Are You Working Hard to be Saved?—Ephesians 3, Part 2 | 89

Nikki and Colleen talk about what it means to do the works of God and how to tell if your works are only the works of your “flesh”. Transcription by Gwen Billington.

 

Colleen:  Welcome to Former Adventist podcast.  I’m Colleen Tinker.

Nikki:  And I’m Nikki Stevenson.

Colleen:  Today we are going to look at one of my favorite passages in Ephesians, Paul’s prayer in chapter 3, verses 14 to 21.  Early in my life after Adventism, I realized I didn’t really know how to pray for people.  One evening our women’s Bible study leader, Elizabeth Inrig said, as she taught the group, “If you don’t know what to pray, you can always pray Scripture.  The Bible is God’s word, and you can be certain that you can always pray God’s word back to Him.”  That was when I began praying this prayer from Ephesians for Richard.  And sometime later I added my sons when I prayed this prayer, and I even pray this prayer for myself as well.  But before we look at this overflow of Paul’s heart to God for his spiritual children, I want to remind you that we love hearing from you.  Write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com, and check out our online magazine and articles at proclamationmagazine.com.  There you can find links to our Former Adventist YouTube channel and to this podcast, and you can sign up to receive our weekly Proclamation! email and also donate by using the donate tab there.  Your 5-star reviews of this podcast wherever you listen help our audience to grow.  And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram.  We also want to take this opportunity to ask you to participate in our 2021 Former Adventist Conference on February 12 to 14.  Because of COVID restrictions, we will be online-only this year.  But those who register will be able to participate in Zoom breakout sessions, as well as watching the livestream of the entire conference.  There is no charge this year, but you must register to participate in the Zoom sessions.  Just email us at formeradventist@gmail.com, send us your mailing address, and let us know you want to be part of the conference.  But now, Nikki, before we read our passage, I have a question for you.  As an Adventist, how would you have explained what it meant to be “filled up to all the fullness of God”?

Nikki:  I feel like I always give you the same answer.

Colleen:  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  I think I would have thought of that as, well, going back to what Ellen White said, “Christ formed in you, the hope of glory.”  It would have been this idea that the better I was, the more refined my character and the better I kept the law, the more of God I would receive and more of Christ would be formed in me.

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  You know, that’s so interesting.  “More of Christ would be formed in me.”

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  It wasn’t Himself in you, it was somehow Christ-likeness –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  – bit by bit, being put together like a jigsaw puzzle somewhere in you, probably in your brain.

Nikki:  [Laughter.]  Yeah, I never really thought about where it was occurring, but I didn’t ever think of myself as having a spirit.  It was about my behavior and my character, my commitment to make good choices, to do the right thing, live like Jesus lived, that whole “What would Jesus do?” thing.

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  Yeah.  “Thing,” yeah.  [Laughter.] 

Nikki:  [Laughter.] 

Colleen:  Oh, my.  You know, hearing you talk about it, I know response would have been the same.  I don’t remember how I thought about this passage, though I know I read it.  Overall, my general memory of approaching passages like this was thinking of it as somehow evocative, somehow beautiful in an abstract way, kind of metaphorical, kind of picturesque, figure-of-speechy, and like, whatever that mean, it sounds lovely, and always being unsure how it would ever occur in me.  I didn’t know how to make it happen.

Nikki:  Well, and remember, being filled with God or visited by Him, it was completely related to how we behaved, because as soon as we grieved Him, He’d leave us.

Colleen:  That’s right.

Nikki:  So this picture of being filled full meant I was no longer grieving Him.

Colleen:  Yes.  It really did always boil down to how we acted –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  – and how well our wills were in submission to our intentions and desires.  My goodness, it was exhausting.

Nikki:  And you know, for the sake of our non-Adventist audience, you need to know that Ellen White taught that when we grieved God, He left us.

Colleen:  Yes.  That’s why so many Adventists are baptized over and over again.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  They feel they’ve sinned so badly that they have to start over, and baptism is the fresh start, where your sins get washed away.

Nikki:  Yeah, it’s where you’re born again again.

Colleen:  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  And again.

