Colleen and Nikki talk about the doctrine of the security of the believer and why we can’t lose our salvation. Podcast was published January 28, 2020. 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 do our third podcast dealing with the issue of the human spirit. Two weeks ago we identified that we have a spirit, last week we talked about what happens when we die, and this week we’re going to address the question about security, the security of the believer. Can I know I’m saved? Is it a sin to say I’m saved? How can I be sure that I can’t decide to jump out of God’s hand? With that in mind, Nikki, what did you understand about security as an Adventist.
Nikki: I have to say, I don’t even think I ever heard that word used in the context of the Christian life.
Colleen: Okay.
Nikki: I don’t remember ever hearing about security. I did hear people mock and make fun of what they called “cheap grace.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: I heard them talk about the heresy of the idea that once you’re saved, you’re always saved.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Sitting on this side of it, I now know that they were wrongly defining those concepts.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: But I never heard the phrase “the security of the believer,” which is interesting.
Colleen: It is interesting. I didn’t hear it as an Adventist either.
Nikki: You know, and had we heard it, we could have looked into it and learned a lot.
Colleen: We could have.
Nikki: And maybe that’s why they didn’t use the phrase. I don’t know.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: There was a lot of mocking over the idea, and they had to. Because if you have an Investigative Judgment –
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: – you can’t think that way.
Colleen: No. And on top of it, I don’t know if you learned this, but I definitely learned this in Adventist school, Ellen White was clear, it was a sin to say you’re saved.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: She said that if a person said he was saved or she was saved, it would then make them feel free to go out and sin.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Yeah.
Colleen: And it would be dangerous and spiritually wrong to assume that we could know we were saved. And you know, I find that very angering now, because the Bible is very, very clear that we are supposed to know that we have eternal life, present tense have.
Nikki: You know, when I became a Christian and tried to share what I now understand with family and friends, someone said to me, “It’s so arrogant, you’re so arrogant to think that you’re saved. How can you know if you’re saved? That’s so arrogant.” And I realized we’re coming at this conversation from two completely different angles.
Colleen: Good point.
Nikki: They believe salvation is based on what you do for the Lord, what you do or don’t do – do you obey? Are you a commandment-keeper –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – and that’s a loaded statement when you’re talking about Adventism. Our Christian friends might not understand what’s behind all that.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: But that’s Ellen White’s worldview. If you’re coming from that perspective and then you say you’ve arrived, now you’re claiming perfection, and you’re claiming something pretty lofty.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yes.
Nikki: When you understand that Christ is the One who obtained your salvation –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and that it all is at His feet, you can say you’re saved, and that’s just boasting in Him and what He’s done.
Colleen: And His cross.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Yeah. You know, it’s important, I think – what you said really made me think of this. It’s important to know that there are two models that different groups of supposedly Christians have of salvation. There’s, interestingly enough, the Catholic model, which is imitated in the Adventist worldview, surprisingly enough, and then there’s the biblical model of salvation. The Catholic model and the Adventist model of soteriology says that justification, or being declared righteous by God, and sanctification, or obeying God and doing good works, that both of those are necessary for salvation.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: The Bible says we’re saved by grace through faith alone, and justification occurs when we trust Jesus. That is salvation. Sanctification, then, is the fruit of salvation, not a means to salvation, and that distinction sums up a lot of the worldview that we came out of and into which we have come.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: We came out of a worldview that believed we had to keep the commandments in order to stay saved, if we, by any chance, had become saved.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So that’s just not a biblical model.
Nikki: No, it’s not. In Adventism, anyway, you end up holding two opposing views at the same time. I’ve heard Adventists say, “Oh, it’s all about righteousness by faith,” which to them means justification. They’re using the word incorrectly. But they say that it’s all about faith, but then you can lose it if you disobey.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: You can’t say that it’s all a work of God but you can lose it if you disobey, because that means it’s dependent upon your works.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: So it is not all a work of God.
