THIRD QUARTER 2023
SABBATH SCHOOL INSIGHT #4
JULY 22, 2023
“HOW GOD RESCUES US”

 

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10, NKJV).

 

More Than a Metaphor

It is truly a blessing to study the book of Ephesians, and it is certainly also true that we are called to “share in His victory,” as the question in Sunday’s lesson indicates. How we share in His victory is key. Often we view the life and death of Christ as separate from us, as a kind of metaphor, something to inspire us to an experience like His. Of course this is in a sense true, as He is the Savior, one of a kind. But the 1888 Message involved teaching the gospel - the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Christ as more than merely a metaphor.

Outside of Christ the human race was doomed to death in Adam, and it was only the intervention of God in Christ that saved the race from annihilation. As a consequence, we are individually spiritually dead apart from recognizing and accepting our identity in Christ, as part of a reconstituted race in Him. We need new life.

In order to have this life, and the victory that follows, we must understand in what we are believing. Only by grasping and believing the objective truth of Christ as our righteousness can we have the fulness of Him in our subjective experience. When we focus merely or primarily on our role or part in salvation, it is easy to miss the power available to us in what God has already done for us in Christ. When Christ indwells us it is by faith in His righteousness, in what He has already accomplished for us:

The only defense against evil is the indwelling of Christ in the heart through faith in His righteousness. Unless we become vitally connected with God, we can never resist the unhallowed effects of self-love, self-indulgence, and temptation to sin. We may leave off many bad habits, for the time we may part company with Satan; but without a vital connection with God, through the surrender of ourselves to Him moment by moment, we shall be overcome. Without a personal acquaintance with Christ, and a continual communion, we are at the mercy of the enemy, and shall do his bidding in the end. —Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 324, emphasis supplied here and onward.

Another way to say this is that we can only experience by faith what we are believing. If we disbelieve the reality of what Christ already accomplished as the representative of all humanity, we cannot enter the reality of our new identity in Him.

Jesus humbled himself, clothing his divinity with humanity, in order that he might stand as the head and representative of the human family, and by both precept and example condemn sin in the flesh, and give the lie to Satan's charges. He was subjected to the fiercest temptations that human nature can know, yet he sinned not; for sin is the transgression of the law. By faith he laid hold upon divinity, even as humanity may lay hold upon infinite power through him. Altho tempted upon all points even as men are tempted, he sinned not. He did not surrender his allegiance to God, as did Adam. — Ellen G. White, Sign of the Times, January 16, 1896.

 

The implications of this position of Christ at the head of the race for our experience of the victorious life of faith should be not only obvious, but heart warming:

 

You will agree that we are made free by faith. When faith comes, we are no longer in prison. That is what we have learned in the third chapter of Galatians. But we can not believe a thing that is not so. Faith lays hold of [f]acts, things actually accomplished, and nothing else. Faith does not make facts, it only believes them. We do not make a thing so by believing it; we believe it, or at least ought to, because it is so. If it were not so before we are called upon to believe it, there would be nothing for us to believe. Therefore the fact that we get freedom in Christ by faith, and that anybody can have the same freedom by faith, proves that the freedom is already given to all. They have only to grasp it, and walk at liberty. Our part is to say with the psalmist, "O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; . . . Thou hast loosed my bonds." Psalms 116:16. Don't go to arguing with the Lord, and saying that you cannot walk straight. He says that you are loosed, and that is enough. Hold fast to His words in the face of the devil, and you will find that they will never fail you. The Word which says, "Thou art free," is the Word that keeps you free. Don't let it go from your mind. — E. J.  Waggoner, Present Truth UK, April 14, 1897, p. 227.

 

When Jesus, the Son of God, became united to this human family by birth, taking upon Himself the same sinful flesh which every son and daughter of Adam bears. He revealed in His own person that mystery which had been the hope of the church in all the ages. In Him all the human family conquered sin through the power of the indwelling Spirit; in Him all the human family paid the penalty of sin, "because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died;" in Him all the human family was raised from the dead and seated on high, since He "hath raised us up together, and made as sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus;" but all this "is of faith, that it might be by grace." No outward form, not even the observance of a Gospel form when the observance is merely outward, can take the place of living faith. "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.” — W. W. Prescott, Present Truth UK, June 14, 1900, p. 374.

 

But since the first Adam took his place, there has been a change, and humanity is sinful humanity. The power of righteousness has been lost. To redeem man from the place unto which he had fallen, Jesus Christ comes, and takes the very flesh now borne by humanity; He comes in sinful flesh, and takes the case where Adam tried it and failed. He became, not a man, but He became flesh; He became human, and gathered all humanity unto Himself, embraced it in His own infinite mind, and stood as the representative of the whole human family. —W. W. Prescott, Bible Echo and Signs of the Times, January 6, 1896, Vol. 4, p. 15.

 

Now what does it mean to us that Jesus Christ became the second head of this human family? It means this: Just as, when Adam was created, all the members of the human family were created in him, so also when the second man was created "according to God in righteousness and true holiness," all the members of that family were created in him. It means that, as God saw in Adam all the members of the human family, so he saw in Christ, the second father of the family, all the members of the divine human family; so he saw in him all his sons, all his daughters, all his descendants; all that belong to the family. No matter whether they were born into the family or not. Before Jacob and Esau were born, God saw two nations there. No matter whether born into the divine-human family or not, yet God created in Christ Jesus, the new man, all the members of the divine-human family that should afterward be born into that family.

 

Now the fact that Christ took our flesh, and that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, means a great deal more than that there was a good man who lived then, and set us a good example. He was the second father, he was the representative of humanity; and it was when Jesus Christ took our human nature and was born of a woman, that humanity and divinity were joined. It was then that Jesus Christ gave himself, not simply for the human family but to the human family. That is to say, Jesus Christ joined himself to humanity and gave himself to humanity, and identified himself with humanity and became humanity; and he became we, and we were there in him. It means that Jesus Christ in himself joined humanity and divinity to all eternity to take our human nature and retain it to all eternity, and is to-day our representative in heaven, still bearing our human nature, and there is a divine-human man in heaven to-day, - Jesus Christ. — W. W. Prescott, General Conference Bulletin, February 4, 1895, pp. 9-10.

 

What encouragement this is for us! God in a very real sense resurrected the entire race in Christ and raised us up in our Representative into the heavenly places. Our part is to believe this and accept is as done for us individually as well, and in that believing, we enter in to the experience of victory that comes in and through Christ.

 

~Todd Guthrie