Colleen:  And again and again.  [Laughter.]  Well, Nikki, would you read for us this amazing and beautiful prayer that Paul prays for the Ephesians?  This is coming right after his parenthetical break, where he explained his calling, to explain the New Covenant.  That’s what we talked about last week.  And we talked last week about the fact that the first verse in chapter 3 is the beginning of Paul’s thought, where he actually said, “for this reason,” which is what he’s saying right after chapter 2, where he explains that we’re Jew and Gentile are made into one new person in Christ and being built into a temple for the Lord, “For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles,” and then he launched off into an explanation of how significant it was that he was called to speak to the Gentiles, but he comes back to that original thought now in verse 14, and it’s one of the most beautiful prayers, in my opinion, in the entire Bible.  So would you mind reading that?

Nikki:  “For this reason I bend my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner self, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God.  Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.  Amen.”

Colleen:  It’s so amazing to me in verse 14 how vulnerable Paul is when he starts this prayer.  In Paul’s day, when Jews prayed, they prayed standing up.  It was a sign of respect.  It was a sign of – it was how they prayed.  But Paul here is so overcome with what he has just explained about the work of God through Jesus Christ in the Body of Christ that he’s overcome with emotion, and he drops to his knees, and he says, “I bow my knee before the Father,” and then he talks about what that means, that God is our Father.  He’s overwhelmed by the magnitude of God’s work.  So when you read here, Nikki, “through whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,” what do you understand Paul to be saying here?

Nikki:  Well, first of all, I just want to say, as a Bible-believing Christian, I love the fact that Paul talks about families in heaven.  So I looked in my commentaries, and have a quote here from John MacArthur on this passage.  It says, “Paul was not teaching the universal Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man, but was simply referring to believers from every era of history, those who are dead in heaven and those who are alive on earth,” and that picture is just so incredible, that we have family in heaven and on earth, each of these families created by God, named by God, and ultimately under His Fatherhood.  It made me think of something that Pastor Gary said when my son, Joshua, was baptized.  And I actually wrote it down.  I wanted to share it with you guys.  I thought it was so cool.  He said, “Your family names and your first names are wonderful names, but there is another sense in which when you’re baptized you’re taking another name on yourself, the name of the Lord Jesus, and publicly identifying yourself with Him.”  And then he went on to say, “In this act of going under the water and coming up again, we are saying that even though I may have a wonderful family and all these blessings of God, now I am identifying myself first of all not as a person of my family name but as someone who is bearing the name of Christ.”  That came to mind as I read this, and it really seems to be the theme in this letter.

Colleen:  It does.

Nikki:  Paul says that we are created in Christ, that we are now of the Father’s household, we’re of His household, we are family in Him, and so thinking of Paul, who has been brought to this point of worship, of prayer, in this letter to the Ephesians, praising God for this family that’s in heaven and that’s on earth and acknowledging that.

Colleen:  That’s wonderful.  When I think about it, the Father is the one that generates the family.  You know, John 1:12 says that to those who believe in Jesus, to all who believe in His name, was given the right to become children of God, born not of the will of man or of a husband, but born of God.  So this is what Paul is referring to.  He’s talking about people here who have been born of God.  And it reminds me how thoroughly Paul explains in other places in the New Testament, even at the beginning of chapter 2 of Ephesians, that all of us are born dead in sin, and he says in 1 Corinthians 15 and in Romans 5 that we are by nature children of Adam, but when we believe, we become children of Christ, we are put into Christ, and we become literally born of God.  So that’s who Paul is talking about here, and I love that John MacArthur quote you read because he said, “This isn’t about the universal Fatherhood of God or the brotherhood of man.”  A lot of people assume, including Adventists, I might add, we’re all brothers, we’re all children of God.  No, we’re all creations of God, but Scripture is very clear that only those who trust in Jesus are His children.  So when Paul says God is the Father, and every family on earth derives its name from Him, he’s speaking in context of believers.  But I think it’s really interesting that God identifies Himself to us as Father.  So when you have people come along and say, “Well, God isn’t human.  We can’t say He’s gendered,” and Richard and I have in the past listened to some sermons by somebody from a different denomination, a non-Christian denomination, actually, who is a pastor of an old friend of Richard’s who he went to academy with.  But this pastor would start every service by saying, “Father, Mother, God,”  “Father, Mother, God.”  And God never identifies Himself to us that way.

Nikki:  Um-um.

