Nikki and Colleen start the amazing chapter two of Ephesians. Did you know that they were taught that Jesus had a sinful nature? Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: This week we’re looking at the first three verses of Ephesians 2. We have just gotten through studying through one of Paul’s fathomless declarations of the work of the Father in choosing and predestining us, in the work of the Son in summing up all things in heaven and on earth through the blood of His cross and making us heirs of God in Him, and of the work of the Holy Spirit in indwelling and sealing us as God’s adopted, born-again children. We’ve read Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians, actually his prayer for all believers, that God will give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus. Paul prays that we will know the surpassing greatness of Jesus’ power working in us, the power that raised Him from the dead and seated Him at the right hand of the Father, above all rulers and authorities and powers. And now, as we begin Ephesians 2, we step back and look at the truth about our own nature, that we are by nature dead in sin and children of wrath. We’re not in need of being made good. We’re in need of being made alive. But first I want to remind you that if you have questions for us or if you have observations or suggestions, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can find our online Proclamation! Magazine at proclamationmagazine.com, and you can sign up there for our weekly email magazine. You can also donate there and find links to our Former Adventist YouTube channel. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and write a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And now, Nikki, before we start these first three verses of Ephesians 2, I have a question for you.
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: As an Adventist, did you think babies were innocent or guilty?
Nikki: Well, I don’t remember being taught specifically about this, but I believed that babies were kind of like a white canvas, they were a clean slate, and they would begin to sin early, and that sin was related to their behavior. For me, I thought, you know, when my kids start saying “no” defiantly, they’re at that age where they’re starting to sin or to show their sin. I had a relative who believed that if they even cried that they were being sinners and they were manipulating you. You know, very early on. Infant. And I thought that was ridiculous. I thought, you know, that’s just their human nature, they need help. But I do remember, after being born again, I had a conversation with a relative who was much older than me and had a been a very committed Adventist, and he told me that the Bible says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and he said, “But I know one person who hasn’t sinned. Do you know who that is?” And I said, “Jesus.” And he said, “No, my baby brother. He died while he was a baby. He never had a chance to sin.” And I was horrified because this was someone that I looked up to my entire life as, you know, a Bible-believing person, and he was exposing the fact that he interprets the Bible through his own personal opinion and experience, and I learned over time that’s more common in Adventism than the idea that we’re born sinners.
Colleen: Yeah, I have to say as an Adventist I believed that everybody is a sinner, but I would have had a hard time explaining what I thought about babies or when this sinning began because I didn’t understand intrinsic death in sin as a spiritual thing. I did believe that we inherited somehow the sins of our parents, humanity had inherited Adam’s sin and that because of Adam’s sin, humanity had been degenerating through the years and that I inherited all that degeneration and all those inherited tendencies to sin. So I believed babies came into the world predisposed to sin, but I would not have understood that as something absolute as death or life. It just was that we came in with the deck stacked against us, so to speak.
Nikki: Like a tendency, not necessarily a nature problem.
Colleen: Yeah. Well, here in Ephesians 2:1-3, and I have to say, we’re spending this whole podcast on these three verses because these three verses help to rewrite the fundamental understanding of human reality, and it’s something that I realized as I came out of Adventism I had not understood, and it made all the difference in understanding the gospel when I started understanding the truth about who a human was. So we’re spending this whole podcast on these three verses because we want to be sure all of us understand what happened when Adam sinned and who we really are. So, Nikki, would you just lead us off by reading these first three verses of Ephesians 2, please, before we start talking about it?
Nikki: “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
Colleen: It sounds pretty grim.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But as an Adventist, I don’t even know what I would have thought of this because I know I did read it, but I would have once again assumed that there was a lot of metaphorical language here because I didn’t understand the reality that it was talking about. So let’s look at this verse 1, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,” just that much. What do we learn from this verse? What is Paul saying about humans?
Nikki: We were dead, that our sins caused us to be dead. And you know, as an Adventist, I would have known that our sins are causing us to die, but I would not have been able to say that I was dead.
