Colleen and Nikki continue a study of Ephesians. In this episode they discuss sovereignty and God’s requirement for blood. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: Today we continue walking through Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church. Now, aside from the fact that believers are called to spend time in God’s word and it’s just a wonderful thing to do, we do this on this podcast because spending time carefully walking through any portion of Scripture works brilliantly to expose and weed out our old Adventist ideas and then to replace them with biblical truths. So for that reason, as we move through chapter 1, we’re taking very small bites of Scripture because these verses do so much to correct our false understandings about the nature and work of Christ, the effect of the gospel on our lives, and even about the character and attributes of God. We won’t be able to plumb the depths of these texts, but we hope that enough will be said here to draw you into your own ongoing study of this letter. But before we get started, I just want to remind you, if you have any questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can also visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly emails containing new online articles, links to current podcasts, and other ministry news. You can also find our donate tab there if you’re interested in coming alongside Life Assurance Ministries with your financial support, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and please, consider writing a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, Colleen, as I prepared for this podcast, I kept thinking that I wished I had these verses in my back pocket as a student at La Sierra.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: Many of my professors there found the propitiatory atonement to be dated and barbaric, and they didn’t like the blood or the wrath of God against sin. Some of them, honestly, were like a dog with a bone on this issue, and it was confusing because whatever else I thought about the effects of Christ’s death, I at least knew it was necessary for forgiveness. What did you think Jesus’ blood had to do with your salvation and forgiveness when you were an Adventist?
Colleen: You know, it’s hard for me to remember exactly because it was muddy. I did believe His blood was necessary. I did believe it was necessary. But I couldn’t have exactly explained how it affected my forgiveness. I did believe that it wasn’t once and done. I did believe that whatever His death was about, that He died instead of me but that I had to keep accessing the power of His blood by confessing my sins.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I really did believe the Investigative Judgment scenario, that I had to have every sin confessed, even the forgotten ones. I would lie awake at night worrying that I might have forgotten a sin that I didn’t confess. You know, Ellen was very clear that if we didn’t confess our sins, Jesus would not apply His blood. I wouldn’t have been able to completely explain it, I just would have said it was necessary and that it was ongoing. Later, when I was working at the Quiet Hour in the early ’80s, I heard about the moral influence theory, and I interviewed Graham Maxwell for the Quiet Hour Echoes, and he was all smiles and all benevolent kindness as he talked about God not needing Jesus to die in order to be a forgiver. He forgave us just because He was a forgiving, good God. And it was all very compelling and very sentimental, sweet, and it just kind of eliminated all the mess of the uncertainty of all that blood in heaven. So in answer to your question, I couldn’t have explained it well. I knew it was somehow necessary, but the idea of God being forgiving without the blood was a very intriguing idea that I encountered early in my adult life. What about you, Nikki? How did you understand the blood? What did you think?
Nikki: A lot like you, Colleen. I knew it was important. I didn’t know exactly how. I knew it needed to be applied to each sin. I had kind of mental images of it being used to blot out sins in a big book –
Colleen: Yes. [Laughter.]
Nikki: – up in heaven in a room full of angels. I didn’t really understand why it had to happen that way. I had this very juvenile kind of curiosity about why God would choose to do it that way. And so when I went to La Sierra, even though I had read in Scripture that it was necessary, when I heard these arguments, this case they would lay out for God being good and not having wrath and not being like a child abuser. He was a good God, full of love, and almost like they had an edge on God, they understood God.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: There was something appealing about the answer to that juvenile question of “Why did you have to do it that way?” Their answer to it really was, “Well, it was just kind of a method that Bible writers used to reach the people of the day, and that’s not really what happened.” It only worked if you discredited Scripture, and that was the most disturbing thing to me. But I didn’t understand the gospel enough to know how to argue with it. And I can’t say I didn’t read my Bible. I did. I just didn’t see it; I didn’t see it.
