Nikki and Colleen continue talking through chapter two of Ephesians. The unborn John the Baptist recognized that God was in the room. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: Last week we looked together at Ephesians 2:1-3, and we saw that all humans, in their natural condition, are born dead and cut off from God. We talked about the fact that apart from the saving work of Christ, we’re all destined for eternal punishment under the wrath of God on the basis of our very nature. Not a single human is exempt from this reality, no matter how moral or how sincerely they live out their earthly lives. We’re all born into this inevitable fate, and the only way of escape is through the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who gives us a new nature. This week we’ll begin discussing chapter 2:4-10, and we want to slow down and spend some time here as we walk together through this Christmas season. These next verses summarize what Christ has done for us and why He came. In love, Christ entered this world to bring us life. But before we get started, let me remind you that if you have any questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. If you would like to receive our weekly email with ministry news and links to new online articles or if you’d like to donate to the ministry to help us in this work of reaching Adventists with the pure gospel of Scripture, you can visit proclamationmagazine.com. Also, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, before we get started, Colleen, I have to ask you: As an Adventist, when you read through this section of Ephesians, what did you think it meant that “by grace you have been saved”? What did those words mean to you?
Colleen: I don’t remember them meaning very much except sort of a godly platitude. I did not know exactly what grace had to do with my salvation, except that God, sort of like an offended father, decided to overlook my sin because Jesus pled for me, and to just overlook my sin and to grant me salvation if I measured up. So it kind of involved a feeling that God was just condescending to me and offering me forgiveness just because He was good and I needed to know He was good, and it also kind of meant that He would make up the difference. If I did my very, very best and always worked my hardest and was always committed to the Sabbath, that at the very end of my life, if I hadn’t achieved perfection, which, of course, I knew I couldn’t, that He would then make up the difference, and that was somehow His grace to me, like “You poor thing. You tried hard. Now I’ll step in and show you who’s really good, and I’ll do this for you.” It was sort of condescending, and I wasn’t sure.
Nikki: That’s interesting.
Colleen: What about you, Nikki?
Nikki: Well, I’ll start by saying that I never paid attention to the tenses, ever. So I wouldn’t have seen “you have been saved.” I just wouldn’t have even seen it there. And I didn’t understand that grace is connected to gift or giving. I wouldn’t have seen it as the gift of salvation from God. I would have seen grace as “Because I’m so kind and loving and compassionate, I have made this way for you to be saved.” It’s incredible to me that we can read these words out loud, we can read them, and they mean something completely different in our head.
Colleen: I know. That’s what keeps striking me as we go through this. I don’t even know to explain how I thought of it as an Adventist. It was almost like throw-away words that made God sound so good and sweet and me so bad. That’s all I really understood. So, Nikki, in the interest of context, why don’t we read from Ephesians 2:1, just so we all remember what it says about our natural state, and read through to verse 10. And then we’ll back up, and we’ll spend a little extra time looking at verses 4 and 5 and how the incarnation of the Lord Jesus as God the Son has changed everything for us. This is something I did not understand when I was an Adventist.
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. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”
Colleen: In verses 4 and 5, we read that God is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, and that He made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved) – there’s that phrase. As we look at this, the context is we were dead. So when you look at verse 4, what is Paul telling us about God and His mercy? What is His mercy and what is it that He did through His mercy? How do you see verses 4 and 5 when you look at what Paul is actually saying here?
Nikki: What I see is that our salvation is completely and totally initiated by God Himself on the basis of His mercy and His love for us. He came to us in our spiritual death, in this helpless state, and He chose to set His love on us and to bring us to life with Christ.
Colleen: It’s amazing! And somehow, this passage here in Ephesians 2 is all built upon and grounded in the truths that we learned in chapter 1, that the Father chose us and predestined us to be adopted, that we’ve been placed in Christ, and that in Christ we have become heirs, and that He has sealed us with the Holy Spirit. These are the giant indicatives that make it possible for us to be able to understand Ephesians 2 at all.
Nikki: And it’s interesting, when you talk to an Adventist about the original human condition and what the rest of Christianity teaches, according to Scripture, they’ll argue that a God of love would not have His wrath directed at anyone. They treat us like they have the upper hand on knowing the love of God.
Colleen: Moral superiority.