Colleen:  He identifies Himself as Father, and if we see Scripture as being the word of God, then we have to say, this is how He asks us to think of Him, how He asks us to identify Him, and how He asks us to speak to Him.  When Paul says, “every family in heaven and on earth derives its name from the Father,” he’s first of all speaking to believers, but there is a way in which he is saying, “God, the one who created humanity, has defined and identified who we are.”  So even within our families in the world in general, believer or unbeliever, they are headed by fathers in God’s eternal plan of creation.  So I just think that’s an important thing to remember in this day when gender is being questioned, family structure is being questioned.  God identifies Himself as a father, and that’s something that’s instructive for how He created us.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.  It was designed by Him.  You know, and it’s important to point out too, given our Adventist background and the Adventist background of so many of our listeners, that this clearly states that believers go to be with the Lord when they die –

Colleen:  Yeah.

Nikki:  – that there are believers in heaven.  And you know, I was thinking about what would I have thought of this particular verse as an Adventist?  And I think I would have attributed these families to these watching planets, who were watching us vindicate God’s character.

Colleen:  Ohhh.

Nikki:  And it wouldn’t have even occurred to me to see that there are people who are in heaven with the Lord right – as Paul wrote that and obviously right now too.

Colleen:  That’s true.  That is so true.  This text clearly attacks the doctrine of soul sleep.

Nikki:  It’s not what we would point to as a central passage or a didactic teaching on the issue, but it’s just more support, more evidence that we see all throughout Scripture, that assumption that, of course, they’re with Him.

Colleen:  I agree completely.  I see that here.  I think that’s a fair thing to derive from that verse.  And he moves on from that to verse 16, “…that He [the Father] would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.”  Well, what is he saying here about believers and their relationship with God and the Spirit?  And what does that do for a believer?

Nikki:  Well, the first thing I see when I look at this is God’s will, His effectual work.  This is motivated by Him.  He’s granting this to us.  It reminds me of what you said a few moments ago, when you quoted from the first chapter of John, that we are born not of the will of man, nor even of the will of the flesh.  This is all God initiated, and here we have Paul praying that God would grant us, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner self.  So even that strength, even that growing, that connection with the Spirit, comes from God.  I couldn’t help but think about the fact that in Adventism we’re told to strengthen the power of God in us through spiritual disciplines, keeping the Sabbath, avoiding sin, as defined by Adventism.  It was the will of the flesh that strengthened our connection with the Holy Spirit, that empowered us, that –

Colleen:  Yeah.

Nikki:  – that was able to elicit those light beams from the throne room.

Colleen:  [Laughter.] 

Nikki:  It was our will. 

Colleen:  Uh-huh.

Nikki:  But here we see this is God initiated.  He’s granting this to us, and it’s according to the riches of His glory, which is again reminiscent of chapter 1, where he talks about all the blessings in the heavenly places that God blessed us with in Christ.  That was in chapter 1, in verse 3, and then in 1:18 he talks about the riches of His glory in the inheritance. 

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  This is all a part of our inheritance.

Colleen:  Absolutely.

Nikki:  This is God-given.

Colleen:  It’s so amazing, actually.  You know, another thing I was thinking of when I was reading this verse is this business of being strengthened through His Spirit in the inner man.  We know from Ephesians 1:13 and 14 that when we have believed the gospel of our salvation, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.  He indwells us.  This is the unique gift of what God does for believers in the New Covenant.  This is part of the new birth.  And I remember – I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I just think it’s worth talking about again, that the indwelling Holy Spirit is not the same thing as what people who don’t worship God experience when they are possessed by a spirit.

Nikki:  Right.

Colleen:  This is a completely different thing.  I just remember a friend of mine saying, when we were still Adventists and we were starting to understand that the New Testament taught that the Holy Spirit indwells us, and I remember her saying to me, “I’ve always thought of the Holy Spirit indwelling me as a kind of positive demon possession, like He’ll make you do something for God that you don’t want to do.”  I just want to say, demons – when demons take over somebody, you think about the demoniac that Jesus cast out the legion of demons and then the demons went into the pigs and drove them off the cliff, that demoniac was living among the tombs, scratching himself with stones, unclothed, scary, making noises.  The people of town were afraid of him.  Demons destroy the personhood of the person they inhabit.  They take over the person’s identity; they use the person’s strength and energy for their nefarious purposes.  But when we trust Jesus and the Holy Spirit indwells us, it’s not like that at all.  He doesn’t use us for His purposes, He gives us Himself, and He gives us who we really are.  He gives us life.  Demons take and suck life out of the bodies they inhabit, but the Lord gives us life, gives us purpose, gives us sanity.  And remember what happened to that demoniac when Jesus cast the demons out of him.  He was in his right mind, the Bible tells us, suddenly in his right mind, and he wanted to follow Jesus and go with Him, and Jesus said, “No, go back to the town and tell your family and all the people who know who you are what I have done for you.”  He gave him his sanity.  So when I think about the Holy Spirit indwelling us as the gift of God when we trust Jesus and how He gives us our true identity.  He gives us life; He gives us His power; He gives us His knowledge.  And I think about Ellen White and what happened when she would have her visions, which she claimed to be from the Lord, and she would see her spirit guide, whom she called the “handsome young man,” what was going on with her?