Colleen: That’s right. And interestingly, when Adventists talk about righteousness by faith, and that is a very big frame of reference for people who follow the 1888 message – anybody listening to this who’s heard of the 1888 message will understand that, and this isn’t the place to unpack that – it’s still works-based. For an Adventist to talk about righteousness by faith, they are talking about becoming good by faith.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And “by faith” is not a matter of trusting Jesus’ finished work. It’s believing that Jesus will come and come alongside and help you make the right decisions so that you will keep the commandments and do good works. It’s about becoming something internally, intrinsically. It’s about imparted righteousness, as in “God gives you the ability to be good,” instead of what the Bible teaches, which is imputed righteousness, which means we never become righteous this side of being glorified, but we are declared justified by faith in Jesus’ finished work. We are credited with Jesus’ own personal righteousness. Adventism does not understand that particular distinction. I believe that many Adventist theologians do understand the difference between imparted and imputed righteousness, but because of Ellen White and the unique system of soteriology that was developed because of the Investigative Judgment doctrine, Adventists cannot preach imputed righteousness alone. They have to say “we become righteous by having faith in Jesus coming alongside us.”
Nikki: Um-hmm. So as we move into this conversation, which is actually really quite confusing –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – if you’ve come from an Adventist worldview, whether it was taught clearly to you or you just were born into it, I think that it would be really helpful, for some of our listeners anyway, if we define our terms.
Colleen: Let’s do it.
Nikki: Okay. So can you tell us, what is justification?
Colleen: Justification means we are declared, well, as some people would say, “just as if I’d never sinned.” Just as if I’d never sinned, we are declared righteous before God. It’s even more than that, though. It’s not just as if I’d never sinned, but when we’re declared righteous by trusting in Jesus’ finished work, we are also credited. It’s like God gives us money in our justification or righteousness bank. We’re not only declared as if we’d never sinned, but we are credited with Jesus’ own personal righteousness. So biblical justification comes only through trusting that Jesus died for my sins, paid the price, broke the power of death, and I repent before Him and accept what He has done on my behalf. When I do that, I am declared justified before God, as if I’d never sinned, and credited with His righteousness. That’s justification according to Scripture.
Nikki: So it’s a judicial act, it’s God as judge declaring us right with Him.
Colleen: Yes. On the basis of Jesus.
Nikki: Yes. Okay, so tell us what is sanctification?
Colleen: Biblically, sanctification, there are two types, but they’re very closely related. Sanctification means growing in Christlikeness. Now, that’s a trigger word for those of us who’ve been Adventist.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Because we’re taught that we have to let the righteousness of Christ be fully developed in our characters before Jesus will come back. That’s not taught in the Bible. However, the word “sanctification” simply has a very clear single meaning, “set apart for holy use.” We’re set apart for God’s use. So when we are justified, when we trust Christ, we are declared sanctified, set apart for His purposes, and in God’s eyes He sees us through Jesus because we’re hidden in Him. God sees Jesus when He looks at us. We are sanctified at the moment of belief. But working it out practically in this life, where we have our spirits brought to life through the new birth, through trusting in Jesus, the interesting thing is, we’re still in mortal bodies. We’re still not glorified physically, and our mortal bodies still have, as Paul explains in Romans 7, a law of sin in them. We are still tempted to sin. So as believers who have been made new and brought to life, we have the Holy Spirit in us, and for the first time – we could not do this before being born again, but for the first time we have the ability when tempted to either indulge the temptation or to pause, to step back a minute and say, “Lord Jesus, please be my strength and help me to honor you in this moment,” and that business of being able to step back and learn to trust Jesus at the moment of temptation ongoingly as we live, that is what we call progressive sanctification, but that is not something that determines or assures our salvation. That is something that only true believers can do.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And that is the fruit of being saved.
Nikki: So we have positional sanctification –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – which is us in Christ.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And then we have ongoing sanctification, which is related to us being transformed into the image of the Son.
Colleen: Perfect. Yes. Exactly.
Nikki: Okay. Tell us what is righteousness?
Colleen: As an Adventist, I remember in Bible class being taught, kind of almost like a formula, “righteousness equals right-doing.” It was always defined as “righteousness equals right-doing.” So our goal was to become right-doers, like Jesus was a right-doer. It meant obeying the Law. It meant having righteous thoughts, thinking only good things, not speaking of unholy things on the Sabbath. It was all that, but righteousness is actually defined by God Himself. It is His own attribute of perfection and moral purity that defines righteousness. It’s something we in our mortal flesh can never have on our own. It is the perfection and the moral purity of God Himself, and the amazing thing is that that becomes ours when we trust Jesus. It’s credited to us. Paul says in Philippians 3:8 and 9, “Indeed” –and this is an older Paul. He’s in prison when he writes this. He’s an older man, he’s suffered a lot. He’s experienced terrible physical persecution. “Indeed,” he says, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him,” and here it is, “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” So true righteousness is God’s own perfection, Jesus’ own intrinsic perfection, and that is credited to us when we trust Jesus.
