COLLEEN TINKER
Can you believe this is the second New Year we have welcomed in the time of Covid? When we all entered our first two-week “lockdown” to “slow the spread”, none of us had any idea we would still be navigating the cultural implications of this virus nearly two years later.
If these last two years have taught me anything, they have emphasized that reality is bigger than my experience. What I perceive around me is not all that is real, and my reactions to the world have to be based on something unchanging instead of on today’s news. Oh, the news—accurate or inaccurate—is data, but reality is defined by the the One who is already in the future.
Law, Sin, and the Sting of Death
This week I suddenly saw a relatively obscure Bible passage as if for the first time. I had been studying 1 Corinthians 15, and after Paul’s intriguing descriptions of the spiritual bodies God has prepared for those who will be raised from the dead, he quotes from Isaiah 25 and then emphasizes that “the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (v. 56).
Have you ever thought about that? Paul illustrated our condition with a vivid metaphor. Like a bee that stings its victim with painful poison that kills it, so sin stings humanity with death. In the case of insects, the sting of death is carried by a bee. Paul says sin functions in us as a bee functions in its victim. The “sting of death is sin”. Yet Paul doesn’t stop by identifying the deathly sting of sin.
Next he states that the “power of sin is the law”. This phrase completely shatters the Adventist paradigm. Adventism says that the law is what shows humanity how to live without sin—but Paul says the opposite! The law is what gives sin its power. The law identifies sin in people, and the law reveals that humans are sinners! It does not give us the means of overcoming sin; rather, the law gives us the death sentence as it reveals sin in us! In fact, the law only increases the despair of sinners as they realize that their thoughts and desires and behaviors are sinful continually. The law cements the sting of death in sinners because the law defines death as the natural consequence of sin.
Indeed, “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.”
What hope do we have?
As Adventists, we all lived in the anxiety of fearing we could never be good enough for God.
As Adventists, we all lived in the anxiety of fearing we could never be good enough for God. Yet here in 1 Corinthians 51:57 Paul gives us the bottom line: victory can be ours! “But thanks be to God,” he writes, “who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”
I couldn’t understand Paul’s meaning here when I was an Adventist. I thought that our victory through Jesus meant following His example to pray and practice self-discipline until we beat sin to death in our bodies.
No! Victory through our Lord Jesus is HIS victory, not ours—and we receive His victory over human sin which He won for us through His death, burial, and resurrection (1 Cor. 15:3, 4). When we believe in Him and trust His finished work, He gives us new birth—spiritual life—and the sting of death and the power of the law have no more authority over us! We move from being in the domain of darkness to being in the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Col 1:13), and we pass from death to life (Jn. 5:24)!
We enter the new covenant in Jesus’ blood when we believe—and we have victory and freedom from sin and death through our Lord Jesus! Thanks be to God!
Steadfast and Immovable
Paul ends this triumphant passage in a most surprising way. The shock of realizing that believers are utterly free from the sting of death and the power of sin is enough to give us hope in a reeling world. But Paul suddenly pivots and gives us new marching orders that surprised and moved me:
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord (1 Cor. 15:58).
Paul doesn’t challenge us to create a flurry of programs, causes, or projects. He doesn’t ask us to resolve to do better or to set new soul-winning goals or to give more to missions or to do more and better good deeds. He tells us to be STEADFAST and IMMOVABLE while “abounding in the work of the Lord” because we can KNOW that our “labor is not in vain in the Lord”.
When I pondered these words this week, I thought about the work of Life Assurance Ministries. For the past 21 years this ministry which exists for the salvation of deceived souls has persistently and quietly and consistently—by the grace of God—delivered the true gospel while revealing the hidden darkness in Adventism.
I thought about Dale and Carolyn Ratzlaff faithfully teaching the new covenant and living by faith through whatever obstacles threatened to derail them. I thought about the board members and the faithful writers and speakers who have shared their joy in the Lord and their love of Scripture through testimonies and articles. I thought about my husband Richard who has steered the Life Assurance “ship” through financial ups and downs and through cultural changes—unseen work that has stabilized all of us even when we felt discouraged.
Our work for the Lord is not something we invent, it is work He has prepared in advance for us to do when we are born again and made new because of His victory over sin and death.
Our call is to be steadfast and immovable! Our work for the Lord is not something we invent, it is work He has prepared in advance for us to do when we are born again and made new because of His victory over sin and death.
We are entering a new year tonight—a year even less certain than 2021. The murkiness of the world, though, does not define believers. We live inside this murk, but the Lord gives us His victory while He strengthens us to be steadfast and immovable as we do the next right thing. We do what He puts in front of us to do, and we can know that no task is unessential. We live and love and labor for our Lord, and He has promised that our work is not in vain.
Because He has conquered sin and death, our future is certain. This new year is anchored on One who is bigger than the world, and we enter 2022 steadfast and immovable. Victory is ours, and our Lord Jesus will keep us through whatever this new year brings.
Trust Him. †
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