Colleen and Nikki discuss the way in which Christianity solves issues based on history and people group during the pandemic. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And we’re just checking in. Colleen, how have you been?
Colleen: I have started a new experience in my life. I’ve started having occupational therapy from a hand specialist on my wrist. My wrist is improving slowly, but I have to tell you, I had a really funny experience this morning when I went to my 7:40 appointment. I had a new therapist today that I didn’t have the first two days, and after asking me how my morning was going, and I felt like saying, “It’s 7:40 in the morning” –
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: – “I don’t know yet.” [Laughter.] But he said to me, “So, did you have a well-balanced breakfast?” And I almost laughed! [Laughter.] Number one, I figured he had to be Adventist, and number two, I said, “Ah, not yet.” [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: We didn’t have any further conversation about that, but I realized that my horizontal relationships with people are only half of the reality. I could have probably pursued the breakfast topic, but I realized that there’s more to me than the fact that I’m a former Adventist, and as I was coming home and thinking about that and thinking about other things that are going on, it struck me with a new intensity that I have a Savior that we’ve been studying as we’ve been going through Hebrews, and it’s so interesting how the Book of Hebrews has been confirming and calling upon the Old Testament to verify the existence and the work of the Lord Jesus, and what I’ve realized as part of this reality is that historically Jesus has an ethnicity that is eternal from the point of His incarnation on. He is a Jew. And I find that socomforting because the fact that Jesus has a very distinct ethnicity from a group of people who have a very difficult history makes Him even more of a sympathetic high priest to all of us who believe.
Nikki: Yeah. Um-hmm.
Colleen: He knows, He understands, and He will always be my Savior in a Jewish body. That’s somehow such a wonderful thing.
Nikki: It really is, and it’s so important because the Jewish history and the truths of the Old Testament are so connected. That’s how we identify who Christ is, and this is an uncomfortable topic. I’m just going to come out and say, talking about the racial tensions in our country right now is an uncomfortable thing to do for me.
Colleen: It is for me.
Nikki: I don’t want to create additional division with my own thoughts about this. One of the things that has become so important to me as a Christian who left Adventism, who left a religion that said, “Oh, we’re Israel; we’re the true Israel.”
Colleen: Yes. [Laughter.]
Nikki: When I came to understand, no, I’m not a Jew, I’m not Israel. I am a Gentile. And when I came to see that Scripture is the one that identifies reality – I don’t get to make metaphors or change definitions according to what fits my worldview, Scripture determines reality, Scripture says I’m a Gentile, Scripture tells me Jesus was a Jew. He was born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law, and He grafts in the Gentiles. All of that historical context is so, so important. It’s so important. And it’s what makes Christianity verifiable. If you don’t have Christ, if you don’t have us in our proper context, then you start creating something other. You create a different Jesus or a different religion, and it becomes mythical. And what’s mythical is then optional. It just waters down and weakens the truth of Scripture.
Colleen: We can’t just waltz in and say, because Jesus came to save all mankind who believe, we can’t just decide that we can then think of Him as just like us. He is a man. In that sense, He is like us. But number one, He was always God the Son; number two, He was born spiritually alive; and number three, He was born of a traceable lineage from the tribe of Judah, and He was prophesied to Eve when God told her, her seed would crush the serpent’s head. So God planned and purposed that Jesus would come as a Jew in the tribe of Judah and that He would live under the law. He is Jewish from start to finish, and I find that immensely comforting to my Gentile heart.
Nikki: You know, and there’s a lot of talk right now about the way that humanity has depicted Christ. The pictures of Him in the old Renaissance art, the European Jesus, the – I’ll tell you what, the one that bothers me is the Baby Jesus with the adult face, looks like a cherub.
Colleen: Oh, yes.