Nikki: My next question then would be: Does the Bible ever talk about righteousness by faith?
Colleen: That’s a really good question. Never by that phrase. There is a place in Romans that refers to the righteousness that is by faith, but that is the kind of righteousness I just read about from Philippians, that by faith in Christ we are given credit for having Jesus’ alien-to-us righteousness. That phrase, righteousness by faith, grew out of the 1888 Bible conference in Ellen White’s time, and it is still used in Adventism, but that is not a biblical phrase. What is a biblical phrase is “justification by faith.”
Nikki: Can you talk a little bit about that?
Colleen: Justification by faith is when we have faith in Jesus’ finished work, God declares us as if we’d never sinned and credited with the righteousness, the moral perfection, of God Himself. Adventists, when they talk about righteousness by faith, mean “I become better and better at keeping the Law because I have faith that Jesus is giving me His power to be good.” That’s not a biblical concept. Jesus doesn’t give us the power to be good in order to please Him. He makes us new by convicting us that we must trust Him for our forgiveness for our sins, and when we do, He Himself does all the work of saving us. He declares us just, as if we’d never sinned.
Nikki: So when we’re justified, when we’re declared justified by God, we are saved.
Colleen: We are saved.
Nikki: Okay. I would like to read a verse from Romans 3:28. “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.” And I just want to point out that if you’re justification means you are now saved, and this is apart from works of the Law, you cannot lose that justification based on your works of the Law.
Colleen: Correct.
Nikki: Which completely destroys the Adventist message of the Sabbath as the seal of God.
Colleen: Absolutely. Completely destroys it. And dovetailing with that text, Nikki, let’s look at Romans 4:3 and 4. Those who are listening, if you have never read Romans, you really need to. But Romans 4 is a truly amazing chapter that argues about Abraham’s faith in God and shows how that is the prototype for everybody who is saved. In Romans 4:3 and 4, Paul quotes Genesis, back when God called Abraham and made a covenant with him. He says, “For what does the Scripture say,” and here’s the quote from Genesis 15:6, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” That is the clearest, most recurrent phrase in Scripture that defines righteousness of a person who trusts God and is saved. When we believe God, when we believe that what He says is true and we trust it alone, when we believe Him and act on His word, then that belief is credited to us as righteousness. That’s the righteousness of God that’s credited to us.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And then he says this, “Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due.” Now, let’s just think about that sentence for a moment. If you go to work, when you’re paid for your work, that’s not a gift; right?
Nikki: Uh-uh. Right.
Colleen: You’ve earned it.
Nikki: Yep.
Colleen: Exactly what you’ve earned.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But then he says in verse 5, “But to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.” Let’s think through that sentence. If I don’t work – and let’s put this in terms of thinking about God. If I’m not working hard to please Him, if I’m not keeping the Sabbath, if I’m not trying to keep the food laws, but I am believing that Jesus justifies the ungodly – and do you catch that?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It doesn’t say He justifies the godly. The godly would be those who are working hard or who are trying to please God, in the context of this verse.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But to the one who does not work but believes that God justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. How do you understand that, Nikki? What’s he saying about being saved and being justified there?
Nikki: Well, it’s interesting that you have working for your salvation being contrasted with believing God.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s as if that means unbelief, to work for your salvation –
Colleen: – is unbelief.
Nikki: – is unbelief.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: But the one who believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. There again, it’s all faith, it’s believing what God has said.
Colleen: Yes. And what has God said? He sent His son. He died according to Scripture for our sins. He was buried. He was raised on the third day according to Scripture. And when we believe that that was for us personally, for our sin, our personal sin, He saves us, He justifies us. He justifies us even though we have not become good. But when He convicts us of who Jesus is and what Jesus did and we trust Him, He justifies us, and our faith in that finished work of Jesus, that faith in Him, is what He credits to our account as righteousness.
