Articles

Question: I’m from a Seventh Day Adventist background and I’ve always been taught that Christ had a fallen, human nature that was almost degenerate. Ellen G. White, our church’s prophetess, emphasized Christ as our Example more so than our Savior. She writes, “His example declares that our only hope of eternal life is through bringing our appetites and passions into subjection to the will of God" (The Desire of Ages, p. 122).  She contended that Christ had a sinful nature yet lived without sinning; therefore, we must to do the same.  Does man have a sinful nature?  Was Christ fully human?  If so, did He have a sinful nature?  Does man have to reach perfection to be saved?  If so, what is Christ’s role in man’s salvation?

Answer #1: Does man have a sinful nature? “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5).  Man is not a sinner because he sins; he sins because he is a sinner.  We each inherited our sinful nature from our parents who are sinners and this has been true of all men since the fall in the Garden.  Though man has a sinful nature, he is still responsible for doing what he knows is right.  The Lord is a just God and He will not be unfair with anyone, but will hold every man accountable for doing those things he clearly knows is wrong (Romans 1), so every man will be without excuse on the Day of Judgment.  We have all done what we knew was wrong (Romans 3:23).  We break God’s sovereign law, which reflects His absolute truth, time and again.  So it is not that God will be unjust with any man that is so frightening, but the fact that He will be just in His judgment and condemnation of all men.

Answer #2: Was Christ fully human?  Being born of the seed of woman (Genesis 3:15), Christ was fully human.  Does that mean He was tempted in every way we are tempted?  Yes.  Was He perfect in His obedience to God’s good, perfect, and pleasing will?  Yes.  Well, why didn’t He sin like every other man since the fall in the Garden?  He wasn’t born of the seed of Adam.  This also answers your next question: Did He have a sinful nature?  No!  He was not born of Adam’s seed; therefore, He did not inherit a sinful nature.  

Answer #3: Does man have to obtain perfection to be saved?  If so, what is Christ’s role in man’s salvation? I’d like to answer these two questions together.  When the Lord created man he was good.  Adam did not have a sinful nature until he sinned.  So neither Adam nor Christ began with a sinful nature.  But where Adam failed, Christ succeeded.  Had Christ not been completely obedient to God’s good, perfect and pleasing will, His atonement for us would not have satisfied God’s holy and righteous character.  It is impossible for God’s holy nature to forgive sin, because He cannot deny who He is.  While God is love, merciful, kind, longsuffering, and forgiving, He is also holy, just, and righteous.  When man sinned, he alienated himself from a holy God and before the Lord could extend His grace and forgiveness to man, something had to be done to satisfy the righteous and just demands of His character.  And that could only be accomplished by the Lord Himself; therefore, “Someone” who is fully God, totally divine, had to make atonement for our sin if we were to be reconciled to Him.  Yet, that “Someone” would not have been a proper representative for us unless He was also fully human.  God Incarnate was the answer.  Christ is both fully God and fully man, a concept very difficult for the finite mind to comprehend. 

In order for Christ’s sacrifice to be just, He had to be fully man, capable of choosing obedience or disobedience.  Unlike Adam, Christ always chose to obey God’s good, perfect, and pleasing will.  You may have heard some refer to Christ as the “second Adam.”  Adam, created sinless, was faced with the choice of obedience or disobedience, and chose to sin and suffered the deadly consequences.  Christ, like Adam, started with a “clean slate” but always chose obedience.  Since His life was without sin, He could satisfy God’s holy demands when He received the just punishment our sin required. At the cross a “double imputation” took place between Christ and those He redeems.  Our sins were imputed to Him and punished in Him, and His righteousness was ascribed to us since He was a propitiation (satisfied God's just wrath) for our sin (Romans 3:25-26).

It is true that we must be perfect (without sin; holy) to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Yet, we know we cannot and have not achieved perfection and holiness.  In fact, the Bible reveals we would never even want to be holy because of the influence of our sinful nature.  “The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live” (Ecclesiastes 9:3).  “Men loved darkness instead of life” (John 3:19).  “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire” (John 8:44). 

It is only by the grace of God that believers desire to turn from their sinful nature and seek reconciliation with a holy God through Christ’s atoning death.  “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:44). “Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God” (II Corinthians 3:5).  Man is dead in his sin (Ephesians 2:1-3).  Can a dead man get up and choose to do something by his own power? No, he must be revived.  God brought us to a new life in which sin cannot enslave us any longer (John 3:3; Titus 3:5; I Peter 1:23; James 1:18; II Cor. 5:17; I John 5:4).  That is the reason our sinful nature is so disgusting to us after we have been born again of the water of His word and the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Answer #4: But as Christians we are still not perfect, so why are we allowed into heaven?  We are justified (declared legally righteous; Romans 5:6-11) before a holy God because of the righteousness of Christ that has been ascribed to our account.  Because of His sacrifice, we are declared legally righteous in the eyes of God, since our sin was fully punished at the cross.  We can now abide with Him in heaven because we have been redeemed by Him.  Even our faith is not of ourselves; it too is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-10). 

Answer #5: Was God obligated to save any of us?  Did he need humans with Him in heaven to keep Him from being lonely as some would say?  No way.  God is completely self-existing, self-sustaining, self-sufficient, and sovereign.  He does not need man.  We have absolutely nothing to contribute to Him. 

Answer #6: So why did He create man and redeem him, especially after man blew his first chance in Adam?  The scripture simply says because the Lord wanted to do so to demonstrate His glory.  It was in accordance with His good, perfect, and pleasing will (Ephesians 1). 

Some may say, oh, he saved us because He is good.  So if He hadn’t saved us, would He no longer have been good? Others might say, He saved us so that we could appreciate Him and so He could experience our gratitude.  Does God need to feel appreciated?  No.  He is good because He is holy; those are attributes within His asciety; His self-sustaining, self-existing, and eternal nature. 

There are no strings attached to our salvation.  None of God’s characteristics are dependent upon us.  He redeemed us in Christ simply because He willed it.

Answer #7: While God didn’t need to save us, we know we have a need to be saved, so what can we do by human means to accomplish our reconciliation with a holy God?  The answer is: absolutely nothing.  No matter how many good works we perform, nothing we do can satisfy the righteous punishment our sin deserves.  Though we can’t do anything to bring about our own salvation or reconciliation, the Lord provided in Christ the solution for how the punishment of our sin makes us righteous and acceptable in His sight (Ephesians 1). It is He who stirs our hearts and calls us to Himself.  We are incapable of coming to Him of our own volition, because our nature is enslaved to sin.  But we respond to His call through faith because of His marvelous grace. 

Conclusion: The Lord receives all the credit for our salvation; a salvation that was purchased by the Incarnate One who was both God and man, who satisfied the demands of God's righteous justice and redeemed man through His atoning death at the cross that we might be declared legally righteous before a loving, but holy God.