Nikki:  I read that she would stop breathing and that she would get really stiff, and you know, you read all of that stuff, and you hear people talk about it, but when we went to Michigan we toured a little village.  What was that called again?

Colleen:  The Adventist Village.

Nikki:  Oh.  [Laughter.] 

Colleen:  In Battle Creek.

Nikki:  Okay.  So we toured the Adventist Village, and we went into a church.  They had all of these little – I don’t know if it was the original church or if it was just built to look like it, but we were in there, my kids were with us, and the tour guide told the story of I think it was a doctor who was very skeptical of Ellen White and her visions.  He was not an Adventist.  And he was invited to come to one of their services so that he could examine Ellen if she went into this trance that she went into.  And sure enough, she did, and she stopped breathing, and she became very rigid, and it was for a long time.  I don’t remember how long it was for.  It was unnatural.  And the doctor tried running out of the church.  He was terrified.  That’s not the response that a person has when the Holy Spirit is in the room.

Colleen:  No.

Nikki:  And the elders blocked the door and wouldn’t let him leave.  And they told him he needed to go and examine her.  And I just remember hearing that story and just feeling chills and sorry for that poor doctor.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  What was kind of funny is, at the end of this story, the man invited us to come and have our picture taken by the podium, and not a person in the room wanted to do it.

Colleen:  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  But yeah, no, the descriptions of her when she would have these visions and go into these trances that she said were from God were very reminiscent of demon possession, to be honest.

Colleen:  Absolutely.  Absolutely.  It was not what this is describing as being indwelt by the Spirit of God so that Christ will dwell with power and strengthen us in the inner man.  And then we look at 17 and 18 and see the continuation of Paul’s thought about this.  “So that” – in other words, He will grant us the riches of His glory through the Spirit in the inner man “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.”  Nikki, what is the purpose, then, of the Holy Spirit strengthening us in the inner man, which we understand now is our spirit?  What’s the purpose of that?

Nikki:  Well, this strengthening is causing us to know more of God, to comprehend His love and to be filled with the fullness of God.  And it’s interesting, in verse 16 the assumption is that the Spirit is there, because they’re born again.

Colleen:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Nikki:  And it’s the Spirit who strengthens.  And I want to share this quote that I found on preceptaustin.org, and it’s from author Bob George, and I think it’s helpful when we’re talking about being strengthened by the Spirit and walking with the Lord, and the fruit of knowing these things about Christ.  So author Bob George has observed that, “It’s possible for a Christian to live as a practical atheist.  That’s a person who, despite right doctrine, approaches life as if he were the only resource available.  Such an approach is as unnecessary and impractical as buying a powerful car and then pushing it.”

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  I love that.

Nikki:  So here we see Paul is praying that the believers would be strengthened by the Spirit to live the life that God’s given them to live, and we do that through knowing more of Christ, knowing more of His love, and it’s a knowing that nobody can teach it –

Colleen:  That’s right.

Nikki:  – and once you know it, nobody can take it from you.

Colleen:  That’s so true.

Nikki:  It’s the experience of being indwelt by God.  You know, when I read verse 17, “…so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,” I had a pause while we were preparing for this podcast, because Paul’s writing to believers who he’s already said have been risen with Christ –

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  – that He brought them to life, that they were indwelled, in chapter 1, by the Spirit when they believed the true gospel.  So what is this here, “…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,” that he’s praying this now?  And I went and I looked up some commentaries on that same Precept Austin website, and the consensus among them was that this dwelling is not about the moment of our salvation.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  This dwelling seems to be related to His preeminence or His dominant rule in our inner man, in our spirit.  So rather than just passively being in us and, like Bob George describes, the person pushing the powerful car –

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  Right.

Nikki:  – rather than being that passive observer, this dwelling that Paul’s praying for, this strengthening, is about Him taking over, it’s His lordship, if you will, it’s that effectual work of the Lord in our life, and that comes through faith.  That comes through trust, another word for faith here.  It’s trusting Him.  It’s submitting everything to Him.  And as we do that, we know more of Him.