Colleen: There is a real thing that exists here that this is talking about, and we’ve said it already, that it’s spiritual death that it’s talking about, but we want to ask: How do we know that? How can we explain that? How do we know that spiritual death isn’t just some perverted way of thinking, as I would have thought as an Adventist? I thought spiritual reality resided in my brain and that if I followed the health message, the neurons in my frontal lobe would function better and I would be more able to perceive truth and more able to perceive the Holy Spirit, and then I would be more able to absorb the Adventist doctrines I was being taught. I really believed that spiritual life was somehow connected to my brain and to keeping my brain healthy. But that’s not what Scripture teaches us. So we’re going to look at Genesis 2:15-17. This passage records God speaking to Adam. Interestingly, this is right before He created Eve, so the instruction we hear about not eating the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil precedes the creation of Eve, and it was given directly to Adam. Let’s read Genesis 2:15-17, Nikki, and hear what God said would happen if Adam disobeyed Him and ate from that tree.
Nikki: “Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.'”
Colleen: Okay. What do we know from these three verses? God took Adam, after He created him, He put him in the Garden of Eden, and then what did He tell him?
Nikki: He gave him this command that he could eat from any tree in the garden as much as he wanted to but that he wasn’t supposed to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and that the day he ate it, he would die.
Colleen: And notice the time frame. God was very specific. He didn’t just say, “If you eat it you’ll die by and by.” What did He actually say?
Nikki: He said, “In the day that you eat from it, you will surely die.”
Colleen: As an Adventist, I mulled that over in my head and mulched it together and thought, “Ahh, it’s a figure of speech, like ‘in that day, if you eat it, something will happen, something will change, your trajectory will change.'” But I didn’t understand that it actually meant literally what it said, which is a mistake for reading Scripture. Fast forward to Genesis 3. I think it’s important to read verses 3:1-13 because it tells the story of what happened, and we can see clearly how we can know that God’s word was fulfilled.
Nikki: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, has God said, “You shall not eat from any tree of the garden”?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, “You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.”‘ The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ 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 desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. They heard the sound of the Lord God 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. Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ He said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.’ And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from 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 from the tree, and I ate.’ Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ And the woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.'”
Colleen: When they ate, what happened? God had said they would die in the day they ate. Now, as an Adventist, I couldn’t see how that could have been literally true. What were you taught as an Adventist? What were you taught about them dying when they ate the fruit? Do you remember?
Nikki: Yeah, you know, I think I was told that they were cut off from their connection with God.
Colleen: I was told that they began to die.
Nikki: Oh, yes. My understand of that was that they began to die because they weren’t connected to God spiritually, but it wasn’t about a spirit.
Colleen: What was the first thing that happened? They ate, and what did they see?
Nikki: Well, first of all, their eyes were opened and then they knew that they were naked.
Colleen: Which tells us that they had not been clothed but that they had been unashamed. They were completely righteous before God. They were perfect. And there was no shame in being naked. Now, Ellen White said that they were clothed in garments of light and that God stripped away the veil of light so that they could see that they were naked. The Bible doesn’t say that. They were simply naked and unashamed. Right from the get-go, Ellen White gets this wrong. She can’t even allow the Bible to suggest that they could have been naked and unashamed, but in their sinless, pre-fall state, their natural condition was not a shameful condition. But suddenly, they knew they were naked, and they were ashamed. And what did they do?
Nikki: They got busy trying to deal with it themselves. They sewed fig leaves together, and they were going to cover up.
Colleen: And then, after they covered up, they heard God in the garden, because He always came and walked with them. For the first time, what did they do when they heard God?
Nikki: They ran and hid. I would like to just put in here, since we’re in this text, that the idea of God walking in the garden is an anthropomorphism. God is spirit. He doesn’t have a body like we were taught. Ellen White said He had a body, walking.
Colleen: But He came, they knew He was coming, and they hid, as if they could hide from God. But God said to them, in verse 9 – what did He say?