Nikki: Yes! But Scripture tells us in spite of that condition, in spite of the fact that we were enemies of God, it was His love and His mercy that He chose to set upon us that causes us to be rescued from that.
Colleen: It’s only Him. Now, I have to say also that that word “grace,” I learned in Adventist elementary school that grace means “unmerited favor,” and that’s actually technically true, “favor” meaning goodwill or pleasant disposition or something good that you don’t deserve is being given to you, but I never understood as an Adventist what that meant in terms of God and Jesus. It’s been really interesting to me as a Christian to hear Christians use an acronym for grace that somehow makes the word come alive for me. It’s “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.” “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.” And so that understanding of grace changes all of this. It is by grace you have been saved. Well, that means God’s riches is everything that is His, everything even that I can’t see or imagine, but that’s been extended to me not just because He decided to look kindly on me because, you know, I was trying so hard and was so desperate to be good. No! He grants me His riches because of Jesus, at Jesus’ expense. That’s the piece I didn’t understand, and that’s the piece that I see Adventism doesn’t like to talk about because it requires us dealing with who Jesus really is, why He really came, and what His blood was about.
Nikki: Well, and that acronym doesn’t fit their worldview because when they talk about the grace that Christians talk about, they refer to it as “cheap grace.” They don’t get the “at Christ’s expense” part.
Colleen: Oh, my goodness. That is so true. So when we look at this, God being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead, made us alive – “by grace you have been saved” – we have to ask ourselves, what actually is this grace of God founded on? What does it mean, “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense”? And this is where we come to Christmas. Understanding the incarnation has transformed Christmas for me, Nikki.
Nikki: Me too.
Colleen: So how has it changed for you?
Nikki: It’s just so full of worship. I can’t hear a Christmas carol without crying. The gospel is beautifully portrayed in the Christmas carols. I had no idea. I had no idea. And when I think of what God did, that He chose to come here to die for me, I’m completely humbled.
Colleen: And I never understood, as an Adventist, that when He came as a baby, He didn’t just come just exactly like me, to show me how to be good and to regain salvation and oneness with God. That’s how I understood it as an Adventist. I did not understand that He came, yes, as a man; yes, as a human with a mortal body; but never giving up any of the full attributes of God. I didn’t understand that. I didn’t understand that He really did have all of His omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence contained in that body. I was taught He set that aside. But if He had, He wouldn’t have been God, and I didn’t understand why He needed to be both God and man and that He didn’t come to show me how to be good. Before we look at a really significant passage in Luke 1, of all places, would you share with us, Nikki, one of the Christmas carols that has kind of opened your eyes to who Jesus really is and what He really did when He came? We’ve got a couple carols that we’re going to share. I’d like you to start with the one that you mentioned to me earlier.
Nikki: Well, I remember, it was my first Christmas as a Christian in 2010, and we were at church singing “What Child is This?” a Christmas carol I’ve sung my whole life, listened to my whole life, and we got to this part where it says:
Why lies He in such mean estate
Where ox and lamb are feeding?
Good Christians, fear, for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading.Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,
The cross be borne for me, for you,
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The babe, the Son of Mary.
And I just cried. I just cried. “The silent Word is pleading”? In the manger the silent Word was pleading. And the picture that the cross was borne for us was overwhelming.
Colleen: I used to hate the mention of the cross at Christmas. As an Adventist, I didn’t like hearing about it at Christmas, and in Adventism I didn’t hear about it at Christmas. But if I ever went into or listened to on the radio a Christian Christmas presentation, the cross was always mentioned, and like you pointed out, it’s even in the carols if we do all the verses.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I hated that. I used to feel resentful, like, “Don’t mess up my Christmas with this messy cross. It’s not the same holiday. The cross is Easter and the resurrection, and the birth of the baby is Christmas.” I had no idea that the cross was why Christmas existed. A hymn that has really impacted me is “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Now, I grew up singing this out of the Adventist Hymnal. In the Adventist Hymnal, verse 1 is like it is in other hymnals and verse 3, “Hail, the heaven-born Prince of peace!” That verse is the same. But when I look at the second verse, the Adventist version is not the same as the version sung among Christians all over the world. Now, here’s the verse from the Adventist Hymnal:
Christ by highest heaven adored,
Christ the everlasting Lord,
In the manger born a king,
While adoring angels sing.
