Nikki and Colleen share the truth of why Jesus was born. He is the way, not the one to show us the how to keep the Sabbath. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: Last week we were talking through Ephesians 2:4 and 5. We talked about how God, in His mercy and because of His love, made us alive with Christ when we were dead in our sins. We discussed how this miracle of our new life is directly connected with the incarnation of God the Son, which we’re celebrating this month. So we looked back at the story in Luke 1, where we learn about Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist, when she welcomed Mary, pregnant with the Lord Jesus, into her home. When the pregnant Mary entered Elizabeth’s house, the unborn John, filled with the Holy Spirit, leaped in his mother’s womb, and Elizabeth herself was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, even calling Mary “the mother of my Lord” and asking how it was that she would come to her. Both Elizabeth and her unborn baby worshipped the yet unborn Jesus. Only God receives worship. Angels don’t, other created beings don’t. Elizabeth and the unborn John worshipped Jesus, the incarnate God the Son, forming as a human baby in His mother’s womb. We talked about the fact that Jesus was God’s way of smuggling life into our domain of darkness. He was the only human ever born who didn’t have to be born again because He was born spiritually alive, conceived by the Holy Spirit. This miracle of God being born in flesh is what we celebrate at Christmas. Jesus didn’t just come to show us how to please God. He came to save us, to die for our sins, and He could only do this because He was sinless, never spiritually dead, because He was fully God, every moment of His existence, even inside Mary’s womb. Our new birth is possible because the Lord Jesus took human flesh and lived a human life, died a human death, all without ever having sin Himself, and then He rose from death, He broke its curse. We can’t properly celebrate the birth of Jesus without considering the fact that He came to die. He came to die on a cross. He came to pay for our sin. So this week we’re going to look at the next four verses of Ephesians 2, and we’re going to talk about how our being seated with Christ in heavenly places, because we have been saved, we’re going to talk about how this is a gift of God completely connected to the Lord Jesus coming as a baby, incarnate God the Son. But before we do that, I want to remind you that if you have questions or comments or suggestions, please write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. We love hearing from you. You can subscribe to our weekly Proclamation! email by going to proclamationmagazine.com. You may also donate there by using the donate tab, and you can find links to our online Proclamation! Magazine and our Former Adventist YouTube channel. We appreciate those of you who have been writing reviews for the podcast wherever you listen, and if you haven’t written one, please consider doing so. They really do increase the reach of our podcast. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and Facebook. So now, Nikki, before we start our actual discussion of the passage, I have a question for you.
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: When you were an Adventist, how did you understand what it meant to be raised up with Christ and seated with Him in heavenly places?
Nikki: Well, I don’t remember ever hearing about Him being seated in heavenly places, and I certainly never thought of myself there, but when I thought about being raised with Him, it was very much a metaphor. I didn’t think about that much while I was younger, but in my 20s I met a pastor. He actually had been the pastor of my church. He was the one who baptized me into Adventism, and he taught that we die every day, that we die to self, that we are raised every day when we choose to live like Christ lived, and one of the ways that we died every day was that we would memorize Scripture and we would quote Scripture. And I remember he used a lot of Ellen White quotes as well. He encouraged us to memorize. Being made alive or raised, that whole picture was just about how I chose to live, what I put in my head every day.
Colleen: I heard that too. The whole concept was very confusing to me, and I, like you, thought it was a metaphor. In fact, almost everything about the Christian life and about the new birth, as I read it in Scripture, was metaphorical because being just a body with breath, I had no way to understand new birth, I had no way to understand being raised with Christ, much less seated with Him. It all sounded like a giant promise, like “If you do these things that are listed in this book, you will one day sit with Christ.” That’s your promise. If you’re good, you’ll get that.
Nikki: Yeah, tenses are ignored.
Colleen: Yeah, really! This is all in the past tense. These are things that have already happened when we have believed in the Lord Jesus and been sealed with the Holy Spirit. We have been raised with Him, and we are seated with Him in heavenly places. But to get a better picture of what it is Paul is really saying, and for context’s sake, Nikki, would you read for us Ephesians 2:1-9, and we’re going to focus especially on verses 6 through 9.
