COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine
Adventism isn’t the only religion that doesn’t make much of the resurrection, but it’s the one that I know the best. It’s especially frustrating to talk about Adventism’s love-hate dance with Easter, though, because Adventists have become adept at using words that sound almost biblical. In fact, they use real biblical terms, but they generally use them in slightly different ways that Christians use them because their underlying ideas about those words are shaped by their great controversy worldview.
Who Are We, Really?
The bottom line confusion in the Adventist understanding of “resurrection” is the great controversy definition of humanity. They teach that humans do not have immaterial spirits that separate from the body at death and go consciously to be with the Lord. In fact, Adventism’s physicalism is clearly seen in this quotation from their book Seventh-day Adventists Believe:
As we have already mentioned, in the Old Testament “soul” is a translation of the Hebrew nephesh. In Genesis 2:7 it denotes humans as living beings after the breath of life entered into a physical body formed from the elements of the earth. “Similarly, a new soul comes into existence whenever a child is born, each soul’ being a new unit of life uniquely different and separate from other similar units.” —Seventh-day Adventists Believe, 2018 edition, p. 94, quoting “Soul,” SDA Bible Dictionary, rev. ed, (1979), vol. 7, p. 257.
This quotation alone reveals that within Adventism, humanity is understood to be a body that breathes. Notice that it states that “whenever a child is born”, “a new soul comes into existence.” In other words, not until the body breathes does a human soul exist. Thus Adventists believe that humans are physical beings without an immaterial consciousness that lives inside their bodies and which leaves the body at death and is conscious after death. In fact, consider this quote from page 92 of Seventh-day Adventists Believe:
The soul has no conscious existence apart from the body. There is no text indicating that the soul survives the body as a conscious entity…the Old Testament Hebrews word ruach, translated spirit, refers to the energizing spark of life essential to individual existence. It stands for the divine energy, or life principle, that animates human beings.—Seventh-day Adventists Believe, 2018 edition, p 95.
With this foundational belief—that humans are merely bodies that breath and that their breath is the “spirit” that returns to God at death—there is no concrete way for them to understand Ephesians 2:1–3 which clarifies that each person is born dead in sin:
And you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.—Ephesians 2:1–3 LSB
For Adventists, this passage is metaphorical, a word picture to describe what they understand to be a “sinful nature” comprised of physical propensities to sin that cause people to desire and pursue sins. They simply do not believe in the theological idea of depravity: that all people are literally born spiritually dead and must be made spiritually alive.
Furthermore, the statement that “there is no text indicating that the soul survives the body” simply ignores, for example, 2 Corinthians 5:1–9:
For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord—absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.—2 Corinthians 5:1–9 LSB
As Humans Go, So Goes Jesus
This belief that humans are bodies that breathe and that they have no immaterial spirits, no identities that survive death, informs their belief about the incarnate Christ as well.
They believe that when Jesus gave up His Spirit and breathed His last, that He gave his breath back to God, and He died and went to the tomb. In other words, no part of Jesus existed (except in God’s memory) during the time he was dead after His crucifixion.
After all, Ellen White said that He had no advantage that the rest of humanity didn’t have. He came with the same fallen nature and had to overcome temptation and show us how we, like He, could keep the law and be obedient, pleasing God by dedicating ourselves to righteous behavior and exposing Satan as a liar and deceiver.
Jesus, then, is the Adventists’ great moral exemplar, showing us how to obey, how to please God, how to properly keep the Sabbath, and finally showing us that one day we, too, will have a physical resurrection like He did. He came to die for our sin, they say, but His death was similar to a down payment: it makes it possible for us to have our past sins forgiven when we “accept Him”, but then we have to commit ourselves to obeying Him and becoming increasingly obedient.
