Sin & Grace in the Christian Life

On this week’s White Horse Inn radio program (free download here), an important question with implications for current and former Adventists (and all Christians) is addressed: Is the salvation of Christians who die with unconfessed sin in peril? For those who grew up in the Adventist church and were taught the historic doctrine of the investigative judgment, the answer is an unequivocal “Yes”. Ellen White taught that if even one unconfessed sin was found in the heavenly record books, the professing Christian’s name would be blotted out from the Book of Life and their eternal salvation would be forfeited. For example, in The Great Controversy, she wrote, “All who have ever taken upon themselves the name of Christ must pass its searching scrutiny… Sins that have not been repented of and forsaken will not be pardoned, and blotted out of the books of record, but will stand to witness against the sinner in the day of God… Words once spoken, deeds once done, can never be recalled. Angels have registered both the good and the evil. The mightiest conqueror upon the earth can not call back the record of even a single day. Our acts, our words, even our most secret motives, all have their weight in deciding our destiny for weal or woe. Though they may be forgotten by us, they will bear their testimony to justify or to condemn.” (The Great Controversy, 1940 edition, page 552). Flying in the face of the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone, Ellen White taught in this passage a view of justification held by many of her day–God will forgive past sins, but for the present and future you are on your own. Under this teaching, if a professed Christian commits a sin at any point, the sin will not be covered by Jesus unless the believer specifically recalls the sin and asks for forgiveness.

Maybe some of us think this teaching is a leftover relic of another era, or maybe it is completely confined to the historic branch of the Seventh-day Adventist church. But is this really the case? Reflecting on his own Christian (non-Adventist) upbringing, Michael Horton, one of the hosts of the White Horse Inn, says, “In the circles in which I was raised, salvation was free for something like the first 60 days. ... There was this ‘grace period’ where the convert was lavished with good news–Christ died for sinners, no matter how big, Jesus paid it all. Wow, Jesus paid it all! Ah yes, but then came the ‘all to Him I owe’ part...just after I thought it was all of Christ, all by grace alone, suddenly the bills showed up together with all the fine print.” Horton later asks the rhetorical question that inevitably arises when discussing God’s unmerited favor, “If grace is free, won’t that lead to laziness, or license [to sin]?” Horton concludes that this fear is the reason for all of the “fine print” which turns the good news upside down.

Exploring these ideas further, the staff of the White Horse Inn conducted interviews of random evangelical Christians attending a Christian conference, asking the question, “What happens to Christians who die with unconfessed sin?” The answers may sound very familiar to some of us with ties to the historic Adventist church.

“What happens to Christians who die with unconfessed sin?”

First answer: “Uh...unconfessed sin...I think they’re in trouble.”

Second answer: “I think they’re going to hell.”

Third answer: “He [Jesus] knows we’re gonna mess up...but if we’re trying to do right and we’re trying to live right and for the right reasons, then I believe we’re really going to go to heaven.”

Fourth answer: “I do believe there is a common grace, and there’s also specific grace, and I believe if someone is a follower of Christ, and they happen to die before they said their last prayer, I’m sure God is a little more understanding than we make Him out to be.”

Fifth answer: “I know there are some people who believe that the moment you sin, you lose your salvation. I don’t believe that you immediately lose your salvation. I believe that if you die with unconfessed sin as a believer...there are two judgments...some of our works will be burned up and there are believers who will be saved as through fire, but they’re still saved...I think there are different degrees of reward in heaven just as there are different degrees of punishment in hell.”

Sixth answer: “Unconfessed sin? We go to hell.”

Seventh answer: “A lot of Christians still have problems and faults, but Jesus told us that we’re not under condemnation.”

Eighth answer: “Only the Lord knows, and He knows our hearts, and I would never want to stand in judgment of anyone else–only God would know what their eternal salvation would be.”

Ninth answer: “I really believe that God only knows the answer to that.”

Tenth answer: “If I’ve done everything that I know to do, intellectually and spiritually, according to His word, then God will take care of the rest–that’s what He promised.”

Eleventh answer: “There’s lots of sins I’ve committed that I haven’t confessed. God sees all of those and they are washed in the blood of Jesus Christ...we need to confess our sins regularly, but every Christian has sins that they have not confessed and if you die without confessing every little sin, surely you will be covered by the blood of Jesus Christ.”

Twelfth answer: “I think we’re all sinners...if you get hit by a bus and you committed a sin the second before you die...I don’t think God looks at you and says, ‘Whoops, missed one! Whoops, send him downstairs.’ I think God looks at your heart–he looks at your heart and actions together.”