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. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Colleen: Okay. We’re going to look specifically at the beginning here, at verse 6, where we’re jumping into the middle of one of Paul’s long sentences. He’s just gone through saying that we were dead in our transgressions and sins, but God raised us up while we were dead and made us alive together with Christ, and I just want to reiterate, Paul says that God made us alive with Christ when we were dead. We didn’t have to stop smoking, stop drinking, stop eating bacon. He made us alive when we trusted Jesus. He made us alive when we were dead and transferred us and seated us with Him in heavenly places, and now here we are, alive in Christ and trying to understand what Paul is telling us is really our legacy. So when you look at verse 6, Nikki, how do you understand now what he says when he tells us that we’re not only raised with Him, but seated with Him in heavenly places, where He is?
Nikki: Well, this is talking about the fact that we have been given new life, that we have a new spirit that He’s given to us. We talked about that in Ephesians 1:13 and 14, and we saw that that was promised in Ezekiel, that He would put a new spirit in us. So He’s raised us up through the resurrection life of Christ. And He’s seated us with Him, in that we are now positionally in Christ, so wherever He is, we are there with Him.
Colleen: And that’s not a metaphor. That’s actually real. Our living spirits are with Him, and even though we’re stuck in finite bodies in a sinful world, we spiritually are with Christ, and what this is saying is that we are with Him right now when we’re believers. It’s not a maybe, it’s not a promise, it’s not a figure of speech. It’s real. It’s His resurrection life that makes it possible for this to happen. Nikki, you were sharing some texts with me before, while we were talking about this before we began to record. Would you mind talking about that?
Nikki: We read about this in Colossians when we walked through Colossians. In chapter 2:9-13, Paul writes: “For in Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.”
Colleen: That is the same thing.
Nikki: It also made me think of Romans 8, in verse 10: “If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” It’s like the inverse of what we read at the beginning of Ephesians, where our bodies were walking around, but our spirits were dead.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: But if Christ is in us, it’s reversed.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: The body is dead because of sin but the spirit is alive because of righteousness, and he goes on to say, “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” So we know that ultimate resurrection of the body, that salvation that we all are waiting for, it’s all on the basis of Christ in us. That is why Paul says, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” It’s that resurrection life of Christ that raises our spirits and that will also raise our body when the time comes.
Colleen: That is so amazing. This business of being united with Christ through His death and resurrection is so hard for an Adventist who believes that they’re only physical –
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: – to have any conception of. But it is a fact that is repeated through the New Testament, and we have to believe that Paul is saying these things because he wants us to understand that he means what the words say. When we’re born again through believing the gospel, through understanding that we’re sinners and we need a Savior and that Jesus paid for our sin with His sinless blood, when we understand that and trust Him and believe Him, we’re brought to life. And as I heard one commentator say about this passage – it was actually pretty moving to me and clarifying in some way – he said, “When we’re born again, we become participants in His death, His burial, and His resurrection.” It’s not just that we vicariously get the benefits of them, but when we’re united with Christ, who is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, when we’re united with Him, we become participants in His death, His burial, and His resurrection, and this commentator said, “If we understand this reality, we understand the whole New Testament.”
Nikki: This is solus Christus. This is In Christ Alone. It is in Christ; it’s positional.