Nikki: This brings me back to our talk a couple weeks ago about being born again –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and that communal grave. No amount of work inside of that communal grave will give you life.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: It’s believing in the Lord Jesus and entrusting yourself to Him that, as you said, blasts out that wall –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – in that communal grave and gives us an exit from that.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s Ephesians 2 again, it’s that “being brought to life” that actually –
Colleen: Yes! That actually brings us out of the communal grave, that actually causes us to be declared righteous, and using that communal grave as an image, it’s the blood of Jesus that blasts open that wall. He had to shed His blood to pay for human sin, and you know, I did not understand that as an Adventist. I thought, you know, He did this almost like a representative death. Yes, He died for my sins, whatever, but now I have to show that I value what He did and honor Him by being good, but that’s not what the Bible teaches. He became a man – I did not understand this as an Adventist, but Romans 2 explains this. He became a man so He could pay for human sin. An angel couldn’t pay for human sin. A spirit couldn’t pay for human sin. Humans are spirits with bodies. We had to have a perfect human sacrifice to pay the price that God established was the proper wages of sin, and Jesus, God the Son, took a human body so that He could die a human death for human sin. And it is His human death of shed blood that opens up – perfect death, a sinless man, something none of us could do, that qualifies Him to be our substitute. He is God. As God, He is eternal. Only God could take responsibility for all of His fallen human creation, but only a perfect man could offer the proper sacrifice for human sin, and Jesus became a man without ever stopping being God so He could do that unique thing and bring us out of the slavery to our sin. His blood is what shatters out that communal grave, and when we believe Him, we are justified. And you notice, again, that we are still ungodly. Ephesians 2 says that too.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: We’re saved in our sin when we believe, but when He transfers us into the kingdom of the beloved Son and gives us new life in Jesus and the indwelling Holy Spirit, we are no longer slaves to our sin. We have Him indwelling us, and we have a new position, new power, new passions, new desires. We would never want to hurt Him or sin against Him, even though our bodies still have a law of sin that tempts us. There’s a text I really love that explains what God does for us through Jesus without any of our works being involved. It’s in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. It’s interesting to notice that Paul is writing to the church in Corinth. They are believers. He calls them “brothers” at the beginning of this epistle, but it’s an unruly church. He’s having to correct a lot of misbehavior, and that’s an interesting thing to notice, because in a group of believers, there can be people who are acting in the flesh, and Paul is correcting them.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And here in 1 Corinthians 6:9, he says, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” And then he says this to these believers, “Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God.” Now, notice what Paul says to these people. God Himself washed them. They were sanctified. In other words, they were put into Christ, set apart for God’s purposes. In God’s eyes, they are His, and they are perfect in His sight. They are for Him. And they were justified. They were declared perfectly righteous and free from sin in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and none of this has anything to do with behavior. They had been sinners, but when they trusted Christ, these things happened.
Nikki: Another text that talks about positional sanctification is found in the same letter, and it’s in verses 27 through 31.
Colleen: Which chapter?
Nikki: 1 Corinthians 1:27-31. Sorry. And this actually also talks about God’s choosing. “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, and sanctification and redemption.”
Colleen: Wow.
Nikki: “So that as it is written, Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
Colleen: This is an amazing passage because Paul is explaining here that there’s no room for boasting. None of these things that God does for us come about by our works or our perfecting ourselves or our keeping the Law. It comes only through faith in Christ. Verse 30, “By His doing, you are in Christ Jesus, who became” – and I’ve pondered this in the past. It’s not just that He gave you. You notice the word is “He became to us wisdom from God,” so when we are made alive in Christ, Jesus Himself is our wisdom from God. Jesus Himself is our righteousness, Jesus Himself is our sanctification and our redemption. You can’t undo that.
Nikki: [Laughter.] No.
Colleen: You can’t undo Jesus.
Nikki: And you can’t boast in your own works. You cannot possibly be arrogant to say that Christ did this for us.
Colleen: No. To boast in Christ is to give Him the glory. We did not do this.
Nikki: And I want to point out that this didn’t even come about by our own seeking or striving.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: God chose these things. We see that again in Romans chapter 8. I’m going to read 29 and 30. It says, “For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified.”
Colleen: It’s the same message as 1 Corinthians.
Nikki: Yeah! And we’re living between the justified and glorified.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: We have been declared justified when we’ve come to Christ, and we’re waiting on our glorification, but it’s as good as done, according to God’s Word.
Colleen: Because it’s in the past tense. He chose us, He predestined us, He called us, and He justified us, and He glorified – that’s past tense – us.
Nikki: Tense is important.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: I didn’t understand how much tense and grammar and all of that mattered when I read the Bible as an Adventist.
Colleen: No, because we metaphorized everything.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Yeah. Yeah, and it says right here in 29 that He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: It’s His work in us that changes us –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – into the image of Christ.