Colleen: I get that. I didn’t either. I didn’t see it. Well, as we approach the second part of Ephesians 1, we looked at verses 1 to 6 last week, which includes the introduction to the book, and then it includes the work of the Father in our salvation, and it went into some detail about what it means that He chose us and predestined us to be adopted as His sons, or heirs. Today we’re going to look at verses 7 through 12, where we look more specifically at the effects on us of Jesus, the Lamb of God; on Jesus, the one who came according to the will of the Father. So, Nikki, would you read those verses, please? And then we’ll walk through them and unpack them. These have proved to be very rich for both of us, I think, as we prepared for this.
Nikki: “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.”
Colleen: It’s a pretty amazing passage, and it’s hard to, like, just scratch it with your fingernail and see what’s really there. It’s very rich. But let’s go back to verse 7, and before we actually talk about it, let’s just remember who is Paul writing to, believers or unbelievers?
Nikki: Believers in Ephesus.
Colleen: So are they Jewish believers primarily or Gentile?
Nikki: These are Gentile believers.
Colleen: So their background is paganism, not Judaism.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: They are believers without having ever lived under the law, which I think is significant because as we read this, it helps us to remember who Paul is writing to, and we can’t read this and have it mean something completely different to us than it meant to them. So in verse 7 Paul tells us that in so much. The Lord’s blood freed us from the consequences of sin. It freed us from the obligation to pay for our sin. His blood, His death, redeemed us from our past, from our sin nature and from our obligation to pay God, and it was through His blood, it was by the means of His blood, it was necessary. And just this one verse deals with the bloodless atonement of the moral influence theory.
Colleen: It’s interesting that Adventist theologians and scholars have struggled so much with what to do about Jesus’ death and Jesus’ blood and have landed all over the book in terms of non-forensic atonement, explaining away the necessity of Jesus’ blood, saying that “God is a good God, He wouldn’t require the death of a person. He certainly wouldn’t require the death of His Son.” And yet right here this verse said that the Father redeemed us through the blood of Jesus. Now, it was helpful for me to think through what it meant to redeem. The word redemption is like a marketplace term, and if we think in terms of the Roman empire, where they had slaves that were sold at auction blocks, if a person had a slave and that slave was going to achieve his freedom, he had to be redeemed in some way. So if somebody put up the money for the life of that slave and the owner could receive the money, he would let the slave go free. Now, that is a redemption from slavery in a very literal sense. So Paul is using a metaphor that is real to the people who are reading this. They lived in Rome. They understood the business of redeeming slaves from slavery. As an Adventist, I thought of Jesus’ blood “redeeming” me, but it was on-again, off-again redemption. It was like if I sinned, I would lose my standing and I would have to confess and repent and hope that Jesus would forgive me all over again, but that is not describing redemption. Redemption is once and done. When I started understand that this is describing something that happens once for the rest of eternity, it looked different to me. When Jesus died and when we believe in Him, His blood, which He shed for our sin, actually redeems our dead self, our whole person, not just forgives little individual sins by covering them over with a little spot of blood dropped from a finger of somebody in heaven onto a little record in a book in heaven. No! Jesus’ blood redeemed all of us. It was the payment that satisfied God fully, and when we trust Him, He redeems all of us, not just individual sins, all of us. And that means that just like a slave when he was redeemed from slavery, he was completely free for the rest of his life, but he still had to learn to live as a free man. He had to learn to live making responsible choices and growing in his maturity as a free man. Just so, when we are redeemed from slavery, we grow in sanctification as the Lord, through His Spirit in us, convicts us of ongoing sin. But that doesn’t mean we fall out of salvation. We are fully and eternally saved when we have truly trusted Jesus.
Nikki: This goes back to Hebrews. It was a sacrifice once for all. This is why we don’t have to constantly go back with another sacrifice. He’s our priest after the order of Melchizedek, He’s our eternal priest, and His sacrifice was sufficient for all of our sins. One of the things that I loved about this verse was looking kind of at some of these words, and the word for “forgiveness” means “a full acquittal.” It’s judicial. It’s a full, complete acquittal. And the word for “trespasses,” it includes “wrongdoing that can be unconscious and not deliberate,” and we saw that in Hebrews 2 when the example that we were given was for the Day of Atonement, when the sacrifice was for unconfessed and unremembered sins.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: This too goes against the Adventist idea that if you do not remember every single sin and repent for every single sin, then that angel in heaven won’t drop the blood over the transgression written in the book.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: That’s just not here. It’s not in Ephesians, it’s not in Hebrews, it’s not anywhere.