Nikki: He said, “Where are you?” [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] And Adam said, “Oh, I heard the sound of you in the garden,” and then what did he admit? “I was” – what?
Nikki: – “afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.”
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting? He had not been afraid of God before, and he had not been concerned about being naked before. And God said to him, “Who told you that you were naked?” Isn’t that interesting? I mean, it wasn’t like something had changed about them. It was their own self-awareness that had changed. They felt shame. They didn’t suddenly become naked, they just suddenly saw they were naked and knew shame. And then, what was His next question?
Nikki: “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
Colleen: Uh-huh. And then began the blame game.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: What did the man say?
Nikki: He blamed the woman that God gave him. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] So indirectly he’s blaming God.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: “This woman you gave me” made me eat. And then God spoke to the woman and said, “What is this you have done?” And what was her response?
Nikki: “The serpent deceived me and I ate.”
Colleen: So there was no owning their sin on either one of their parts. Adam blamed Eve for the sin. Eve blamed the serpent for the sin. And they hid themselves and tried to cover their nakedness. They knew shame, they knew guilt, they hid, and they blamed. These were completely new behaviors for them. What caused them to behave in such unprecedented ways?
Nikki: Well, this was the fruit of their spiritual death. The Lord said that “in the day that you eat you will die, and they did. And this is the result of that.
Colleen: It’s not enough to say, “Oh, they began to die,” that one day nearly a thousand years later they would actually die. God had said they would die the day they ate. We see that it happened because this is unprecedented behavior. They were afraid of God and hid from God. You only do that if you are dead in your sin, if you have been disconnected from the life of God through not trusting and acting on His word.
Nikki: And you know, if seems like a part of this conversation is the fact that that they were created in the image of God, who is spirit, and He breathed spirit into them, and so the image of God in them – I mean, they’re still image bearers, but it had changed. They had died a spiritual death, and it’s interesting to me that when Eve had that conversation with the serpent that he said, “You surely will not die.”
Colleen: The great deception.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And he could say that because their bodies did not cease to exist at that moment.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: That was his justification for that particular kind of lie.
Nikki: Yeah, and it just seems like a little bit of a continuation of that lie to suggest that humans don’t have spirits that have died.
Colleen: And we know God is spirit because Jesus said that to the Samaritan woman in John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” So we know that man has spirit.
Nikki: And we know in the New Testament it says that God is invisible, and we know that Jesus took a form, becoming in the likeness of man. The Trinity was spirit, and then Christ came and took a body and added a body to Himself.
Colleen: So God, invisible God, in the garden with Adam and Eve knows they have eaten of that tree. Adam and Eve know their position before God has changed. They know they have sinned, they know they are ashamed, they know what God said was true. They know that they died. Now, when we fast forward to the New Testament, we find even more explanation for how this fact of what Adam and Eve did applies to the whole human race. I know as an Adventist I used to think, “Well, how is it even fair that we’re blamed for sin just because Adam sinned? I didn’t do that.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And I could not figure out how that could be applied to me all these millennia later. How could Adam’s sin be applied to me? But we know from the New Testament because of Adam, all are dead. And we’re going to read a couple of verses, but I just want to say, Adam was the head of the human race. God created Adam to be the father of all of humanity, and when he died, all of humanity took on the spiritual death that came into existence when he and Eve sinned. We learn in the New Testament that when He sent Jesus, God the Son incarnate in a human body, that there is a new head of the new race. Those who are born again are new creatures, new creations, and Jesus now becomes the head of the new man. But we don’t fully understand that until we come to the New Testament. So if we look at 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, we read this, “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” And we learn here again that Adam, the man, is the one that brought death to the human race, and we all die because we’re born of Adam’s legacy. But in Christ we’ll all be made alive. Nikki, you were talking to me some about Romans 5 as well and how this talks about our death in Adam. Could you read that passage for us, please?
Nikki: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned – for until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one the many will be made righteous.”