Colleen: Yes. And I think it’s worth mentioning right here because as an Adventist, free will was so important. It was like the most valuable thing in the universe, and God Himself would limit Himself to protect our free will, but that is such a nonbiblical idea. In Scripture we are told that we are born dead in sin. As people who are dead in sin in that communal grave that we talked about, we cannot please God. Romans 3 declares that. No one seeks for God, no one can please God. The poison of asps is under their tongues. I just – you know, when you think about an asp being a snake and you think about the snake being the first deceiver of mankind, that’s a profound text to me. So that’s our natural condition. We don’t seek God in our natural condition, and I remember hearing our pastor, Gary Inrig, say when he preached through Romans and other places as well, “We can’t rise above our own natures.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: When our natures are dead in sin, subject to the prince of the children of disobedience, as it says in Ephesians 2:1-3, we can’t on our own seek for God. He has to break through that domain of darkness and reveal Himself to us, and He does do that.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So it’s His work. We can’t go out and seek for God. He has to come and meet us and wake us up and show us who He is, and He gives us the ability to trust Him.
Nikki: That brings the image of Jesus before Lazarus to mind.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: I’ve heard pastors refer to that passage to talk about what it is to be born again. A dead man cannot make himself alive.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: Jesus called him, “Lazarus, come out!” And he came out, and then He told the people around Him, go and unwrap his graveclothes. And it’s such a picture of what happens when He calls us to life, when He, as 1 Peter says, causes us to be born again by the resurrection power of Christ.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And then we come around each other, and we work together through this life after being born again.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Which means unraveling graveclothes and being sanctified.
Colleen: I think of that often when I think about dealing with people who have left Adventism. We have so many strange graveclothes.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Yeah.
Colleen: I have a friend. Some of you have met her. Her name is Joanie Yorba-Gray, and she actually translates Proclamation! into Spanish and has attended many of our FAF conferences. She has done mission work in Africa with a ministry called He Intends Victory, which is – the acronym is HIV, and it deals with AIDS widows and so forth in Africa, and she said to me once at the end of an FAF conference, “Adventism is very dark.” She says, “It’s not like garden variety unbelief. It’s dark like Africa, witch-doctor dark, because it has so much twisting of Scripture and false identity of who we are and a false identification of Jesus.” And we have so many graveclothes to unpack.
Nikki: Uh-hmm.
Colleen: And think about it, it is the Lord Jesus who reached through all that darkness and revealed Himself to us. It was His work. He chose us, He made us alive, and we come around – like Nikki said, like you said, we come around each other and help each other unwrap the graveclothes as we go on in this life.
Nikki: Um-hmm. And just like for Adam and Eve, some of those graveclothes, they’re the devil twisting God’s very words.
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: Sometimes it’s Scripture that needs to be corrected in our thinking. I keep thinking of – on Sunday we watched a pretty horrible video, didn’t we?
Colleen: We did.
Nikki: We watched an episode of Amazing Facts by Doug Batchelor in which he gave seven sections on the last day events, and he used a lot of Scripture, out of context –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and he held a Bible in his hand the entire time –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and he instilled fear –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – that was rooted in Ellen White.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: This was not from Scripture, and so when we come out of that and we come to faith in in Christ, we’ve got to undo all of those false, twisted uses of God’s word.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s the graveclothes.
Colleen: It is. And when we have trusted Jesus, the beauty is – and this is one of the learning curves for us as new believers coming out of Adventism. The beauty is God won’t drop us. We can’t accidentally or halfway on purpose decide to jump from His hand and lose our salvation, as we were taught we could. We can allow Him to unwrap our graveclothes gradually over time because He is in charge of us, and our life is eternal. It doesn’t stop and start once we’ve trusted Him, and He holds us. How did you start to understand that you were secure in Jesus? What text meant a lot to you, Nikki?
Nikki: There were several of them. It’s hard to choose. The first time I ever heard the teaching was in 2010 at the FAF conference. John Rittenhouse had a breakout. It’s online, so if you guys haven’t seen it, please go see it. I think it’s called, “Is Once Saved Always Saved Biblical.”
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And he talked about the passage that describes God holding us in His hand.
Colleen: I love that passage.
Nikki: I believe it’s in John.
Colleen: John 10:27-30.
Nikki: So if you have your Bible, you should definitely go to John chapter 10.
Colleen: You have to see this with your own eyes.
Nikki: Um-hmm. So in verse 27 He says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” One of the things that John said is, he asked the question, “Who’s holding whom?”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: You see here that God, both the Father and the Son, are holding us.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And he said, “That means that the responsibility for keeping us there is in His hands” –
Colleen: Not ours.
Nikki: – “the hands of the one who’s holding.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And he said, “God cannot fail. And even we cannot remove ourselves from the grasp of God.”