Peace on earth, to men goodwill,
Bid the trembling soul be still.
Christ on earth has come to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with those words. They’re true; they’re all true.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But they don’t identify the nature and identity of Jesus at His core. Here’s that verse as it occurs in a Christian hymnal:
Christ by highest heaven adored,
Christ the everlasting Lord.
Now, it starts to deviate:
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a virgin’s womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with men to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Well, what do you see in that verse, Nikki, that wasn’t in the Adventist version?
Nikki: This baby is God.
Colleen: And it’s not God like, “Well, I’m going to grant you some deity so that you can call yourself God.” This is the full identity of God in human flesh: “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see.” That’s the full substance of the Trinity. That’s who Jesus is. Every person of the Trinity has all the substance of the full almighty God. That’s who Jesus was, even in flesh. I didn’t understand that.
Nikki: He was born alive.
Colleen: Explain what you mean by that.
Nikki: Well, we saw earlier in Ephesians that we were all born dead in sin. We were born with spirits that were cut off from God. We looked at that last week, that our spirits are born dead. And that we’re walking around in that condition. But when Christ came, He was “veiled in flesh the Godhead.” He was fully alive. He was the author of life from the moment He was conceived, so He didn’t need to be born again.
Colleen: He’s the only human ever born that did not have to be born again. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. When we trust Him, when we see who He is and what He did and believe, we are born of the Spirit at that moment and become spiritually alive. Jesus did not have to become spiritually alive. He was God. And it’s such as interesting thing, Nikki, when I think about it, we’ve talked before about the fact that we’re born in sin, into the domain of darkness, as Paul says, that communal grave. Every human born is born spiritually dead and has to be transferred out by God when we trust Jesus. But how are we going to get life brought into this domain of darkness so that we can be transferred out, and that’s the mystery of the incarnation. It’s like God smuggled life into the domain of darkness by putting God the Son into a mortal body and having Him be born of a mortal woman in the domain of darkness, but He smuggled life in. He had eternal life that never stopped, and He lived a sinless life because He was God, because He was sinless, because He had no sin in Him. He died a perfect, sinless, human death, and He rose again and broke the curse that locked us into this communal grave of death. He broke open our communal grave and gave us His blood as the new and living way out, to be reconnected with the Father.
Nikki: And this is how the gospel is so different from Adventism. I remember as a new former hearing people say that it was a different gospel. Well, it is, and we see that in this passage and in what you’ve just described, this need for life and the fact that Christ came, and He smuggled life to give us life. We see right here in verse 5, even when we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been – past tense have been – saved. Our salvation is on the basis of our belief in Christ. It’s about life and death. It is not about vindicating God before a watching universe. It is not about perfectly keeping the Sabbath and aligning yourself with the one who created. That is the Adventist narrative, and that’s not what this is about. This salvation, in just these two verses, is very clearly described as being alive in Christ and rescued from that domain of darkness and that communal grave.
Colleen: It’s amazing. And when you think of grace, “by grace you have been saved,” as you said so clearly, Nikki, when you think of grace as being “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense,” all we have to do is look at the incarnation to start seeing what’s Christ’s expense really was.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He humbled Himself. He left His glory, as Paul explains in Philippians 2 and 3. He left His glory in heaven with the Father. He came and took not just a human body. He took a mortal human body, a body that had to die. He came and humbled Himself, God the Son, and became the Son of Man, born in the ordinary way to a mortal woman who needed a Savior herself, and that’s something that some religions don’t understand either. They believe that Mary was perfect and had never sinned and that was how she bore a sinless Son. No, the Bible never says that. What made Jesus sinless was the fact that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and was God. Mary bore her own Savior. Such an amazing thought!
Nikki: [Laughter.] That’s incredible.
Colleen: There’s a passage in Luke 1 that tells the story, and we all really do know it. It was a new thought for me a few years ago when I was reading through this with Richard, when we were reading through the Bible together. What I realized is God has given us in His eternal word the account of Jesus’ conception and birth and the interaction between Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, who bore John the Baptist, to tell us some really important things about who Jesus is. Things that we know can only be what the Bible tells us they are. Why don’t we just look over at Luke 1 because as we’re starting out into the Christmas season with this passage from Ephesians, we really need to see how the Bible tells us that what we’ve said about Jesus is true. Luke 1 begins with the story of the angel meeting Zacharias in the temple and telling him that he and Elizabeth are going to have a son. Now, we all know that story, but something really interesting was said to him by the angel, and in verse 15, Nikki, we find out something about John that’s really important. Do you mind reading that?