Colleen: What is this talking about? What is this, death came through a man and righteousness comes through a man and all have died because of Adam? What does this tell us? I mean, this is actually confirming and explaining what we’re reading here in this first verse, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins.” In what way?
Nikki: We were born spiritually dead because we were born in the likeness of Adam. He’s our human father, and we’re his offspring, and that’s our nature.
Colleen: This is not just an attitude of sin or a tendency or a propensity to sin. This is literal death, literal spiritual death. He explains it further in verse 2. He’s saying, “You were all dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” Well, this is a pretty shocking text compared to my Adventist worldview. You were talking to me some before the podcast, Nikki, about what you were thinking when you read this text. What did you see in here that was different from the way you used to think?
Nikki: Well, first of all, in verse 1 he told us that we were dead, and then in 2 he said that we used to walk around like that. I don’t think I would have known what to do with that as an Adventist. I understand now our spirits were dead but we were walking and living in this other way. As I was looking at this text, I was looking at the verse that says that we walked according to the course of this world, to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. And you’ve said many times, Colleen, on here that the Lord reveals Himself to us, and then He reveals us to us, and then He reveals our life to us, and this is one of those verses. We are getting a correction on our view of man, of fallen man. That informs us about our life before Christ, but it also informs us about our world around us and the people that we reach back to who don’t believe the true gospel, who have not been born again, and we know that they are dead in their trespasses and sins, no matter how moral they are. They are influenced by the prince of the power of the air and the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Now, this doesn’t mean they’re not responsible for their sin. It actually helps me understand, it helps to explain, the distance that we can feel when we interact with our unbelieving friends and family, even the most religious of them, because it’s almost like – I’ve never really known how to articulate it, and the best I could do would be to say that it’s like you’re standing face-to-face with them but you’re surrounded by completely different atmospheres. There is this invisible separateness that I never really saw as an Adventist, although I will say that when I got around non-Adventist Christians I knew there was something different about them, but I didn’t really know how to interpret it except to be drawn to it. But as a Christian, when I get around unbelievers who believe that they know God and that I’ve actually been accused of joining a cult [laughter] –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – I’ve sensed that separateness, and at first I thought it was just their sheer disappointment in me, their disappointment in my lifestyle change, in leading my family down a different road after having been in “the truth.” I didn’t understand that it was literally a spiritual difference. There was a difference between us. The hostility was new and shocking. When I was able to understand that it was coming from a spiritual influence, it helped me know how to navigate the situation better. Rather than trusting my unbelieving loved ones to have accurate interpretations and assessments of me and allowing myself to crumble because I’m feeling that distance, I was able to look at the situation and see that they’re deceived about what’s going on here. They don’t understand. And it kind of gives you marching orders when you understand that this spiritual disconnect is real. It’s why our greatest tool is to pray for them. We speak the truth, we expose error, but we have to pray for them. We have to pray that they’ll come to know their need for a Savior, that they’ll be drawn to the word, that they’ll be granted repentance and a believing heart, and we can’t allow their behavior toward us to inform us about the kind of Christians we are or about our life choices. We have to understand that they’re not able to interpret accurately what’s happening.