Colleen: Yes. That’s true. If it were not true, Jesus couldn’t have said in John 5:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has” – present tense – “eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”
Nikki: Boy, that takes care of the Investigative Judgment too, doesn’t it?
Colleen: Totally!
Nikki: Because in Adventism you are not a part of the Investigative Judgment until you believe.
Colleen: It’s unbelievable blasphemy.
Nikki: Yeah, and in that John 5:24 text, that part that says, “Has passed out of death,” John Rittenhouse pointed out that that’s the perfect active indicative tense, and he said “perfect tense” means a past completed action with the results continuing into the future without cessation or duration. That means no soul sleep.
Colleen: That’s right. And like you mentioned before, Nikki, eternal life is eternal.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It doesn’t mean stop and start, stop and start, I jump out, I have to get it again.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: Eternal is eternal. And according to these verses we’ve been reading, God knew us before we were born. Sometimes we tell people, “Jesus died for your sins past, present, and future,” and we who’ve been Adventist tend to go, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Maybe past, but how can He have died for my future sins?” Well, think about it. When Jesus died, we were not born. Every one of our sins was future to Him.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Yeah.
Colleen: So the difference is not that we’re now alive and so we can say He’s covered up my past sins. When He died for us personally, He died for our personal sins for our entire life, and when we trust Him, His finished work is ours, and we have passed from death to life.
Nikki: And His declaration of us as justified comes from eternity.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It is not coming from a specific point in time.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: It’s coming from eternity, from the omniscient One who knows all things, beginning and end.
Colleen: That’s right. That’s such a great point.
Nikki: And God cannot lie. So if He calls me His daughter –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and if His Spirit testifies to my spirit that I’m His child, if He’s caused me to be born again –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – He can’t undo that.
Colleen: No. We can’t be unborn any more than a baby can be unborn. I know that sometimes people say, after they’ve heard us talking about what it means to be saved, like around the lunch table after lunch on Sunday sometimes, “Well, okay, but what about all those warnings about ‘there’s no sacrifice left if you sin?'” We have to mention that because, you know, we who’ve been Adventist have been pretty armored against believing we can know we have eternal life, but let’s look. Hebrews has some pretty scary warnings, and one of them is found in Hebrews 10, and the full passage is 19-31, but that’s kind of long. We won’t read the whole thing, but I would suggest you get your Bible and read it, just because it’s important to understand. He starts this passage by saying, “We brethren,” who are believers, “have confidence to enter the Holy Place by the blood of Jesus.” Now, the Holy Place in the tabernacle and in the temple was the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was, but remember, that veil was torn when Jesus died, and the presence of God became exposed, actually to the world. There was no longer a veil hiding the Shekinah Glory from the rest of the temple. The Shekinah Glory would be visible then. The presence of God was made available to everybody on the basis of Jesus’ blood. And he goes on in this passage, Hebrews 10:20, “We have confidence to enter the Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith,” and I remember when I realized, it was several years ago, that that curtain in the temple, that curtain in the tabernacle represented the body of Jesus. It pointed to the body of Jesus which was torn on the cross, and when Jesus died, that curtain tore, and I realized that even before Jesus came in the flesh, it was always Him who kept sinners alive, protected from the glory of God which would destroy sin if it came in contact with sin directly. Jesus has always kept sinners from dying in the presence of a Holy God, and when He died on the cross, His blood paid for sin so that the presence of God was opened up to the world. Prior to Jesus dying, a sinner could only approach God – any Israelite that came into the temple to look for forgiveness, could only come with the blood of an animal. They had to bring a sacrifice, a blood sacrifice. When Jesus died, the blood sacrifice once for all had been offered, and now anybody, any sinner, can approach God on the basis of Jesus’ blood and ask for forgiveness. They don’t have to bring their own sacrifice anymore. The body has been torn, and that’s the new and living way, and because of Jesus we can approach God directly. But then the writer of Hebrews goes on down a few verses and says, “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.'” So we’re often asked, “What about that? What if I sin? Am I going to be trampling the blood of Jesus?” And there are two things I want to say about this. The first is, we’ve seen texts already that show that when we trust Jesus we pass out of death into life. That’s a done deal. But I remember the parable of the soils. Remember that, Nikki?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: There were four soils. There was the rocky soil, the weedy soil, the hard soil, and the good soil. So what happened to the seed, which represented the gospel, what happened to the seed that fell on the hard soil?
Nikki: The birds came and ate them.