Colleen: Yes. All of this is what is ours when we’re in Christ, and it’s not just a metaphor or a figure of speech or a promise. It’s now. The miracle of our new birth and our participation in Jesus’ death and His resurrection and our now being with Him, in Him at the Father’s right hand, it’s only possible because Jesus came as a baby. It’s what we’re celebrating this month. And I confess that as an Adventist, I did not like thinking about the life and death of Jesus at Christmastime. Somehow all the beautiful lighting and the artistic cards and the sweet pageants of the birth of this baby, complete with shepherds and lambs and angels and light and happiness and joy, that was just Christmas to me, and I didn’t want anybody ruining it with the thought of the cross. In fact, I was really highly offended if people did or if I read a Christmas card or a Christian pageant or a Christmas carol that had these words, but I’m seeing now that I hated it because I didn’t understand what Jesus did when He came. I didn’t understand who Jesus was, and I didn’t understand why He had to die. Now that I’m reading this, I’m realizing that what Jesus did in coming as a baby to be a human was all for the purpose of dying for my sin. The cross was part of Christmas. It dawned on me, while I was looking at this passage, that last week we talked about Elizabeth and John the Baptist and how they worshipped the unborn Jesus, and it dawned on me that it was that same John the Baptist who had worshipped Jesus as an unborn baby who was the person who introduced Jesus to Israel. He was the forerunner of Christ, and in the Book of John it tells us this, in verses 29 through 36: “The next day he” – meaning John the Baptist – “saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is He of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because He was before me.’ I myself did not know Him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that He might be revealed to Israel. And John bore witness: ‘I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on Him. I myself did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.’ The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as He walked by and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!'” And I realized that when John the Baptist said that, John the Baptist was announcing to Israel that Jesus was the Messiah, the sacrifice of God for the sin of the world. John understood that by the revelation from the Father. He didn’t just announce that a good man was coming to show us all how to become free from sin and able to keep the law. No! He introduced Jesus as the sacrifice, the Lamb of God for whom the world had been waiting. I knew these words as an Adventist, but it never dawned on me how significant they were and what an amazing message it was that John the Baptist had. This was the man who had worshipped his Savior as an unborn baby when his Savior was an unborn baby, and he knew, John had known, as a fetus in Elizabeth’s womb, that God was in the room, and he had worshipped Him. And now he introduced Him to Israel.
Nikki: That’s incredible. It makes me think of Baby Jesus in the manger with John’s words overlaid on that. “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
Colleen: Another thing that struck me – and you know, again this is a passage I knew as an Adventist, but I didn’t understand the significance of it. I didn’t understand that I could not think of the birth of Jesus without understanding what Isaiah had said in Isaiah 53, and to be sure, John the Baptist knew Isaiah 53. John the Baptist knew that Jesus was the fulfillment of Isaiah 53 that day he introduced Him to Israel. But when I look at Isaiah 53, I think, 500 years before Jesus the prophet Isaiah wrote this: “He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; like a lamb” – and there’s that word for the sacrifice again, that’s the Israelite word for sacrifice for sin – “like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, and there was no deceit in His mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush Him.” Nikki, had you ever thought of that as an Adventist, “It was the will of the Lord to crush Him”?
Nikki: I do remember pondering that as an Adventist, and it was confusing to me. I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand that it was all the work of God.
Colleen: Yeah. I didn’t understand that God actually had wrath against sin and that His wrath was poured out on Jesus, not in an act of divine child abuse, but in an act of the Trinity absorbing the consequences of sin in the Trinity’s self –
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: – for our sake. So, “It was the will of the Lord to crush Him; He has put Him to grief; when His soul makes an offering for guilt, He shall see His offspring; He shall prolong His days.” Well, that is a hint of the resurrection. I didn’t understand that either. How does a dead man have offspring?
Nikki: Well, the resurrection and the new birth.
Colleen: Exactly! None of that was clear to me. But it’s implied right here in Isaiah. He’ll see His offspring. He shall prolong His days. This is being said of a man who is being put to death. “Out of the anguish of His soul He shall see and be satisfied; by His knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the many, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.” And that’s me, the transgressor. As an Adventist, I thought Jesus’ death was just an inevitable suffering that symbolically substituted for my eternal death if I kept the law and kept overcoming sin, and I had no idea that Jesus was utterly sinless, that He had not inherited Mary’s bad genes, and that He had died an infinite death because He was God, because He was human, and His blood, His sinless blood, covered the entire weight of human sin.