Historic Adventism—the “real” Adventism based on the counsels of Ellen White—requires that the last generation of Adventists who are alive when Jesus returns will have to perfectly keep the law, perfectly reflecting the character of Christ. In fact, if such a generation does not manifest itself, Jesus will not return. He is, essentially, held “hostage” by the unwillingness (or inability) of His people to commit themselves to perfect obedience.
Today many Adventists reject this idea of perfect obedience (after all, they know they are unable too keep that law!), and the settle for saying that if they do their best, Jesus will make up the rest that they were unable to accomplish before they died—or before He comes again.
In the scheme of Adventist soteriology, it is humans that really hold the power. Jesus did all that He could, taking our fallen flesh and overcoming perfectly so He could perfectly die without sin—yet Jesus’ death was really about proving that the law could be kept and man could accomplish its “keeping”.
In Adventism, Jesus’s death was about defending and upholding the law and defeating the accusations of Satan. Jesus’s resurrection, therefore, was really nothing more than a demonstration that He COULD rise from death. After all, EGW said that when He rose, Jesus didn’t even know yet whether or not God had accepted His sacrifice. He had to go to His Father and get His approval before His disciples could touch Him!
What Really Happened?
Jesus, however, came to earth exactly as prophesied. He came as a human baby born to a virgin. He was conceived when the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and “for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God” (Lk. 1:35).
Jesus came as a real Jewish male baby, but He was also the Son of God—fully God, with “all the fulness” of God—every single attribute of God—residing in His body of flesh (Col 2:9).
He was not “just like we are”. He was born spiritually alive. Unlike all the rest of us who are born in Adam, He was never spiritually dead; God Himself was His Father, and Jesus was never without the eternal life of God.
The Lord Jesus was God’s RESCUE of the fallen human race. In Mary’s baby God “smuggled” His own life—the life that was lost to humanity the moment Adam ate of that forbidden fruit (see Genesis 2:17 and 3:1–19). From that day on, every person ever born has been born spiritually dead. Our immaterial spirits, which can know God or be dead to Him, are by nature dead and we are condemned.
Only when we believe in the Son of God who was born alive and never sinned because there was no sin ever in Him can we be born from above and brought to life spiritually.
Jesus pleased His Father not by virtue of His law-keeping (which was sinless) but by His perfect submission and obedience to His will. He came to do His Father’s will, and by taking our sin and going to the cross, He did what only He could do: He literally took responsibility for us sinful, rebellious creatures and died our death, paying for our sin by enduring God’s full wrath against sin in Himself as He hung on the cross.
For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were appointed sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be appointed righteous.—Romans 5:17–19 LSB
In other words, all of us died in Adam. The Lord Jesus came—NOT “in Adam” but born of God—and He came to rescue us and to make us new. He came to give us a new heritage—without our losing our personal identities. He came to provide the only possible way to take us out of our natural death—our domain of darkness—and to make us alive in Him, citizens of the kingdom of the beloved Son (Col 1:13).
The Lord Jesus, spiritually alive since conception, lived in perfect compliance and submission to His Father, and when the time came for Him to become sin for us, He showed us that His human will struggled with the will of His Father; He begged that, if it would be possible, the Father would allow the cup of suffering for the sin of the world to pass from Him—and yet He submitted to the Father’s will.
In the ultimate act of faithfulness to His own character, God the Son became sin for His rebellious creatures and took the wrath of God into Himself. He came to show us that God is completely just: the full penalty of human sin had to be paid. God cannot forgive without a just payment. Justice had to be served, and the Lord Jesus paid the just price, propitiating for us with His own blood.
As He justly took our sin and our punishment in Himself, He also showed us that He alone is the One who justifies us. The just Judge also justifies the helpless creature who has lived in spiritual death.
Moreover, the Father was there with Jesus as this great exchange of our sin for His righteousness took place:
Now all [these] things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their transgressions against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.—2 Corinthians 5:19, 20 LSB
Do you see that? The Father was there IN CHRIST as Jesus hung on the cross. The Father was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Further, He did not count the transgressions against the people, and the reason was that He was counting them against His Son! The Father and the Son were suffering together. The man Jesus experienced the full wrath of God for sin so intensely that He could not “feel” His Father’s presence. He even cried out, “Why have you forsaken me?!”