Colleen: Yeah. So did any seeds germinate on that hard soil?
Nikki: No.
Colleen: What about the rocky soil?
Nikki: Well, they grew roots, but then the heat came and dried them up.
Colleen: Yeah, they had plants –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – but their root system was shallow because of the rocks. They didn’t have a deep root that could withstand heat. They died. What about the weedy soil?
Nikki: The weeds came and choked them out, the stress of life and the concern for money.
Colleen: Yes. But you notice that in both of those two soils, the rocks and the weeds, those seeds did germinate.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Oh, and what about the good soil?
Nikki: Well, they grew plants, and they bore fruit.
Colleen: They bore fruit, yeah. Full, mature plants, which includes fruit.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: A mature plant must bear and reproduce, in that sense. What do the soils represent?
Nikki: The heart.
Colleen: The heart. They represent different kinds of people. The hard, rocky path that the seeds didn’t even germinate, the birds came and ate it. It’s a very hard heart who resists the gospel and won’t even consider it. The good soil is a true believer –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – who is receptive to the gospel, who drinks it up, allows the Lord to plant it deeply in them and teach them to trust Him. The rocky soil and the weedy soil are very interesting categories because there are probably representatives of these soils in every church congregation. These are people who don’t automatically resist the gospel. The gospel seed finds a place to germinate in them. But it doesn’t bear full fruit. The rocky soil is attracted to the gospel. A person may flirt with the gospel, may like the body of Christ, may come around, may function like a believer, people around think they’re believers because they have a plant growing, a gospel plant is growing, but when hardship comes, they disappear.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Now, the weedy soil, same thing, but they’re people who are compromised by the love of the world, and ultimately the gospel plant will die out. So when I look at these warnings in Hebrews, I realize that in any church there are going to be different kinds of soils. We ourselves can’t always tell what kind of a soil we’re sitting next to in the pew, so to speak. But God does know, and I believe that these warnings are written to those people who are functioning as part of the church, who are interacting as part of the body of Christ, but they haven’t fully trusted Jesus. They haven’t let the gospel own their heart. If we find ourselves in that place, that we know we’re compromised, that we are attracted to the gospel and we believe Jesus did what He said He did, but we’re not willing to place our whole weight on Him, we need to hear these warnings and ask the Lord to give us a soft heart towards Him and to teach us to repent before the Lord and allow His Spirit to give us new hearts.
Nikki: And it’s worth pointing out that verse 39 in that same chapter says, “But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the persevering of the soul.”
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: We have several examples in Scripture of false brothers –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – of false believers. The Bible tells us that our practice reveals whose child we are, Satan’s or God’s. And we have examples of the going out of false believers in 1 John 2:18 and 19, and James 2 warns us against fruitless faith, that it’s not real faith.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: There are warnings in Scripture for us to have genuine, persevering faith.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: Well, another example, Matthew 7 –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – where they come to Jesus, and they say, “Lord, Lord, we cast out demons and we did all these things in your name, and He ends up saying, “Away from me. I never knew you.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: He doesn’t say, “I knew you and then I didn’t.”
Colleen: No.
Nikki: He says, “I never knew you.”
Colleen: That’s right. In fact, it’s interesting too because in Galatians Paul is chastising those believing Gentiles for being deceived by the Judaizers, who were trying to bring them back under the Law, and He says, “When you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. But now that you have come to know God – or to be known by God” – I mean, he actually corrects himself in the verse.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to those weak and worthless elemental things?” It’s interesting because the issue here for believing and persevering and having eternal life is that we’re known by God on the basis of having trusted Jesus. And there are false believers, there are those soils who are attracted but who don’t bear fruit and who don’t have mature gospel plants. One of the best ways I have come to understand this on a practical level is to think of Judas. Judas was one of the 12. He went out with the disciples when Jesus sent His disciples out into the cities of Judea. Luke tells two stories of that, where He sends the 12 and then where He sends the 70. They cast out demons, they healed the sick, they proclaimed the coming of the kingdom of God. Judas was with them, and he was doing those same miracles, but he did not believe, and ultimately he betrayed Jesus, and the Bible tells us that Jesus said it would have been better for him had he not been born, but he did what he did to fulfill Scripture. Judas is an example of that false believing, a partial interest without full trust in Jesus. So when you have been born again, called by Jesus, made new through trusting His finished work, you are born again, and you can know you are saved. We’re supposed to.