Colleen: In a nutshell, we’re not still in slavery to our sin when we have believed, but we are redeemed. We’re not hoping and praying we don’t forget a sin. Instead, we’re living with our eyes fixed on Jesus, knowing He is keeping us, He is sustaining us, and He is growing us in grace. We are forgiven, as you pointed out, when we believe, and this transaction that Jesus did of purchasing us from slavery is an expression of God’s grace. God’s grace to us is the shed blood of His incarnate Son on behalf of us so that the entire person of us is saved when we believe. It’s no longer about our sins. It’s about being alive or being dead, and Jesus’ blood makes us alive and we are now His. We have a new identity.
Nikki: And this grace is something that He lavishes on us. That means over and beyond what we would think or expect. This is abundant grace. This is complete forgiveness.
Colleen: And that brings us to verse 8, where it says our redemption, our forgiveness, and the riches of His grace is something God the Father has lavished on us. That’s a word that means running over, more than adequate, far more than we can expect. The riches of His grace are greater than merely saving us. The riches of His grace include our eternal inheritance and our identity and our security and everything we have in Christ. So, Nikki, when we go on, at the end of verse 8 into verse 9, we read, “In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him.” Could you talk a little bit about what Paul means when he talks about God making known the mystery of His will in all wisdom and insight? We had some conversation about this before the podcast, and the choice of words here is really interesting and significant, and I wondered if you’d talk a bit about that.
Nikki: Well, just right at the beginning there in verse 9, where it talks about Him doing what He does here, “in all wisdom and insight,” these are verses that have helped me understand God. God is omniscient. His wisdom isn’t something that’s learned. It’s His divine intelligence, His omnipotent omniscience. He is all wise, all knowing, and His insight is clear in deep understanding of what He’s doing. This isn’t Plan B. This is something that He has, through the purpose of His will, intended for humanity, for His glory, and this mystery of His will is so multifaceted. When we were talking about this before we started the podcast, there were so many different ways that we could look at what’s contained in this, but essentially it’s the New Covenant. It’s what Christ did. It’s His coming and His redeeming us and creating a new creature and establishing the church and everything that comes with that.
Colleen: It seems to me that Paul is saying here: In Christ God has revealed to us what he calls “the mystery of His will,” and this revelation was an outpouring of God’s wisdom and insight. These are things that only God can know that have been revealed to us in Christ. And when we trust Jesus, the fathomless riches of God’s will become ours and we become able to see them more and more because we’ve been made alive and forgiven by His blood, and we’ve been transformed out of the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, and we begin to see that Jesus’ sacrifice is God’s wisdom and riches. Everything that Jesus has done to inaugurate the New Covenant is an expression of God’s wisdom and insight, and He makes these things known to us, which is absolutely remarkable to me. These are things that a natural person cannot understand or even perceive, but when we’re born again through the blood of Jesus, God makes known to us the mystery of His will, which is such an amazing thought to me. Our salvation was always God’s purpose, and He does this for the praise of His glory, which baffles me, but from His perspective this is for His glory, and you know, it just makes me say, I really pray that I will honor Him and speak rightly of Him and speak rightly of His word because the mystery of His will is huge, and that He would pull me into His life and His story out of the domain of darkness is something I certainly didn’t deserve, but I’m so thankful.
Nikki: And it’s interesting to me that this mystery of His will is something that Paul was charged with teaching the church. I just find it fascinating that Paul is one of the ones that the Adventists love to hate. They don’t like his writing, they struggle with his writing, they say he’s confusing. I had a pastor at the end of my time in Adventism who said that she thought Paul was incredibly arrogant.
Colleen: Oh my goodness. I remember having an Adventist pastor and his wife visit FAF many years ago, and I remember him responding to something we were saying in our study about what Paul had said, and I have a distinct memory of this man leaning back in his chair, crossing his legs, putting his hands behind his head and saying, “Well, Paul might just have had some bad pizza the night before that.” So yes, they hate Paul.
Nikki: Yeah, they don’t like Paul. And if you don’t like someone, you’re not going to listen to what they have to say. And I’m not saying all Adventists don’t like Paul, but a lot of the teachers that I encountered in Southern California really didn’t like Paul.