Yet His Father was there, in Christ, and our triune God was accomplishing the salvation of the human race together.
Jesus’ blood was the only blood that was sufficient to pay for human sin. First, it was human blood—and human blood was required to propitiate for human sin. That is the reason all those sacrificial animals could not take away sin! They could only serve as temporary reminders that death was the consequence of sin, and the animals took the place of the Israelites’ lives when they brought those lambs and bulls to the tabernacle.
Second, Jesus is God. He is our Creator, and only He could take responsibility for us. He had the authority to claim us and rescue us, and He took our human identity so that He could pay the sufficient price. His death was sufficient to pay for all human sin.
Then, on the third day, Jesus rose from the tomb in a singular demonstration that the curse of death has been shattered. No longer are we humans doomed to die; the Lord Jesus, the God who took human flesh, has taken our sin, taken our punishment and endured the wrath of God. He rose from the grave not because He “could” but because His sacrifice and atonement were complete. What Jesus did was sufficient to overturn the curse of death that Adam bequeathed to the human race!
Ellen White lied. Jesus did not rise without knowing if His sacrifice was sufficient. He did not have to go to the Father to find out if He passed the test. NO!
Jesus had literally, spiritually, gone to the Father when He died, just as He said He would. He told the thief that He would be with Him in Paradise that very day, and He gave up His Spirit to His Father and died.
Jesus rose from death BECAUSE His blood was sufficient and effective. Jesus’s blood literally CANCELLED the curse of death into which humanity is born. Now we have the ability to come before the Father in repentance on the basis of Jesus’ shed blood and to find forgiveness and life!
Jesus showed us that He is the Second Adam, the One who is NOT spiritually dead, the One who took our sin in Himself and paid our price.
Our Proper Response
When we see that we are by nature unable to please God or to participate in our salvation and righteousness, the only proper response is to bow in thanksgiving before the cross of Jesus. We must admit that we need a Savior, and we are asked to believe that His blood has already paid for all our sin. When we trust and believe Him, the miracle happens.
We are born of God. When we trust the crucified and risen Christ, we literally pass from death to life, just as He said we would (Jn 5:24). This miracle goes against nature. It literally changes us, and when we receive the resurrection life, the ETERNAL life of God in our spirits, we are new creations in Christ. We go from being in Adam to being in Christ, and we are, in a sense, a “new race”. We are spiritually alive!
Our immaterial spirits are no longer dead when we believe. Paul describes it this way:
However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But 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.—Romans 8:9–11 LSB
Did you see that? When we trust Christ, He indwells us by His Spirit, and we become alive! Even though our bodies are still dead because they are still mortal, yet the Spirit of God lives in us, and we are literally ALIVE!
We celebrate the resurrection not because Jesus merely came out of the grave but because He reversed nature! He literally reversed the curse because He took the curse!
We who know and trust Jesus celebrate the resurrection because He has made us new creations in Him. We no longer fear death because we are already eternally alive and have the promise that our bodies will one day be glorified as well!
The resurrection is the moment that all nature was reversed. The curse of death which God ordained over creation the moment Adam ate has been reversed in the New Adam, and our Savior has already inaugurated His new covenant in His blood that guarantees our eternal life and the eventual glorification of all creation!
This Easter, celebrate your new life. Celebrate that your life is now hidden with Christ in God, and thank Him for calling you and making you His.
The Resurrection is our promise and our hope. We live in victory, knowing that God’s word is sure:
But when this corruptible puts on the incorruptible, and this mortal puts on immortality, then will come about the word that is written, “DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory. O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?” Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not [in] vain in the Lord.—1 Corinthians 15:54–58 LSB
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