Nikki: This is the why. This is why we celebrate Christmas. This is why Jesus came. And this wasn’t a surprise. We also read in Isaiah 46, God is speaking of Himself, and He says, “Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other;’ I am God, and there is no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.'” The Lord coming and saving us was declared from God Himself –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – thousands of years before. This was the why, and the why in Adventism has no resemblance to God’s why in Scripture.
Colleen: Absolutely not. That’s such a great point. Oh, my goodness. When I think about the why of Jesus’ coming as an Adventist to the why of Jesus’ coming now, as I think about it from a biblical standpoint, it’s hard to express the difference, but I know that now I feel brought to tears when I think of it, and it doesn’t get old. It keeps looking deeper and more profound, and I realize that the reason I feel so committed to celebrating Christmas is not just because it’s a sweet time, it’s because this is the Lamb of God who was born that night to die. So when we look at verse 7, we read, “So that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
Nikki: This is the so that, this is the why. Now, I was thinking about this as we were getting ready for the podcast. In the Great Controversy worldview, the plan was that man would vindicate God to all the watching universe, all the different planets, all the people who were enthralled in what was going on here, and they were going to show that God’s law was fair and reasonable and could be kept by anyone who really tries, so that Satan’s accusations against God could be satisfactorily answered to all the creatures. That was the why. That’s why Jesus came, to prove that this could be done. But in Scripture we see, in verses 6 and 7, that the why is because “God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ…so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” This is sola gratia. This is by grace alone.
Colleen: Wow.
Nikki: This is for God’s glory. This is all for Him and done by Him. This has nothing to do with us, our behavior, or vindicating God.
Colleen: That’s so true.
Nikki: It was so that the surpassing riches of His grace would be manifested.
Colleen: It’s interesting to me that this passage tells us there are ages to come. This isn’t all there is. It also tells us that we, as being made alive, believers in the Lord Jesus, hidden with Christ in God, sealed with the Holy Spirit, placed in Christ, His Body, that when other creatures look at us, we become to the praise of His glory. We are the evidence of God’s grace toward us in Jesus. It’s nothing about us. It’s not that we get glory. It’s that the fact that we’re there says God is beyond gracious. God is beyond good. We become His Exhibit A. It’s kind of like Paul said to the Corinthians, “You’re the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.” Well, we, to the Lord, are His children and the evidence of His grace and His kindness in Jesus. As you’re talking, I was thinking, you know, what you are saying is 180 degrees different from what I learned in Adventism. And I found a few Ellen White quotes. I don’t mean to bore us all with Ellen, but I do think it’s important for all of us to understand that the way we thought as Adventists is similar to each other and consistent for a specific reason: Our worldview was shaped by Ellen White, whether or not we read her. So I’m going to read just a few quotes here that I found. These are quotes about what Jesus came to do. Now, we’ve just looked, so far, in Ephesians and have been reading that He came to die for sin, He came to make us alive, He came to pay the price, but here’s what Ellen said. Now, this is from a compilation called The Bible Training School, which was compiled, by the way, the year after she died, in 1916, and this is what she said, “Satan has declared to his synagogue” – interesting she uses that word – “that man could not keep God’s commandments. One soul saved would prove this statement false. One soul saved would demonstrate the righteousness of God’s law. Christ came to this earth and by a life of obedience showed that man could obey. He canceled the guilt resting on the sinner. Jesus clothed Himself with the robe of sorrow.” And then she said this in the Review and Herald. This was published in 1891. “Jesus came to demonstrate how much a God can love, a Savior suffer, in order to save men from perdition and bring eternal life within their reach.”
Nikki: Argh.
Colleen: “Within their reach”? Really? Eternal life is not within my reach. It’s given to me as a gift. I have nothing to do with it. I don’t strive for it. He gives it to me –
Nikki: Praise God!