Colleen: It keeps coming up. I keep hearing from people who question Paul. And yet, look at what Paul is revealing to us. He’s telling us, by God’s grace to him, what the mystery of God’s will is, and He’s making it known to us in real time through the new birth. Paul is not inventing things. This is reality that’s written here.
Nikki: And it’s interesting that he has always had to defend his authority.
Colleen: Yeah. [Laughter.]
Nikki: Even now while he’s in heaven, the timeless Scriptures continue to defend his authority to those of us who read the Bible and take it seriously.
Colleen: That’s a really good point, Nikki. Of all the apostles, he’s the most maligned.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: We move now to the next part of one of Paul’s famous long sentences, where he talks about what this mystery of His will involves and why God is revealing it. Verse 10, “…with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.” Now, that’s a sort of convoluted, hard-to-explain passage, but when you read the context, when you read the sentence all at once, it starts to become clear. Why don’t we talk our way through it, Nikki? In verse 10 Paul is saying that the revelation of this mystery of God’s will in Christ was necessary for a new administration, or, some might say, a new dispensation, that was suited to the fullness of the times. What does Paul mean when he talks about “a new administration” or “a new dispensation”? What’s that a reference to? What does that even mean?
Nikki: Well, I believe that’s the New Covenant, the Church Age.
Colleen: Yes. I believe it is too. Israel is now fulfilled in Christ. Israel is still Israel, but the new administration of God is the New Covenant. The Mosaic covenant has been fulfilled. It’s really interesting how this passage in Ephesians has helped me see, in a way somewhat unique that I actually have trouble explaining, that the coming of Jesus, the incarnate God the Son, who lived and died, was buried and rose again, changed and marked history. Everything that came before Him was pre-Christ, everything that comes after Him is post-cross, and it’s like a division in time. Even though everyone on both sides of the cross is saved in exactly the same way, by believing God, and that’s counted to him for righteousness, on this side of the cross, salvation includes understanding who died for us, who redeemed us. It’s a division that changes the administration of how God is working. And I just want to say, Adventists are quick to say, “Well, the Sabbath is still meant to be kept because God never changes, so the Sabbath is still here.” And I want to say, Paul right here is saying there’s a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of time. There’s a new thing that happened when Jesus came, and like you said, it’s the church, it’s the New Covenant.
Nikki: And the Sabbath is not synonymous with God. God never changes, but that doesn’t mean that the things that He does don’t change.
Colleen: One very clear example of this is the flood. Peter explains that God destroyed the world with a flood back in the primordial times, but that will never happen again. God Himself said it would never happen again, and He gave the rainbow to covenant that with humanity and with the earth. Now, Peter says, God is reserving the earth for fire. So yes, God changes the way He deals with man, but He Himself doesn’t change, even though His administration changes as things go on. So here Paul is starting to explain a new administration. What does it mean – and I think we need to really figure this out – when he says this dispensation, or this administration, is suited to the fullness of the times. Now, what do we know about that phrase, “the fullness of the times”? What does that even mean?
Nikki: We see it in other parts of Scripture, where we learn that in the fullness of time God sent forth His Son, and we know that that was something that was predetermined, that God had chosen the appointed time for the return of Christ, and this too is an appointed time.
Colleen: Jesus’ coming was not random. It wasn’t something that came about when Israel finally got their act together and was ready for Him, like we were taught the Second Coming would happen when we get our act together and bring Him in. No. The fullness of time, when God brought forth Jesus, born of a virgin, born under the law, as it says in Galatians 4:4, that fullness of time was preset, and it’s so interesting, when I finally understood that, I found this remarkable passage in Acts 17, where Paul is talking to the Athenians, another group of pagans in another well-known pagan city, about this very idea of God having fixed times. This is found in Acts 17:24-27. “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from each one of us.” So it’s clear that Paul was preaching to the Athenians another fullness of time, the time that God had set forth when each person would live in a specific place according to His foreknowledge. And then he goes in that passage to say there’s a day fixed when God will judge the earth through a Man He has appointed, and that’s, of course, Jesus. So the administration of the New Covenant, the church, is the mystery of God’s will, which came about at a time God determined. It’s suitable to the fullness of times because it was only after Jesus came in the fullness of time, only after He had lived a sinless life, died a sinner’s death without being a sinner, and rose from death could this next step in God’s purpose be inaugurated. This new administration is not at its end yet. It’s an administration that will continue until all things are summed up in Christ, both in heaven and on earth.