Colleen:  I love that.  It goes right along with what he says in the next phrase, “And that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints…”  That “being rooted and grounded in love” seems really significant to me because, you know, today, in the climate we live in, it does seem like this idea of love and fairness and understanding people’s legacies and past and the pain and the oppression that they might have experienced or that their race experienced or that their country experienced is supposed to cause us to love them in a way that’s really self-abnegating, so that we give them the privileges that we’ve had, to make up – that is not the definition of love in the Bible.  First of all, the love that rights the wrong of oppression is the love that caused Jesus to go to the cross.  That was a singular love that none of us can do for one another.  He is the one who took the sins done to us, paid the price of those sins, and sets us free from sin.  We can’t do that for one another.  But what we have to admit is that we all are born with the same kind of equal sin.  You know, Ephesians 2 taught us that we’re all born dead in sin.  So if we see that the Bible defines our true identities, our true natures, and that there’s only one of two identities in which we can stand, we are either dead in sin by nature or we are alive in Christ, the way you were just explaining.  And when we are alive in Christ, that’s when we become able to love as God loves.  To define love as based in any way on a human value is limiting.  It’s not true love.  But Christ gives us His love so that we can look at another person and realize, the way I can help another person is to introduce them to the reality that’s found in Christ.

Nikki:  Another interesting thing about that word “love” there, Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus, and the letter that John wrote to the church in Ephesus much later, that we find in the book of Revelation, actually says, “You guys have done a great job fighting off false doctrine, but you’ve lost your first love” –

Colleen:  How interesting.

Nikki:  – and the word there again is “agape.”  It’s the same word used in both letters.  And this is that preferential love.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  This is family love.  It’s preferential, and it is so based on Christ, based on the fact that we are family who derives our name from the Father.

Colleen:  That’s such an interesting point, Nikki.  And it’s interesting that he goes on in 18 to say that this being rooted and grounded in love through faith in Christ is for the purpose of our understanding and comprehending with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and you know what’s so interesting?  He doesn’t say of what specifically.

Nikki:  Yeah, I noticed that.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  But in context I think we can see this as referring to the work of God.  Prior to this chapter, he was describing the work of God in creating one new man in Christ and in creating the church, who is being built into a temple of God through the Spirit.  And now that we’re born again and brought into the Body of Christ and we’re being built into that temple, we are learning firsthand, because of the indwelling Spirit, the indwelling Christ, and learning His love, that we are learning how broad and high and deep and wide is the church, is God’s work in the church.  If you think about those dimensions, we can think of the breadth and depth of God’s Body, the church, that it’s limitless.  It took God’s people from the nation and made them part of the nations.  He took them from that central place in Jerusalem and scattered them through the entire world.  The length and breadth of God’s work in the church is around the world.  And the height of the church reaches even into heaven, where we’re seated with Christ at the right hand of God.  And the depth, well, we originated in sin, and we reach back through the power of Jesus to those who are still in sin and bring the light of the gospel to them so that they too may be able to be seated with Christ in heavenly places.  The dimensions of God’s work in the world through His Body is without limit, and that’s something we begin to perceive when we are being filled with the knowledge of the love of Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit, who empowers us.  I confess, I never quite get over how much what we learned from Ellen White contradicts Scripture.  And I went looking to see if she said anything about this phrase, “the length and breadth and height and depth,” and I found this quote.  It was in Counsels to the Church, appropriately enough, if you want to think that she’s writing to the church.  She was writing to Adventism, but this is from her book Counsels to the Church.  This is a paragraph where she addresses this concept, and this is how she starts:  “The mind must be educated and disciplined to love purity.”  Well, first of all, Nikki, what have we just read is true for a believer about learning to love?

Nikki:  We learn it through knowing Christ, through being indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

Colleen:  Yes!  This is not an exercise, a mental exercise.  She goes on, “A love for spiritual things should be encouraged; yea, must be encouraged, if you would grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth.  Desires for goodness and true holiness are right so far as they go, but if you stop there, they will avail nothing.  Good purposes are right, but will prove of no avail unless resolutely carried out.  Many will be lost while hoping and desiring to be Christians, but they made no earnest effort, therefore they will be weighed in the balances and found wanting.  The will must be exercised in the right direction.  I will be a wholehearted Christian.  I will know the length and breadth and height and depth of perfect love.”  Nikki, listen to what that woman taught us!  Whether we read her or not, isn’t that what we learned?