Colleen: That’s such a great point. I think it’s interesting that Paul actually says that people who have not been born again, who are by nature dead in sins, are serving, are walking according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. That means that people who are in that condition literally are responding to evil. Now, it doesn’t mean that evil is their only influence, because God is over all, and He’s sovereign even over evil, and He is the one who calls and draws, but it does mean that non-born-again people are vulnerable to and able to be responsive to actual evil, and it makes me think of Colossians 1:13 where it says that those who have believed, God has transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son. And I remember vividly, it was the first FAF conference we had. I was talking with a couple who had been in a breakout session with us, and the leader of the breakout session had been talking about witnessing to or interacting with Adventist family who thought we had apostatized or rejected them, and we were discussing this a little more after the breakout session ended. We were standing outside the classroom, and I distinctly remember the wife of this couple saying, “What you’re experiencing is a kingdom difference.” I’d never thought of that before. She says, “It’s just a kingdom difference.” And I was thinking about that. I was thinking – now, it’s not exactly a parallel, but it’s instructive to me – that my mother became a naturalized American citizen as a young woman after being Canadian. Now, that’s not a huge difference. I realize now that what that involved for her was changing her loyalty and her commitment from one government, from one set of laws, from one national identity, to a completely other. And she actually had to pledge to give her energy, her life, even her willingness to work for the cause of the nation in the case of war. It was very specific things that are part of that naturalization agreement. She changed her loyalty completely. And I’m thinking, the domain of darkness to the kingdom of the beloved Son is even more than that. It’s not just going from one human leader to another human identity. It’s changing spiritual leaders.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And it’s something only God can do, and He takes us out of that. But it’s very real, and what you’re saying, Nikki, is so profound, that that explains the distance we feel. That explains the hostility.
Nikki: We’re no longer united with them in this realm of the prince of the power of the air. We’re in a different realm.
Colleen: And I wouldn’t have had any way to understand that as an Adventist. I just wouldn’t have, because I didn’t understand sin to be literal spiritual death. Let’s read the next verse and see how Paul sort of drives this case home even stronger.
Nikki: “Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
Colleen: I think the phrase in this verse that really impacted me the most was “by nature children of wrath.” I would never have been able to understand that as an Adventist. Wrath is a pretty strong word.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: How could I be by nature children of wrath? I understood that God so loved the world He sent His only begotten Son and that God loved us so much He sent Jesus to die. I couldn’t have exactly explained how that saved me. I was told that God is good, Jesus came to reveal the Father, everything about God is loving. In fact, I was even taught as an Adventist along the way that He doesn’t even have wrath, so what is “by nature a child of wrath”? How did you understand that, Nikki?
Nikki: Honestly, I don’t remember seeing it until the very first time I talked to you on the phone and you took me to this text and asked me how I understood it. And I think I remember thinking it was just describing the kind of person I was.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: When I was preparing for this podcast, I found an article that suggested that this just means that we’re children who have wrath, who are wrathful. That’s not consistent with Scripture. Later in this letter, in Ephesians chapter 5, Paul says, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” The wrath of God is directed at the unbelievers, at humanity and its sin.
Colleen: As I started to internalize what this verse is actually saying, that we are by nature children of wrath, it began to be a starker and starker contrast with how I understood sin as an Adventist. As I was preparing for this podcast, I went back and looked for some of the passages from Ellen White that gave me my worldview. Now, to be honest, I didn’t necessarily understand these things from reading Ellen. I was taught these concepts in Bible class in Adventist schools, all through grade school, all through academy. It was an assumption, it was explained, but I wouldn’t have necessarily have been able to point to an Ellen White passage, and yet I understand now, everything we thought about the nature of man came directly from that prophet that we had. Now, I found a few quotes here that I want to read because on this side of things, I find them unbelievable, shocking, blasphemous even. I found this on ellenwhiteestate.org, and it was attributed to the reference that was CON, page 32, paragraph 3. Now, this is coming at us from the direction of how she’s explaining the relationship between Satan and Jesus and Jesus’ relationship to humanity. Here is what she says: “What a contrast the second Adam presented as He entered the gloomy wilderness to cope with Satan singlehanded. Since the Fall, the race had been decreasing in size and physical strength and sinking lower in the scale of moral worth, up to the period of Christ’s advent to the earth. In order to elevate fallen man, Christ must reach him where he was.” Now get this, “He took human nature and bore the infirmities and degeneracy of the race. He who knew no sin became sin for us. He humiliated Himself to the lowest depths of human woe that He might be qualified to reach man and bring him up from the degradation in which sin had plunged him.” So, Nikki, what is she saying?
Nikki: Aargh. She’s saying that by becoming human He took human sin, the sin nature, and she’s completely leaving the cross out of it. There’s no cross!