Nikki: This reminds me of our study in Colossians in chapter 1, where it says, “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created through Him and for Him,” and then in verse 20 it says, “Through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross. Through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.” The purpose is to bring all things into relationship with Him.
Colleen: That’s so wonderful. I thought of that passage too, Nikki. It’s amazing how these ideas are written about in more than one place, and Paul uses different words to describe the same thing. There’s another passage in 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 where this whole idea of summing everything up in Christ is explained. And this is the famous resurrection chapter. As an Adventist I didn’t know that 1 Corinthians 15 really explained much of anything except the fact that we’d rise from death one day, and it’s a really long chapter.
Nikki: It’s a great one.
Colleen: Amazing how much theology is summed up in it. But here’s what it says in verses 20-28 of 1 Corinthians 15: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 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. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For ‘God has put all things in subjection under His feet.’ But when it says ‘all things are put in subjection,’ it is plain that He is excepted who put all things in subjection under Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subjected to Him who put all things in subjection under Him, that God may be all in all.” It’s a really interesting and intriguing passage, and I don’t think anybody fully understands it, but it’s clearly referring to the eternal state, the new heavens and the new earth, when death is destroyed, when all evil is destroyed, when every enemy of God has been subjected and destroyed and everything will be put in subjection to Christ, who will put Himself in subjection to the Father, and God will be all in all. And all of this comes in its own fullness of time.
Nikki: And it’s interesting too that before all of those enemies are destroyed, every single one of them will bow, those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. All things are going to be summed up in Christ and defined by their relationship to Christ.
Colleen: You know, I never understood salvation as being this intimately connected with Christ, as an Adventist.
Nikki: Me neither.
Colleen: Well, we had words, but I didn’t understand this. I didn’t understand the power Jesus has, the authority that He has, and how my life or death is fully dependent on Him, not on me –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – managing to conjure up my sins and confess them. This is on Jesus bringing me to life if I believe He’s done what He said He did.
Nikki: And you know, I don’t know what I thought that phrase, “to the praise of His glory,” meant as an Adventist. It’s almost like plagiarism, because I thought I had a part in this, and so I did my part, but then we just give all the glory to Him because He’s more important.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: The reality is, that praise to His glory is because He does all of it. I get none of the credit, none of the glory. The only thing I bring to this situation is my sinfulness, that’s it; my need for Him.
Colleen: It makes me emotional to think of it.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He does all this. And He chose and predestined us to be His. That’s an astonishing thing. It gives us a whole new value and worth in Christ. So then in verse 11 Paul continues His sentence: “Also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined” – and there’s that word again – “according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will.” And it’s interesting that the Greek underlying that phrase, “we have obtained an inheritance,” can legitimately be translated that we have become an inheritance, like, God’s inheritance. Either way we look at it, it works. Because we are His, and He is ours, our inheritance for eternity is because we are in Him and He eternally has us. Would you talk a bit about the things that you were thinking about when you were studying for this passage, Nikki? What did you understand Paul to be saying when he talked about guaranteeing our inheritance and our having been predestined for this inheritance?