Nikki:  Yeah.  Yeah, it was up to us to comprehend these things.

Colleen:  And we had to will it and study and stretch our minds because, you know, everything spiritual, according to Ellen, was in the brain.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Aided and abetted by putting off tea, coffee, mustard, pepper, and not eating meat.  Well, after Paul says that we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, he goes on in verse 19 to say, “…and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”  What an amazing thing.  He says right here that we who believe through faith in Christ are indwelt by the Spirit, the indwelling Christ, and that we will come to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.  What is he saying, Nikki?

Nikki:  You can’t teach it.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  You can’t teach it.  You can’t explain it.  It doesn’t matter if it’s your frontal lobe –

Colleen:  [Laughter.] 

Nikki:  [Laughter.] – or where you’re sending it.  It can’t be comprehended.  It’s God who does this in us, and it’s one of those things I’ve heard so many former Adventists say, you can’t explain to people what happens when you are born again.  You just can’t explain the change, the shift.

Colleen:  That’s true.

Nikki:  It’s just something that is beyond knowledge, and you have to experience it.

Colleen:  That’s true, and it’s something that the Lord does for us when we trust Him.  It’s not something we have to work hard to figure out how to apprehend.

Nikki:  Um-um.

Colleen:  He gives it to us.  He sets His love on us, and He teaches us it’s true.

Nikki:  So, I couldn’t help but laugh as you read some of those quotes.  I mean, if you really look at them, they’re horrifying, and they’re not a laughing matter.

Colleen:  Yeah.

Nikki:  It’s false teaching.  But sometimes it’s hard not laugh because this business of directing the human will to be all of this, it’s not something I could even do as a born-again Christian.  When I was saved, all of the changes in my affections and all of my reactions to things that I once loved surprised me.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  I was surprised!  I wasn’t trying to do anything.  It didn’t even occur to me to be offended by some of the stuff that began to offend me after I was born again.

Colleen:  Yeah.

Nikki:  I didn’t realize some of the thoughts I had before I was born again.  I had worldview shifts that came from God.  They came from Scripture.  They were created in me when I was born again.

Colleen:  You know, this is the normal effect of being born again.  People who know Jesus, people who are alive in Christ, will experience these internal shifts because of the Holy Spirit, and this is what is impossible to explain to the Adventists who say, “So, now that you’ve thrown out the Ten Commandments, are you going to go out and cheat and kill and steal and eat ham sandwiches?”  And I say, “Yes to the ham, but of course not to the rest of it!”  This is an insult to the Holy Spirit, to think that a person who is born again would just go out and sin because they don’t have the law.  No!  The Holy Spirit is now directing us and guiding us and changing our hearts.

Nikki:  This is why we see, all over the New Testament, we see the writers calling themselves bondservants of Christ, slaves of Christ.  We see in the middle of chapter 2, near the end actually, where it talks about us being God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works so that we would walk in them.  No, we’re not just saved and then we go and do whatever we want.

Colleen:  No.

Nikki:  When we’re saved, we are created into a new creature.  We have new affections, new desires, and it’s God who works in us to will us for His good pleasure, not to force us to do it so that we can prove our loyalty, but to will us.  He changes our will and our affections.

Colleen:  And a person who is not born again, who is still under the law and loyal to the law, is not able to judge a born-again person.  They’re in a different reality.  They’re still in the domain of darkness if they have not trusted the blood of Jesus alone for their salvation, and they aren’t able understand or judge what a believer is in Christ.  I have another Ellen White quote here that addresses that phrase of “all the fullness of God.”  And again, it’s completely opposite from what Paul is teaching us.  This is from her book Christian Education.  “Unless the sacred word is appreciated, it will not be obeyed as a sure and safe and precious textbook.  Every besetting sin must be put away.  Warfare must be waged against it until it is overcome.  The Lord will work with your efforts.  As finite, sinful man works out his own salvation with fear and trembling, it is God who works in him to will and to do of His own good pleasure.  But God will not work without the cooperation of man.  He must exercise his powers to the very utmost.  He must place himself as an apt, willing student in the school of Christ; and as he accepts the grace that is freely offered to him, the presence of Christ in the thought and in the heart will give him decision of purpose, to lay aside every weight of sin, that the heart may be filled with all the fullness of God and of His love.”  That is exactly the opposite of what Paul says about being filled with all the fullness of God.