Colleen: Absolutely. No! There is no cross. And she is saying that by His taking the infirmities and degeneracy of the race, that is the way in which He who knew no sin became sin for us. She is equating His incarnation with becoming sin for us. That is not His becoming sin for us.
Nikki: No.
Colleen: The Bible says that as the incarnate God the Son, He had no sin. So she is explaining this in a way that leaves us no way to understand sin except as a human thing. It’s physical, it’s taken in in our gene pool, so to speak, that Jesus took it on by taking a mortal body, He inherited degeneracy and infirmity from Mary, and she’s even using this argument, which is so typically Adventist – and I didn’t even know for a long time exactly where it came from – that the race has been decreasing in size and physical strength. I remember learning in school that Adam was 15 feet tall and Eve was 12 and that sin has made us become small and shriveled and weak [laughter] and that our moral capabilities have decreased along with our physical stamina. This is heresy. That’s not what the Bible teaches at all. It’s unbelievable. And she’s saying that by taking a human body in the incarnation, Jesus took all of this on and that was the way He became sin for us. That’s a horrifying thing to say. Jesus did not take sin by becoming a human. He became sin for us as He hung on the cross and took our imputed sin. He took responsibility. Our sin was attributed to Him, was accredited to Him, in the same way His righteousness is accredited to us when we trust Him. I remember the shock I had a few years ago as I was reading through that passage in 2 Corinthians 5:21, He became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him, and it hit me like a ton of bricks that this is imputed sin. This is not inherited physical degeneracy.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: This is a literal imputation of our sin. She had it so wrong.
Nikki: She wasn’t even just a little bit off. This is antichrist doctrine.
Colleen: Yes, it is. It’s a fallible Jesus. It’s a sinful Jesus. This is how she makes Him our example. By inheriting sin in His human body, supposedly, He becomes our example in how not to commit sin. Do you see the illogic of that? He was sinless, not because He didn’t sin. He was sinless because His spirit was never dead.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He never had to be born again because He was born alive. We become eternally alive by becoming born again, and that’s how sin is put to death in our bodies. We become spiritually alive, and His Spirit in us helps us to trust Him when we’re tempted. It’s a completely inside-out thing, and if we don’t understand that we have spirits that are born dead and must be made alive, we will completely misunderstand sin and how sin affects us and how its power over us is really broken. Here’s another quote. This one is from the same source, CON, page 34, paragraph 2, “Satan had succeeded so well in deceiving the angels of God and in ruining noble Adam that he thought he should be successful in overcoming Christ in His humiliation. By his subtlety and untiring efforts, Satan had controlled the appetite and excited and strengthened the passions to so fearful a degree that he had defaced and almost obliterated the image of God in man. Man’s physical and moral dignity were in so great a degree destroyed that he bore but a faint resemblance in character and noble perfection of form to the dignified Adam in Eden.” Ellen is attributing to Satan the destruction of the image of God in man. Satan has never had that power. Satan tempted Eve. Satan is not responsible for human sin in any way. He did not degenerate the human race.
Nikki: And she’s defining the image of God in man as the perfect character of God.
Colleen: Yes. And that’s not the image of God. The image of God in which we were created includes being spiritual beings, because God is spirit, and we are spirit with a fleshly body. God does not have a body. We’re created in His image in more profound ways than human flesh. He doesn’t have human flesh. And finally, this last reference is from Christ’s Object Lessons, page 330, “God will accept only those who are determined to aim high. He places every human agent under obligation to do his best. Moral perfection is required of all. Never should we lower the standard of righteousness in order to accommodate inherited or cultivated tendencies to wrongdoing. We need to understand that imperfection of character is sin. And those who would be workers together with God must strive for perfection” – get this – “of every organ of the body and quality of the mind. True education is the preparation of the physical, mental, and moral powers for the performance of every duty. It is the training of body, mind, and soul for divine service. This is the education that will endure unto eternal life.” She has succeeded in making us believe as Adventists that sin was imperfection of character, sin was indulging the flesh, sin is letting our tendencies to do wrong to come to the fore, and she says that God doesn’t accept anyone who’s not committed to aim high. What about the thief on the cross? He wasn’t committed to any kind of high living. He was being killed as an unregenerate, sinful thief. He had no more chance to be good. And yet here is Jesus saying he would come into the kingdom with Him.