Colleen: – when I believe. And then there’s this from The Bible Echo. This is published in 1896. “Jesus assumed human nature to demonstrate” – and there’s that word again. She’s always writing that He became a man to do a demonstration, but no. He became a man to be a sacrifice, the Lamb of God. “[He] assumed human nature to demonstrate to the fallen world, to Satan and his synagogue, to the universe of heaven, to the worlds unfallen” – uh, the Bible never says there are unfallen worlds – “that human nature, united with His divine nature, could become entirely obedient to the law of God.” And by the way, whenever Ellen talks about the law of God, she means the Ten Commandments, and that’s really important to understand. If anyone is listening to this who has never been Adventist, you might think, “Well, she’s just referring to the whole Bible, the word of God.” No, she means the Ten Commandments, and it’s consistent in her writing. She also says this in Signs of the Times, 1893, “He came to our world, clothing His divinity with humanity, to bear the test and proving of God. By His example of perfect obedience in His human nature, He teaches us that men may be obedient.” I don’t even have words.
Nikki: This is science fiction.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: And this is not anywhere in Scripture. There’s no support for this.
Colleen: And the last one I’m going to read is from The Bible Echo, published in 1894, “Jesus suffered and withstood the severest temptations and finally yielded His life on Calvary’s cross to demonstrate” – again – “to every member of the human family that the law of God is immutable and that not one jot or tittle can be put aside. The cross is a monument of its immutability, and thus it is demonstrated before all worlds and before the angels and before all men that the law cannot cease to exert eternal jurisdiction.” And there you have it, she specifically connects the cross to vindicating the law. She doesn’t ever say He propitiated the Father with His blood, He paid for our sins on the cross. She connects the cross to the law.
Nikki: This is why you have Adventist art where Jesus has His arm around someone in heaven, and He’s pointing to the Ten Commandments on the wall.
Colleen: Exactly. This is not what this passage of Scripture is telling us at all. Nikki, why don’t you read 8 and 9 again for us, and let’s talk about the amazing things that this passage reveals about what Jesus does for us and in us.
Nikki: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Colleen: What do we learn here from Paul? This has become a core central passage to me that assures me of my position in the Lord. In fact, Richard said yesterday that this whole second chapter of Ephesians is his favorite chapter of the Bible, and this particular passage is one of the reasons it contributes to his liking this passage so much. What do we learn here?
Nikki: Well, first of all we see that we have been saved, so we have a past tense here again. And it says that we’ve been saved through faith. This is sola fide, this is through faith alone.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: And that it’s not of ourselves, it’s a gift. This is a gift of God. We don’t elicit this from Him.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: And we saw that earlier in the chapter, that it was because of His great love with which He loved us, that while we were dead He brought us alive together with Him, so this is all a gift of God. And it’s interesting to me how he says that we’re saved through faith here, and in Colossians he says that we were raised up with Him through faith. So we have that “lost or saved” theme with the “dead or alive.” It’s not about keeping the Sabbath; it’s not about eating right; it’s not about a last-day remnant message from a prophetess. Either you’re dead or you’re alive. And both being raised and being saved is all through faith.
Colleen: And it’s all a gift of God, even the faith, the whole concept.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: In fact, the construction of the Greek is such that the articles and the gender of the articles of this phrase are such that in the Greek it suggests that the entire thing, “By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves,” that whole concept is the gift of God. So every piece of that concept is a gift, the grace, the faith, and not of yourselves. It’s not us.
Nikki: And then in verse 9, “not as a result of works,” just reiterates what you just said, “so that no one may boast.” This is soli Deo gloria. This is for the glory of God alone, His work alone, not ours. We don’t get to boast.
Colleen: That is such a great point, Nikki. These are the solas of the Reformation.
Nikki: They really are, and you know, as I was preparing for this podcast and seeing that, I realized – and this is probably a no-brainer for a lot of our listeners, but it was really driven home for me – that Adventism is not Protestant.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: I mean, I know that it has a false gospel, and so to even try to describe it as Protestant or not seems irrelevant, but they claim to be Protestant, and they celebrated the big anniversary of the Reformation, and Ellen White talked about them being like the new reformers, they were reforming the Reformation, in a sense.