Nikki: First of all, just going back to the basics, as an Adventist when I read Scripture, I thought it was for everybody, so just the beginning of this sentence, “in Him we’ve obtained an inheritance,” it’s a positional statement again. It begins with the indicative. If we’re in Christ, we’ve obtained that inheritance. If we’re not, then we have to deal with why we’re not, and we have to repent and come to faith. But once we understand that, we have to look at tenses. It’s that hermeneutic again. This is past tense. We have obtained an inheritance. That makes me think of 1 Peter where it talks about the fact that we have obtained this inheritance and that it is kept in heaven for us, that it’s imperishable, it’s unspoiled, it’s unfading, and it’s reserved for us. This is something that we can know is just as sure as the fact that we’re in Christ. And the fact that we’ve been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His will, the issue of God’s sovereignty is a big issue that we have to deal with when we leave Adventism because it’s almost like, you know, one of the sins of the protestants to believe that God would predestine anything, and it was something we knew better than everybody else, but it’s clearly talked about here in Scripture. If something is predestined, it’s controlled and determined by God, and we see this in other parts of Scripture. This isn’t just a confusing place that we can blow past. It’s everywhere. Paul talks about it in Romans. In chapter 8 he says, “Those whom He predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified; and those whom He justified, He also glorified.” Again, past tense. So we really have to deal with these issues when we’re looking at these texts because God Himself wrote this through Paul.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: We can’t excuse it. I just love the fact that God purposed all of these things, that He drives human history. He is not reactionary, God doesn’t react. God purposes.
Colleen: Oh, yeah. That’s so well said. I was also noticing that this verse says God works out His purpose “according to the counsel of His will.” It’s interesting to think about what that word “counsel” means. Now, “counsel” is often the word used for legal advice from an attorney to a client, and this is saying God works out His purpose, it doesn’t just say “according to His will,” but “according to the counsel of His will.” We have to know that God the Spirit included those words, “according to the counsel of His will,” for a specific reason. If we think it through, we can see God does not receive counsel from another. He is the source of His own counsel for working out the purpose of His will. And like you were saying, this is a statement of God’s sovereignty and omniscience. Nothing can teach God. He is the source of His own counsel, and He is the source of His own will, and His counsel informs Him how to work out His will. This stands in direct opposition to open theism, which is an idea that was generated primarily by Richard Rice, an Adventist, on the faculty of religion at Loma Linda University. Richard Rice retired this summer. A colleague of his was saying that Richard Rice is largely credited in the Christian community with the idea of open theism, and this openness of God idea has permeated out through Richard Rice and his more liberal Christian colleagues into evangelicalism. Now, it’s not mainstream, but there are a great many evangelicals who have embraced this idea, and in a nutshell, open theism says God does not foreknow the future, that He’s learning as He goes, that He limits His ability to know to honor our free will and that as He interacts with humanity and observes how we react, He’s learning and growing with us as He moves with us through time. Now, He’s not in time, but He learns about humanity and His interaction with us by watching us. That is such a heresy. This verse alone denies that idea. Our eternal future, according to this verse 11, our redemption, our inheritance, and us as God’s inheritance, these things are already predestined according to God’s own counsel of His own will. No one teaches God. We learn from Him as His creatures, but He counsels Himself with the omniscient understanding that only He has.
Nikki: You know, I think if I had read that God works all things according to the counsel of His will as an Adventist, I would have read that He does whatever He wants according to His whim. That’s how I would have taken that. But again, God is not reactionary. We can’t attribute human nature to God, to try to understand God, so we can’t treat His will like ours, which is definitely “whimmy.” That’s not a word. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] It’s a good one! I agree!
Nikki: And the fact that He works these things according to the counsel of His will tells us that it’s not without thought. It’s not without that divine wisdom and insight that we talked about. And I want to say too that when we resent God’s power, when we resent that kind of sovereign omnipotence, we’re just exposing our lack of understanding God’s character, and I’m sorry, but who can blame us when we were told that God’s character, the transcript of His character, was the Decalogue.
Colleen: Oh my, yes.
Nikki: You can’t understand God on that basis alone. His will is always in harmony with His character and His attributes. It’s perfect. His will is perfect and holy and righteous and just and loving, and like you said, with all knowledge, He’s with us at all times. He’s not against us, He’s for His will, His purposes.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Which are full of grace, which He lavishes on us.
Colleen: And you know, it’s so upsetting to me, especially as we’re unpacking this chapter in Ephesians, Nikki, that Adventists say that the Decalogue is the transcript of God’s character when this is clearly saying that we come to see and understand in part and perceive the depth of God’s will, the mystery of His will. That’s revealed in Christ –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – in God the Son becoming incarnate and dying a human death and rising from death. That is the revelation of God’s character and will and grace. It’s not the law. The law revealed our sin. Jesus reveals God.
