God has made it obsolete (Heb. 8:13). When we hang onto the law and try to keep it by following Christ’s example, we are rejecting the finished work of Jesus. He kept every term of the law, and now we are to trust in Him.
When we believe and trust in Jesus alone, God credits us with His own personal righteousness. If we go back to the law and try to keep it along with trusting Jesus, we literally fall from grace, as Paul said in Galatians 5:4. In fact, Paul compared turning back to the law’s requirements to embracing paganism (Gal. 4:8–11).
When we try to keep the law, we are rejecting what Jesus has already done. We are refusing to trust that He has done everything necessary for our forgiveness and reconciliation. We are essentially saying that His righteousness isn’t good enough for us: we want to earn our own.
Appeal
If you have been Adventist—and even if you haven’t—I want to appeal to you now. Ask God to show you the truth about Jesus. Ask Him to show you the truth about your own need. Ask Him to show you that you need to be made alive, not merely to be made good.
Ask God to give you the faith to believe that the Lord Jesus has fulfilled the Law and made it obsolete, and that what you need is Jesus. Ask the Father to grant you His grace to believe that Jesus has kept all the terms of the Mosaic covenant, and that when you trust Him, you enter into the new covenant in Jesus’ blood. You become God’s born-again and adopted heir, and He confirms your eternal life by His indwelling Spirit.
Paul tells us in Romans 8:15–17:
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
We can KNOW we are saved. When we trust Jesus alone, God confirms our new life and our new identity by witnessing to our spirits with His own Spirit! We no longer live in fear and anxiety, struggling to do right and to please Him.
Now we are beloved sons and daughters of God. All that is His is ours in Christ, and He will never leave us. We are secure, and we know that we have passed out of death into life. †
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Praise God for His truth! Praying for the Holy Spirit to show my best friend this truth and bring back his joy.
This is the message I finally heard after 35+ years of spiritual starvation in Adventism. I cannot describe the amount of peace that came over me after hearing the gospel for the first time in my mid 30’s. Literally, an Adventist pastor with an independent ministry said to me “Brother, you need to start reading some of those ‘sunday-keeper’ books”. He knew the struggle I was having. I took his advice and read the book “How To Know You Will Spend Eternity With God” by Erwin W. Lutzer. That book changed my life. Reading the first few paragraphs of this article brought back a sense of the joy and tears I wept at the point I heard and received the Good News.