Nikki: And yeah, there’s a lot of discussion and argument about how racism has a part to play in all of that, and what I want to say is, when you depict Jesus as anything other than a Jew, you are altering facts about the Christ, the Messiah of the world. He is a Jew, start to finish. I have absolutely no idea what shade His skin was, and that doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is that we speak honestly about His heritage, because we need to honor the text, we need to honor what’s real. Now, with that being said, those of us who are in the church who are under the New Covenant, who live in Christ, we can know that there is no Jew or Greek.
Colleen: We are equal before God, equally valuable, equally gifted, equally valuable in the Body of Christ and for the Kingdom of God.
Nikki: So there’s a passage that I’ve been thinking about a lot in the last few days, and we talked about it a little bit before we started this check-in. It’s out of Colossians chapter 3. This right here, this is for the church. This is for those who are in the Body of Christ, for the born again. The only answer I have for the world regarding this matter is: You need Jesus. That is the only answer I can generate. I don’t see us having a just, peaceful land until the omnipotent one comes and rules, the omniscient one, the just and holy one. He is the only one who can fix this in a sustaining way.
Colleen: Because we are not possessed of the vision, the perspective to have justice or to know how to be “fair.” Only God can see what is real, and only God can rule justly.
Nikki: But we do have instruction. We were not – even though this is a confusing time, we were not left orphaned or without instruction on how to endure times like this, how to behave, how to live, and how to treat each other. So when we look at Colossians 3, I’m going to start in verse 8, and I just want to read down to 15. “But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.”
Colleen: I’m so struck by that last command, “Be thankful.”
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Even in all of this confusion and disorientation, be thankful. And for me, that means be thankful for Jesus’ Jewishness, be thankful for who I am, be thankful for who you are.
Nikki: Yeah, and one of the things that struck me about this, I had recently heard a sermon where the pastor was speaking on verse 11, and he said that – he described the barbarians. And he said that they were a very primitive tribal group and that they had a history, they were known for actually dismembering their enemies. They would go in and they would take over lands, and they would tear people limb from limb. And here we have Paul telling the church that here, in the church, none of those differences matter. You might be sitting next to somebody who ripped your relative limb from limb, but you are in Christ now, and you don’t identify each other on the basis of your history or on the basis of your people group. There is no difference, we are all in Christ. And then we are called to this really high calling, to love one another and to bear with one another and to forgive one another. And this command, to let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. That word “rule,” the Greek has behind it “umpire” or “arbitrate.” The peace of Christ, He broke down those barriers and those divisions, and He gave us unity in Him, and that is what’s supposed to arbitrate in our differences and in our discussions in our conflict. It’s that, that is the rule.
Colleen: It’s interesting because in the church we are new creations. We are born again, we’re given the life of Jesus. We’re made His body, and that means we’re brothers and sisters in Him, part of the same body. And it just strikes me that ultimately we all have to figure out what we will use as our own personal authority. And as believers, we really have only one choice that’s valid, and that is the word of God, the revelation of God Himself, and even when our emotions and our limited perspective, our fear, whatever, even when those things are high, God’s word is true. And I have to submit my emotions, my head, my feelings, my reality to His word in order to find how to do the next right thing, in order to find how to live in a way that is pleasing to Him. He did not leave us without the revelation of His will.
Nikki: And He is a sovereign God, and like we talked about last week, He chose where we would live.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: He chose everything about us. He is the one who created the nations. He is the one who saves the nations. John saw every tribe and tongue and nation in heaven standing before the throne. Those differences were visible even in eternity. And so we can know that it’s God who chooses these things for us. And we have absolutely no say in this. And we love one another. We embrace our differences. We unite in Christ.
Colleen: Our Jewish Savior, who is God the Son, we’re united in Him. He is our head and will be for eternity. We can praise Him for making us who we are in Him, and we can embrace each other with that reality.
Nikki: So if you have any questions for us, write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can also visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly blogs or our past issues of Proclamation! magazine. There’s also a donate button there if you’d like to come alongside the ministry. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you again when we walk through the next chapter of Hebrews.
Colleen: Bye for now. †
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