Nikki: And He changes your affections.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: You don’t want to be able to jump out of His hand. When I hear people say, “So I no longer have the power to change my mind?” I know that they’re speaking to me from a depraved heart.
Colleen: That’s a good point.
Nikki: Because the one who’s born again has the Spirit of God crying, “Abba, Father.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: We do not long to jump out of our Father’s hands.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: We long to be kept by Him, and there are promises all through Scripture that say we are kept by Him. 1 Peter 1:3-5 talks about how our inheritance is being kept in heaven for us by the power of God –
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: – unfading and unperishing, and Jude talks about us being kept in God by His power.
Colleen: That’s true!
Nikki: I want to say, before we move away from the verses that are harder to understand –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – that it was helpful to me when I was first leaving Adventism and everything I saw in Scripture was followed up in my mind with a, “Yeah, but…”
Colleen: Yes! [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] And it was helpful to me when somebody said, “You have to look at what the Bible clearly teaches –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: In order to interpret the parts of Scripture that are a little harder to understand. The Bible is not going to contradict itself.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: So if God says you are saved, you have eternal life, you have been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Beloved Son, “I have adopted you, you are mine, and no one can take you out of my hand,” when we read about these things – and Hebrews in particular has a couple of them –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – that isn’t a moment to go, “Oh-oh, He didn’t tell me the truth.”
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: That’s a moment to go, “There’s something here I don’t see. I’m going to press into this –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – on the basis of what I already know.
Colleen: Exactly. That’s such an important point, Nikki. And John says in his first epistle, chapter 5 verses 13 and 14, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” We can know when we trust Jesus. And you know, Romans 8, Galatians 4, they assure us that when we trust Jesus, He gives us His Holy Spirit, and His Holy Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are sons of God, and He teaches us, He puts in our hearts the ability to look at God and to cry “Abba, Father,” to know that He is our true Father, and He will never, everlet us go.
Nikki: Ephesians 2:8-10 is really important when we’re talking about the security of the believer. It says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” I just want to stop right there and say, as an Adventist, I don’t think I understood what grace was.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: In fact, I know I didn’t. Grace means unmerited favor. It’s undeserved.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: So, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing. It is the gift of God. Not 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 that we should walk in them.” And it’s important to point out, when we’re talking about the security of the believer, that we understand that once we belong to God, we have work to do.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: We do not just, as they accuse us of, believe we’re saved and go on sinning and having ham sandwiches.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Exactly.
Nikki: [Laughter.] We do have ham sandwiches.
Colleen: Yes, but it’s not a sin. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] No, we understand that there’s work. The work does not precede salvation.
Colleen: Very important point.
Nikki: Romans 8:8 says that what we do in the flesh cannot please God. We cannot please Him in the flesh. Our works before salvation are filthy rags. They mean nothing.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: We see here, in chapter 2, at the beginning, that we were dead in our trespasses and sins. We walked through this when we talked about being born again.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And then God causes us to be born again, and that this is all by grace through faith, and then we have work to do.
Colleen: Yes. And it’s work He specifically prepares for us in advance.
Nikki: Yes! And He puts that desire in our heart to make it our aim to please Him.
Colleen: Yes. It’s all Him, and we can trust that. We can’t lose our eternal life when we have it. And no, we’re not saved so we can go on sinning. We are saved for the good works He created for us in advance. We are saved for His glory. We exist for His glory.
Nikki: And we love Him. And that love drives us to please Him, to obey Him, to keep His word. Like Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” We understand clearly that anything Christ tells us to do is His commandment.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It is not just a Decalogue.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: We love Him, and we long to obey Him, and that’s why we repent, and that’s why we love and serve one another and why we gather together as the church and why we admonish each other and sing praises to God. It all comes from that new birth.
Colleen: And if you have not put all of your weight fully on the finished work of the Lord Jesus, we invite you to do that. You can know that you are saved when you trust Jesus. He shed His human blood, perfect, sinless human blood, on that cross, and on that cross He defeated Satan, disarmed him, and when we trust that and believe that that was for our benefit, He transfers us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved son. He gives us a new heart. He gives us eternal life. He gives us His Holy Spirit, who is a guarantee of our eternal future and our glorified bodies, which will come when He returns. If you haven’t done that, please do it. We would love to know that you know Jesus and that you know you have eternal life. If you have questions or comments, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. If you would like to donate to Life Assurance Ministries or even sign up for our conference in this next week, you can do so at proclamationmagazine.com. Thank you, and we pray that you will know Jesus as your true Savior and your eternal life. †
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