Nikki: Because he recognized Him, he recognized his Savior, and he believed.
Colleen: And that wasn’t a physical thing. That wasn’t a mental thing. That was an awakening that only God could do in him through his spirit. That was the kind of recognition of Jesus that Peter had when Jesus said, “Who do you say that I am?” and he said, “You’re the Christ, the Son of God.” And Jesus said, “Man has not revealed this to you. Only the Father has revealed this to you.” This has nothing to do with aiming high and moral perfection.
Nikki: So when you change the human nature, like she has, and you change the nature of Christ, like she has, then you change the gospel message and the way to salvation. This is why when she quotes that Christ in you the hope of glory, she actually says, “Christ formed in you the hope of glory,” because your hope of glory as an Adventist is the evolution of your character.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: It’s overcoming all of that. And this right here is why Adventists are so confused about their need for a Savior. Their conversion stories, from what I can tell there are two types. There are the people who were good and then they strayed away and they made all these terrible life choices, and then they came back. And then there were the people who were born outside of Adventism and they lived this wild life and then they found Adventism, and it changed their life. They were no longer alcoholics, drug addicts, sleeping around, you name it. They found the Sabbath, they learned how to treat their body like God’s temple and now their diabetes is gone.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: Their conversion stories are just complete, you know, 180s of lifestyle. That creates a problem for the good little Adventists. That creates a problem for the people who were raised inside Adventism, always did their best, they were diligent to follow the rules, they’ve never had pork, they’ve never gone drinking, they haven’t had affairs, they’ve made good life choices. Where’s their need for a Savior? They’ve done everything. And I had a conversation with somebody who told me that she is not a bad person. She said, “I’m not a bad person. I’ve done everything I was told.” She’s right. She was a missionary. She grew up a good Adventist kid. She said, “I never rebelled or made terrible choices, and I know that everything good in my life is from God. I’m grateful for that, but I have no hope that I’ll be saved. I don’t understand why I would deserve to burn, because I don’t think I’m a bad person, and I don’t feel love for Him.” And there was this emptiness in the conversation. It broke my heart. I also had a roommate in college who said, “You know, I’m making good choices, but all my friends are going out. They’re having fun, and I’m left here lonely, and I feel like God doesn’t even see me.” So not only do they not understand their need for a Savior, because they’re doing everything right. What’s the purpose of all of this? Why do I deserve to be punished? Where’s my conversion story? But even in the middle of their obedience, they feel empty and lonely and unseen because there’s no Christian living, there’s no life. It’s all about doing good, and they’re doing it, so now what? These conversion stories don’t contain the gospel of salvation. You don’t hear that. You don’t hear about being born again. They don’t understand what that means. In fact, as an Adventist I thought it was kind of a hippie, you know, kind of charismatic –
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yes.
Nikki: – like, yeah, okay, you’ve been born again. They don’t even really say a whole lot about Jesus usually, except maybe to say that He led them to Adventism or confirmed that. He’s more of a guide, a spirit guide – I don’t know – than somebody who created them, their God who has caused them to be born again by His resurrection from the dead. You know, they don’t have the biblical language in those stories. They don’t understand. That’s why we do this podcast and why we do everything we do in Life Assurance Ministries. It’s not because we want to shake our fists – although there is an element of that at times – at Ellen White and her heresy. It’s more than that. We want people to understand their need.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: We want them to know the true Lord and what He’s really done for them and that they are dead, no matter how moral they are.