Nikki:  Yeah.  That’s just “God helps those who help themselves.”

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  It’s more of that stuff.

Colleen:  Yeah, it is.  And I just wanted to point out that she actually said, “God will not work without the cooperation of man.”

Nikki:   Um-hmm.

Colleen:  You know, our salvation is entirely, as Paul said in chapter 2:8 and 9, a gift from God, a gift of God, by grace, through faith, and not of works so that no one may boast.  He saves us while we are dead in our sin.  It’s after He makes us alive that He starts to clean us up, and He does it by that way you were describing, Nikki, He puts His Spirit in us and we have a change of desire, a change of mind, a change of heart, and He teaches us how to submit to the word of God, not just as a list of rules or a textbook, as Ellen said, but as the very words of God that are stripping away the darkness of false religion and filling us with reality.

Nikki:  That’s why it’s so important for us to be spending time in Scripture, and I always get a little bit worried when I talk about that because I know as an Adventist there was this pressure that you had to have your quiet time –

Colleen:  Oh, I know it.

Nikki:  – it was best to do it first thing in the morning, and you should do it at least for an hour, and some Ellen White is good or a devotional.  I’m not trying to say that believers shouldn’t set aside time.  But when I say that we need to be in Scripture, I mean as a way of life, we need to be reading the Bible, not poring over the pages looking for ourselves –

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  – but reading those pages, looking for Christ.  The word tells us about God, it tells us about our Father in every passage.  Old Testament to the New reveals God to us.

Colleen:  That’s right.

Nikki:  And as we spend that time in the word, no matter what’s going on in our lives, He uses His Spirit to apply the Scriptures to our mind in the moments when we need Him to.  It’s not a matter of us figuring out how to live right so we can get saved.  It’s getting to know our Father, knowing what matters to Him, knowing what’s true about Him, knowing what He says to us and what He wants us to know.  And then His Spirit will apply that to our situations.

Colleen:  Absolutely!  And I want to say again – I know I’ve said this before – but it’s been quite an amazing paradigm shift for me to realize that the commands in the New Testament are not telling us how to become saved.

Nikki:  Um-um.

Colleen:  The epistles of Paul are written to believers.  The command for an unbeliever is to believe in Jesus.  Once we’ve believed in Jesus, have been born again and passed from death to life, and taken by the Father out of the domain of darkness and placed into the kingdom of His beloved Son, we’re new creations.  That is when the commands in the New Testament become ours.  These are instructions for people who already have the power of the Holy Spirit indwelling them.  These are things that flow out of a life once it is already saved and made alive.  And I just want to say, if you’re having trouble understanding how to have time in Scripture, do something that might sound very mundane but is extremely powerful.  Get a notebook and pick a book – you might want to start with Ephesians or maybe Galatians or maybe the Gospel of John – and start literally copying the words into the notebook.  You can do just a few verses a day or a chapter a day, but it will enable you to look at every word, every verb tense, every preposition, and ask God to show you what He’s teaching you through His own word.  It is an amazing experience.

Nikki:  I agree.

Colleen:  So we look now at verses 20 and 21.  This is the ending of Paul’s prayer where he has a benediction of praise and worship to our triune God, who is working for His own glory through the church, which is such an amazing idea.  And he says this, “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.  Amen.”  So, Nikki, what is this power that works within us?

Nikki:  It’s the Holy Spirit. 

Colleen:  Yes, it is the Holy Spirit.  And because we’re indwelt by the Holy Spirit, because we’re alive in Christ and made into new creatures, in us God is doing something that’s more abundant than all we can ask or think because we can only ask or think according to our perspective as people living on this earth.  And even though we have the Lord Himself indwelling us, we’re limited in what we can see.  But God does in us what is the product of His own power.  He does more for us than we can ask or think, and He does it whether or not we think He can, because He’s above us, He’s more than us.  He will use us in ways we never would have imagined because we are His and we’re for His glory.

Nikki:  Yeah, and as I read this, the words that “He does more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think,” it pictures God’s sovereignty, and again, it’s God-initiated provision.  It’s according to His will and perfect knowledge that we’re equipped for all He asks us to walk through and do.  Given everything that’s going on in our world right now, there’s a lot of talk, like “Is this the end?  Are things going to start to get really bad for the church?”  And I’ve seen people online – I actually read this recently from someone who had never been Adventist.  They said, “I’m really stressed out.  What if I’m not strong when things get hard for the church?  How do I prepare for Christ to return?”  Knowing that God provides more abundantly beyond all we ask or think takes the anxiety out of those questions.