Nikki: Well, that takes me back to Romans, where we’re told that now the righteousness of God has been revealed apart from the law. It’s in Christ. And this same Christ who has revealed God to us is the Christ who commissioned Paul to help us understand what that means.
Colleen: That’s such a great point! It’s a full circle. God appointed Paul for our good and for His glory. I love that I’m a Gentile and that Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. I love lining up behind Paul – [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: – and saying, “Yes! Thank you for being obedient.”
Nikki: Yes.
Colleen: So we now come to the last verse we’re going to look at today, and that’s verse 12, where Paul ends his sentence by saying, “To the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.” All of this, the administration suitable to the fullness of time, our inheritance, us as God’s inheritance, the summing up of all things in Christ, all of this is the consequence of Jesus’ death and resurrection and ascension, and the end yield of all this is that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. Now, Nikki, we were talking a little bit about this before the podcast, and we were talking about that phrase, “We who were the first to hope in Christ,” and noticing that different people have different ideas about how to understand that. But would you talk to us a little bit again, remind us of context and talk about how the first readers would have seen that.
Nikki: Well, when Paul is saying “we,” we have to know that he’s including his audience. These are Gentile Christians, and so this is the church.
Colleen: And Paul is a Jew, so he’s including himself with these Gentile Christians.
Nikki: Yes.
Colleen: And this is the church.
Nikki: Yes. And it just makes me think of Romans 11, where he talks about this. He talks about this Church Age, if you will. He says that there’s this mystery that’s happened, that there’s a partial hardening over the hearts of Israel and Gentiles are now coming to faith, but it won’t always be that way. And so when I read this text where he’s writing to Gentile believers and the church, which is composed of both Jews and Gentiles, he’s talking about this Church Age, and a time will come when the Jews will also be brought into faith through Christ. We read about that in Revelation. We know as former Adventists we were taught that we were spiritual Israel, and one of the first things that I was so relieved to let go of was this idea that I was Israel and I had to figure out which tribe I was in the 144,000 –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – but when your hermeneutic allows you to just believe what the words say, then you can know that there’s going to come a time when Israel will be sealed with the Holy Spirit and will come to faith, and so I believe when I read this text that he’s referring to the church being the first to hope in Christ Himself and that a later time will come for Israel.
Colleen: I agree. I saw it the same way as I was studying for this, and all believers before the cross, all believers after the cross are saved the same way, by believing God. And that belief in God’s word and what God says to us is what God credits to us as righteousness, as it said in Genesis 15:6, when Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. But after the cross, believers believe specifically in Christ, the realized Christ, the real person who had come and fulfilled all the shadows that those who lived before the cross were embracing, knowing they were pointing forward. Now we embrace Christ, and we as the church are the first group to hope in Christ. And it’s such an amazing thought that our new birth, our position in Christ, and our being heirs of God with Jesus, all of this is for the praise of God’s glory. We’re not here for our glory, we are here for His glory. And He chooses and predestines us for that purpose.
Nikki: That’s so much easier for me to understand now this side of being born again, understanding that Christ did it all. That’s solo Christus, in Christ alone, and that comes from Scripture alone. And when we really understand that and we’re born again, we understand that it’s to His glory alone.
Colleen: And if you haven’t been born again, if you haven’t admitted that you are a sinner, a hopeless sinner, unable to shed yourself of your private sins and besetting desires and things that always seem to trip you up, if you know that you’re still a slave to sin, just bow before the Lord, throw yourself at the foot of the cross and say, “Lord Jesus, I know you died for my sin, and I need a Savior. I need to be forgiven. I trust you. I accept your gift on my behalf. Please be my Savior and save me.” And He will. Jesus said He turns away no one who comes to Him.
Nikki: If you have any questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can also visit proclamationmagazine.com to sign up for our weekly email containing new online articles, links to current podcasts, and other ministry news. You can also find our donate tab there if you’re interested in coming alongside Life Assurance Ministries with your financial support. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and please consider writing a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And don’t forget to join us next week as we look further into Ephesians chapter 1.
Colleen: See you then.
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—God the Holy Spirit | 114 - October 17, 2022
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—Unity in the Body of Christ | 113 - October 17, 2022
- Inspecting Adventism’s Beliefs—The Remnant and Its Mission | 112 - September 7, 2022