Colleen: Yeah, picked up where Luther left off.
Nikki: But you know, they don’t believe in sola gratia, that they’re saved by grace alone. They don’t understand what grace is, and in fact, I’ve heard them refer to Protestant grace as “cheap grace.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And they don’t understand sola fide, through faith alone. Faith is more akin to believing in the Adventist peculiar message. That’s why they re-baptize –
Colleen: Right!
Nikki: – Christians who are converted into Adventism. They don’t believe in sola Christus, in Christ alone. In fact, they share the process of salvation with Satan, the Adventist scapegoat.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And they believe that we have to apply the blood of Jesus through compulsive repentance, according to their Investigative Judgment doctrine. They don’t actually technically believe in soli Deo gloria either, because they believe that we have a part to play in our salvation. They claim to give glory to God alone, but they believe that we’re going to have stars on our crowns for the souls that we save. They believe that we’re supposed to participate in our sanctification in order that we can be saved, and so the glory goes to God, but also to our faithfulness to God and to His Sabbath. And then there’s sola scriptura. And if they’re honest, Adventists can’t say that they believe in sola scriptura, because everything that’s unique about Adventism comes from an extrabiblical resource, it comes from Ellen G. White, from her prophecies, from her teachings, and in a very real way they continue to have new light as they contextualize her teachings for a new generation. Their fundamental doctrine says that salvation is not yet completed, that they are undergoing this probation, that they are under an Investigative Judgment, and so they have this new information that you will not find in Scripture, that they received from an extrabiblical resource, that they believe they are supposed to spread to the world because common Christianity won’t understand this if all they do is read their Bible, they really need Ellen White and her teachings and the message of Adventism. So they’re not sola scriptura. But Protestant Christianity says salvation is completed, that Jesus accomplished salvation for His people at a point in time. This is rooted in history. And when we come to faith in the Lord Jesus, we are saved. This is why Paul can write about it in the past tense, and this is why Scripture is enough. The event has occurred. It is done. And you can learn anything you need to know about it in the closed canon of Scripture. Scripture is sufficient, and this is why Protestantism says sola scriptura.
Colleen: That’s true. So as we’re walking through this month of December, I decided I would look up a few Christmas carols and see, because as I said, I hated so much having the cross referred to at Christmas. I thought it ruined the sweetness of the season. And I thought, how many Christmas carol lyricists have understood this gospel, and I just have a few to share with you because I found some profound lines in some common Christmas carols, and I just want to read them. For example, some of you may know the carol called Who is He in Yonder Stall. Its words and music were written by a Benjamin Hanby, and these are original words. These are the words of the fourth and fifth stanzas of this particular Christmas carol.
Lo! at midnight, who is He
Prays in dark Gethsemane?
Who is He on yonder tree
Dies in grief and agony?
And then the chorus:
‘Tis the Lord, O wondrous story!
‘Tis the Lord, the King of glory!
At His feet we humbly fall,
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all!
And then the last verse:
Who is He that from the grave
Comes to heal and help and save?
Who is He that from His throne
Rules through all the world alone?
These Christians have known always that the cross was connected with Christmas and that you can’t think of the baby in the manger without thinking of the death He came to die. And then, I loved these two lines from the old hymn We Three Kings. Now, I suspect that most Adventists and non-Adventist know this particular Christmas carol. It’s really familiar. It’s used a lot in children’s Christmas pageants as the little kids dress up and march down the aisle, but I never stopped to think about the words. The entire song is telling the story of meeting the baby Jesus, or the very young child Jesus, from the eyes of these three Gentiles who came from the East to worship Him. These Gentile kings likely knew Jesus was going to come because when they had been exiled to Babylon, the Jewish prophets Daniel and Ezekiel had written during that time, and their writings would have been part of Babylonian collections. They undoubtedly had access to the Jewish prophets, by God’s design, and were expecting this baby and came and worshipped Him. So here are the fourth and fifth verses of the We Three Kings of Orient Are:
Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorr’wing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.