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  It’s God who keeps us.  It’s God who works in us.  It’s God who strengthens us and who finishes the work He begins in us.  He’s the one who’s able to keep us blameless before the Father at the day of His coming.  And Paul tells us later in Ephesians, our work in the last day is to put on the armor of God, to pray, and to stand firm.  And we’ll look closer at that later, but that armor of God, it’s all about equipping ourselves with truth –

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  – that we get from God’s word, and this is how we submit.  This is what we do in those hard days that are coming, those hard days that are here.  This is our front row seat to see how God works powerfully in us and how He causes us to know all these things Paul has prayed for.  Paul’s prayer reminds us that all of our needs, both the anticipated and the unexpected, are met in Christ, and it’s all God’s will for us.

Colleen:  You said that so well.  And you know, it just contrasts so vividly with my last Ellen White quote, which she actually has fashioned around this section, the power within us.  This is what she says – and by the way, this is from the Review and Herald in 1909, and I just want to say, this was 6 years before she died.  She was an old woman.  She had lived her life as the Adventist prophet all those decades, and listen to the hopelessness and the lack of clarity that she has in these closing days, where she’s trying to sound pious.  “There is a possibility of the believer in Christ obtaining an experience that will be wholly sufficient to place him in right relation to God,” and I want to said, “Wait a minute, that’s gobbledygook, but how is it possible for a believer to have an experience that will place him in right relation to God?  No, you aren’t a believer if you aren’t already in right relation to God, and our experience is never what does that.  It’s God Himself who acts on us and in us.  She goes on, “Every promise that is in God’s book holds out to us encouragement that we may be partakers of the divine nature.  This is the possibility – to rely upon God, to believe His word, to work His works, and this we can do when we lay hold of the divinity of Christ.”  How on earth do we do that?  “This possibility is worth more to us than all the riches of the world.  There is nothing on earth that can compare with it.  As we lay hold of the power thus placed within our reach we receive a hope so strong that we can rely wholly upon God’s promises.  And laying hold of the possibilities there are in Christ, we become the sons and daughters of God.”  Well, what is wrong with that?

Nikki:  All of it.  That’s another gospel.

Colleen:  Yes, it is.

Nikki:  It’s not even good news.

Colleen:  No!  No!  I read this, and I think, this woman, who was six years from her death, had no idea how to be a daughter of God.

Nikki:  Um-um.

Colleen:  She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.  She has no idea how to explain becoming born again or how to lay hold of the power that God promises for those who believe in His Son.  She never talks about trusting in Jesus’ finished work.  Well, when we look back at this passage, Paul prays here that believers will know and experience what is our inheritance from the father through Jesus.  Our sanctification, our growth in the Lord as we live our new life in Him, is realized exactly as we realize our salvation – by faith.  God works in us, and we can pray for one another and for ourselves that we will know this power and love, that we will grow in it.  We don’t have to work to obtain these gifts because they are gifts from our Father.  Ellen taught us that our salvation was uncertain until the end.  Only when Jesus comes would we know if we had succeeded, but Paul prays that we will know now God’s own power and love now, while we’re still in our bodies.  Ellen White taught us that our salvation and our victory over sin were the products of our willpower and our decisions.  She taught us these things were physical realities, but Paul’s prayer shows us these are spiritual realities.  We have spirits that are either dead in sin or alive in Christ, and if we are alive, these realities are things we experience in our spirits when we are made alive.  Jesus’ blood has reconciled us to God.  And we’re alive because we have believed in His finished work – that He died for our sin, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to Scripture.  And if you haven’t placed your entire faith, the entire weight of your life and your existence and your future, on the Lord Jesus, if you haven’t given Him the weight of your sin, we ask that you do it now.  Repent.  Tell Him, “I know I’m dead in my sin, and I know I need a Savior,” and the contrite heart He will never turn away.  He knows when you’re asking Him to be your Lord, and He will save you, and He will confirm it.  Don’t forget to write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com.  Sign up for the conference in February, let us know you want to attend and send us your mailing address.  And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and write us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  Thank you again.  And we pray that this prayer of Paul’s will be true in your life.  And we look forward to talking with you more next week.

Nikki:  See you then.