Nikki: “For he will be great in the sight of the Lord; and he will drink no wine or liquor, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb.”
Colleen: Okay, we learn that he’s going to grow up in the way of a Nazarite, like he will be living under a Nazarite vow. He will not drink any wine, any liquor, no fruit of the vine. But then we learn another thing. What is the significance of the end of that sentence, Nikki? “He will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb”?
Nikki: While he was still in his mother’s womb, God filled him with the Holy Spirit.
Colleen: But he had to be filled. He wasn’t automatically filled with the Holy Spirit. And just like us, he was born to a mortal man and a mortal woman, and he was conceived in sin, as David said about himself, “In sin my mother conceived me.” That’s how we’re all conceived as humans on this side of Adam.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He was also conceived in sin, but God filled him with the Holy Spirit, gave him new life, while he was still in Elizabeth’s womb. That’s a really remarkable piece of information that changes how we can understand the story of Elizabeth and Mary and the whole role of John the Baptist. But John the Baptist was mortal. John the Baptist was not naturally spiritually alive. God had to make him spiritually alive, and He did it before he was born. Then we come – a little later in the chapter, we hear about the Angel Gabriel coming to Mary and announcing to her that she would have this son as a virgin, and the Holy Spirit came upon her, and she became pregnant with Jesus. And then, in verse 39, we read the story of Mary going to see Elizabeth. The angel had told her that her relative Elizabeth was also pregnant. Now, Elizabeth, as we recall, had been barren. She couldn’t have children, and John the Baptist was a supernatural, miraculous pregnancy, and Mary knew that. It was so interesting to me that God provided her with an older woman who was also experiencing a supernatural pregnancy with whom she could compare notes, who would understand her own confusion and the misunderstanding of the community towards her. God provided her someone who would understand, which is an amazing thing in itself.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Nikki, do you mind reading Luke 1:39-45, see what it tells us about John in Elizabeth’s womb and Mary, who is bearing Jesus?
Nikki: “Now at this time Mary arose and went in a hurry to the hill country, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she cried out with a loud voice and said, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And how has it happened to me that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.'”
Colleen: You know, we know that story so well that it almost seems like just, “Oh, yeah, there are those words again,” but there are some really amazing things happening here. So Mary enters this house, and what happens?
Nikki: All she does is speak, and the baby leaps in Elizabeth’s womb.
Colleen: Isn’t that amazing? What have we just read from the first part of Luke 1 about the unborn John the Baptist?
Nikki: That he would be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother’s womb.
Colleen: What would cause John the Baptist to leap when he heard Mary’s voice?
Nikki: Well, he recognized his Savior. He recognized God in the room. [Laughter.]
Colleen: He did! And God in the room was in the form of an unborn baby inside Mary.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: The Holy Spirit informed John the Baptist that his Savior was in the room, even though not yet born, and he confirmed to his mother that this was also his Savior and her Savior, and what happened to Elizabeth as the baby leaped?
Nikki: The Holy Spirit filled her.
Colleen: And she prophesied.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: She said, “What have I done?” “Blessed are you.” “How has it happened that the mother of my Lord would come to me?” What is she acknowledging about the unborn Jesus?
Nikki: That He’s her Lord.
Colleen: That’s amazing. You know, I never saw these things as an Adventist. I always thought of them as sort of, oh, retroactive, “Oh, you know, it’s a sweet story. These things happened.” But at the moment they’re happening, Elizabeth knows who Jesus is. At the moment they’re happening, Elizabeth knows who Mary is because the Holy Spirit is informing her and has caused her own unborn baby to confirm the identity of his Savior in the room.
Nikki: Now, isn’t it true that this was Mary’s first trimester? So she wouldn’t have even been showing. But all she did was speak and Elizabeth knew that she was with child and that it was her Lord.