And then the fifth one:
Glorious now behold Him arise;
King and God and sacrifice;
Alleluia, alleluia
Earth to heaven replies.
These are the words that the hymn writer used to describe three Gentile noblemen coming to worship the young Jesus, when even the leaders of Israel refused to acknowledge who He was. But Christians have always known that the cross was part of the story of the manger. Jesus was born, as some have said, in the shadow of the cross.
Nikki: You know, when I first left Adventism, I used to worry about being deceived again. I was listening to these Christians and listening to them teach, and how did I know I was being told the truth? How did I know whether or not I was listening to something that somebody had recently created, you know?
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: But when the Christmas season came that year, it was more clear than ever that everything I was coming to see, supported by Scripture alone, has been held by the church for a very long time, and we have a family tree. We have evidence. These are not new ideas about God; these are not new ideas about Christmas.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: I really encourage new Christians who have recently left Adventism to make sure that in the middle of the Christmas season, it’s okay, listen to Jingle Bells, but get yourself a Christmas hymn album. Get a few of them. Sovereign Grace has a wonderful one. They’ve rewritten O Holy Night to have the gospel in it, and it’s one of my favorite Christmas songs. But listen to these. Listen to the old hymns, listen to the new ones, and listen to your brothers and sisters rejoicing in the news that we’re just discovering here on this side of Adventism.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And know that it is rooted in history, and this is why Jesus came. He came to die for us, and now when we look at the baby in the manger, we see so much more than a nativity scene. We see the whole story. We see the gospel wrapped in swaddling cloth, and it’s why we worship the baby Jesus. It’s why we worship our Lord, because He came to die and to bring us life according to His own great love and mercy and kind intention, not because we elicited it from Him. He set it on us. It was His choice. And He alone brought about our salvation and gave it freely as a gift of grace, and we celebrate that. That’s why we call it “good news,” guys. It really is good news! [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: And we who now know God cannot look indifferently at the manger. It’s hard to get through Christmas without crying a lot, to be honest. [Laughter.]
Colleen: Me too. [Laughter.]
Nikki: Christmas is made new, and because of this, we also can’t look indifferently at Adventism. We long to make known to all of our Adventist loved ones what the true gospel is, and we pray for them this Christmas season. We pray that they will look at the baby in the manger and see that the cross was borne for me, for you, and for them. And now we live because He does. One of my favorite songs about the resurrection life of Christ being given to us and causing us to be alive in Him is written by Andrew Peterson. It’s called His Heart Beats, and I just want to share a couple of the verses from that song:
His heart beats, His blood begins to flow
Waking up what was dead a moment ago
And His heart beats, now everything has changed
‘Cause the blood that brought us peace with God
Is racing through His veins
And His heart beats.He breathes in, His living lungs expand
The heavy air surrounding death turns to breath again
He breathes out, He is Word and flesh once more
The Lamb of God slain for us is a Lion ready to roar
And His heart beats.He rises, glorified in flesh
Clothed in immortality, the firstborn from the dead.
He rises, and His work’s already done
So He’s resting as He rises to reclaim the Bride He won
And His heart beats.The last enemy to be destroyed is death
He must reign until no enemy is left
The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
His heart beats, He will never die againI know that death no longer has dominion over Him
So my heart beats with the rhythm of the saints
As I look for the seeds the King has sown
To burst up from their graves.
His heart beats.
Colleen: So if you do not know the truth that you have been saved by grace through faith, and that’s not of yourselves, but it’s a gift of God so that you may not boast. If you have not experienced that, think about the baby Jesus, who came sinless, alive, so He could die to give you life, and trust Him, and make this the most remarkable and memorable Christmas of your life. So if you have questions or comments, don’t forget to write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Check out proclamationmagazine.com and find our online articles and magazines, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram. And we look forward to sharing another verse from Ephesians 2 with you next week as we approach Christmas.
Nikki: Bye for now.
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