Colleen: That’s so true. I had to understand that I was not a neutral person who finally sinned after I was born. I was not a blank slate waiting to be good or bad. I was born – as David said, I was conceived in sin because I’m a descendant of Adam. I was conceived in sin. I was born, John 3:18, unbelieving, condemned already. Ephesians 2:3, by nature, by nature, who I am naturally, a child of wrath. That means I need saving. I need life. I was dead in sin. And, Nikki, it’s been so powerful to me, as we’ve been talking through this, to realize people who are in the domain of darkness, people who are still by nature children of wrath, dead in sin, not believing in the Lord Jesus can do really good things.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: They can do altruistic things.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Philanthropic things, godly-looking things, but these things are not godly acts because they’re not coming from the life of God. These things have no means of recommending us for salvation or for forgiveness. Being moral is perfectly possible for a non-born-again person, and morality does not save us.
Nikki: And look at Paul. Here in verse 3 he says, “Among them we too all formerly lived.” He had incredible credentials. He was a Jew among Jews, and he’s counting himself among these people. He lived according to the law the best he knew how. You know, I heard a lot in Adventism, “We do our best, and God does the rest. He reads our hearts. Only God knows our hearts.” He knew Paul’s heart. He knew that Paul was persecuting the church for zeal, for his interpretation of God’s law. And yet when He met him on the road, He said, “Paul, why are you persecuting me?” He held him accountable, no matter what his motive was.
Colleen: We are responsible for our own sin. Satan is not the cause of our sin. Satan is not the cause of Adam and Eve’s sin. Satan is not the cause of any kind of inherited tendencies to evil. We are bound, as part of creation, bound to decay as part of the consequence God gave the earth and creation for Adam’s own sin. God is the one who undoes the curse in Christ. The blood of Jesus is the only thing that undoes this curse. It’s the only thing that can rescue us from being by nature children of wrath. All of those good deeds, like Paul talked about in Philippians 2, all of those good deeds we do before we’re born again, do not make us deserving of God’s kindness. I don’t say this only because I think Adventism is uniquely guilty of this attitude. I think even among some Christians there is the sense that morality is the measure of godliness. And of course, godliness, true godliness, true new birth, new life in Christ, yields fruit that has eternal consequences for the kingdom. Of course our lives change when we’re born again because the Spirit of God in us convicts us of sin as our bodies are tempted and as our flesh and brains are tempted, but Romans 12:1 and 2 asks us to present ourselves as living sacrifices, our spirits being born again but still living in a fleshly body, a mortal body, but we present ourselves for service, renewing our minds, as he says in chapter 2 of Romans 12. This renewing of our minds as born-again people happens by immersing ourselves in God’s word. We do change, but doing good deeds before we know Jesus never recommends us for His kindness, never reduces our deserving of eternal death, because we’re born dead.
Nikki: Yeah. Romans 8:8 says those who are in the flesh cannot please God, and down in Romans 9 it says if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.
Colleen: If you have not understood that you are dead in your sin, that you were born unable, as it says in Romans 3:9-15, unable to respond to God, to please God, to seek for God, and that God had to come and break through into the domain of darkness, that He sent the Lord Jesus in human flesh but bearing eternal life, never dead in sin. He did that so He could shed human blood to pay for human sin and thus break open a door out of our communal grave in the domain of darkness. If you have never understood that you are dead and need to be made alive, we ask you to consider what Jesus did and to see what Paul says here. And to see that it is a miracle of God that He brings us to life when we desire to know Him, when He plants in us a desire for life, a desire for Him. And just know that Jesus came and He died the death of a man, and He was buried, and He was raised on the third day, all according to Scripture, so that He could break the power of sin, break the curse of the law, the curse of sin, and resurrect us to eternal life when we trust Him. So if you have questions or comments, we just ask that you write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. And check out proclamationmagazine.com, and you can sign up for our weekly email. Don’t forget to leave us a review for this podcast wherever you listen to it, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram. And thank you for walking through these first three verses of Ephesians 2 with us this week. Join again next week as we read the really good news of what Jesus has done for us.
Nikki: Bye for now.
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