Colleen: This is a miraculous event.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: This is something that only God could have done. But, you know, it’s been so impacting to me. This is the first evidence in Scripture, these are the first witnesses, of the identity of Jesus. You know, God knew that history would attempt to destroy the identity of Jesus, to destroy the Christmas story, to destroy the importance of Jesus. We all came out of a religion that stripped Jesus of His true power and identity and nature. God knew that people would do this to the memory and story and reality of His Son, and the first witnesses of Jesus’ identity were a woman and the unborn baby that she carried. And this has a lot of implications for me, with my Adventist background. First of all, as an Adventist I had no problem understanding why it would be permitted to abort a baby. I mean, it is the Adventist stance. Adventism is pro-choice, in spite of their rather carefully worded statement on abortion. But they are pro-choice. They teach their medical students to do abortions and they do abortions, and their Adventist doctors do abortions in clinics. These are common within Adventism. When I really saw what this passage in Luke was saying, I realized, you can never think of an unborn baby as not a person. God would not send His Spirit to make a not-a-person alive. John was a human being, a full human being, who testified to the identity of Jesus before Jesus was born. Jesus was a full human being. He was God the Son inside His mother. It’s an amazing thing!
Nikki: It’s incredible to me that the witness of John, that it occurred while he was still in his mother’s womb, that he was brought to life in Christ, with Christ. It says in Ephesians that He made us alive together with Christ.
Colleen: Wow.
Nikki: And here is little infant, little unborn John being made alive together with Christ, very literally in the same room.
Colleen: Oh, that’s amazing!
Nikki: It’s a beautiful picture. And you know, another – I just have to share, this Christmas carol, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” that you referred to earlier, has another section in it that was brand new to me, and it makes me think of this. It says:
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
I didn’t know what “second birth” was –
Colleen: No.
Nikki: – as an Adventist. And I have no idea how I would have interpreted this, “Born that man no more may die,” because we did die. I never saw John 11 that says that those who believe in me will never die. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: And so all of this life and death, all of this being made alive in Christ never even factored into my thinking about the gospel, about the reason that Jesus came. That was never a part of the story. It was about Him coming and showing us that by the power of the Holy Spirit we could keep the law and uphold the law, and our salvation was on the basis of our choices, our life choices, and our behaviors, and it was a completely different story. It was incredibly distracting, and I never saw, never saw, that it had to do with life and death. I never saw that it was Christ Himself who brings us to life and that this is what it is to be saved.
Colleen: I didn’t understand that either, Nikki. So when we look back at 4 and 5, “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).” I realize now, especially thinking about Elizabeth and John and Mary and the unborn Jesus, I realize Christ’s expense was huge.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: His incarnation was just the beginning. But like you pointed out, and I’d never thought of it before, God brought the unborn John to life when the unborn Jesus entered the room so that Elizabeth and John, who would be the forerunner of Christ, and Mary would all know for sure who Mary’s baby was: The Savior of the world! The one who would bring the dead to life. Not make the bad people good, but bring the dead to life. So when I look at verse 5, “By grace you have been saved,” it means something completely different to me now. God’s grace to me in bringing me to life was based on the great expense of God the Son, who became a human baby, was gestated for 39, 40 weeks in the womb of a fallen woman named Mary, who He had to save as well. He came and He lived as a poor Jew, and He died a sinner’s death, without ever having sinned, and this great expense of God the Son is the basis on which God the Father gives me new life.
Nikki: And when we look at these verses in the context of Ephesians 1 and we see that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the earth, that He made us alive while we were dead, not once we proved that we were worth it, not after we gave up smoking or gave up drinking or were re-baptized and kept the Sabbath. None of that was a prerequisite. There are no prerequisites. Death, being dead, is the prerequisite. He came, and He rescued us from that, long before we ever even recognized what He was doing in our lives.
Colleen: And if you have not recognized that you are dead in your sins and trespasses, as Ephesians 2 states all of us are when we’re born. If you haven’t recognized that, if you haven’t recognized who Jesus is and what He’s done, think about this Christmas story. Think about Elizabeth with the unborn John, recognizing their Savior as Mary walked into the room with the unborn Jesus, and trust Him. Thank God for the great expense that Christ paid so that you can know Him.
Nikki: If you have any questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. If you’d like to receive our weekly email with ministry news and links to new online articles or if you’d like to donate to the ministry, you can visit proclamationmagazine.com. Also, remember to follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. We look forward to revisiting these passages again, in light of the Christmas story.
Colleen: And we’ll see you next week.
Nikki: Bye.
- 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