Listening to these answers makes one wonder whether these Christians believe that God grades on a curve, but of course, He does not. He holds us to the highest standards of righteousness and only perfection will suffice (Matthew 5:48). He does not give us an “A for effort” or give us a free pass to heaven because we had “good intentions”. As shown by the last answer above, some hold to the hope that Jesus “looks at the heart” to see our good intentions. But even if the basis for our salvation is limited to the condition of our hearts, the Bible says we are doomed: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 ESV)

Returning to Ellen White for a moment, here is what she wrote in 1890 about the relationship between human effort and God’s grace:

“...when it is in the heart to obey God, when efforts are put forth to this end, Jesus accepts this disposition and effort as man’s best service, and he makes up for the deficiency with his own divine merit” (The Signs of the Times, (ST June 16, 1890).

While this quote is concerning enough on its own merits, it was subsequently used to support a works-based system of salvation in the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary under the explanation of, ironically enough, Romans 8:1. “The good news of the gospel is that Christ came to condemn sin, not sinners (John 3:17; Rom. 8:3). To those who believe and accept the generous provisions of the gospel and who in faith commit themselves to lives of loving obedience, Christ offers justification and freedom. There may yet be deficiencies in the believer’s character, but ‘when it is in the heart to obey God, when efforts are put forth to this end, Jesus accepts this disposition and effort as man’s best service, and He makes up for the deficiency with His own divine merit’ (ST June 16, 1890). For such there is no condemnation (John 3:18).”

The parallels between the evangelical Christians quoted above and the statements of Ellen White are difficult to miss. Both place the burden of salvation at least in part upon the sinner, effectively diluting God’s grace. If grace requires some application by the sinner in order to cover sins, then, as Paul says, “grace is no longer grace” (Romans 11:6). All who teach such a method of salvation effectively offer grace with one hand while taking it away with the other, implying that Jesus’ blood is sufficient to cover sins, so long as the sinner makes the application of it. Such teaching effectively subjects the work of Jesus to the effort of man, elevating the sinner into the office of co-savior.

Underlying much of this teaching is a subtle denial of original sin. The Bible says that by one man (Adam), the whole world is in slavery to sin (Romans 5:12). The Psalmist echoes this, saying, “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5). Ephesians 2:1-3 says that we arrive in this world “dead in our sins” and are by default, “children of wrath”.

If we must make continual application of Jesus’ blood by remembering unconfessed sins, we effectively deny the doctrine of original sin. Our belief is that by praying for forgiveness each time we sin, we will be restored to the perfection of Adam and thus, for a time, be fit for translation into heaven. But if Adam’s original sin is still standing against us, no amount of our own efforts in remembering unconfessed sin will ever be enough. Even if we remembered all of our sin, we would still have Adam’s sin to deal with–the sin the Psalmist says was already present in our mother’s womb. Sin is therefore a condition of our fallen humanity, not just a cosmetic defect.

This situation requires more than just human effort, it requires divine intervention. Just as by one man sin entered the world, so too by one Man does sin leave–through the blood of Jesus Christ (Romans 5:12-17). “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” (Romans 5:19 ESV) The good news is that forgiveness does not depend upon our effort to remember unconfessed sins, but solely upon Jesus and His perfect saving work. This is indeed blessed news for those who have failed miserably to keep themselves clean by exercising their memory of sins in prayer.

Let us live and be motivated by this good news! If our faith is in Him, Jesus has paid it all, and nothing more is owed!

In his concluding remarks, Horton summarizes the problem and offers words of hope. “Stop thinking of yourself as if it’s you AND God. It’s not you and God, it’s you in Christ who is God and man. God sees you in Christ, and because you are in Christ, He sees you as righteous. That’s the good news not only for the beginning of the Christian life, it’s the good news for the middle of the Christian life, and it’s the good news for the end of the Christian life. If you die with that message in your heart and in your mind, and just throw out all the “fine print” that you got in all the sermons that told you “no payments until [later]"–if you just throw all that stuff out [and] cling to Christ...you will die well. And if you will die well, you will live well.”

We end the same way Horton does, reflecting upon Edward Fisher’s words from his book, The Marrow of Modern Divinity.

The law says, “Thou art a sinner, and therefore thou shalt be damned,” (Romans 7:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:12).

But the gospel says, No; “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”; and therefore, “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, (1 Timothy 1:15, Acts 16:31).

Again the law says, “Knowest thou not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God; be not deceived,” (1 Corinthians 6:9) And therefore thou being a sinner, and not righteous, shalt not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the gospel says, “God has made Christ to be sin for thee who knew no sin; that thou mightest be made the righteousness of God in him, who is the Lord thy righteousness,” (Jeremiah 23:6).

Again the law says, “Pay me what thou owest me, or else I will cast thee into prison,” (Matthew 18:28,30).

But the gospel says, “Christ gave himself a ransom for thee,” (1 Timothy 2:6); “and so is made redemption unto thee,” (1 Corinthians 1:30).

Again the law says, “Thou hast not continued in all that I require of thee, and therefore thou art accursed,” (Deuteronomy 27:6).

But the gospel says, “Christ hath redeemed thee from the curse of the law, being made a curse for thee,” (Galatians 3:13).

Again the law says, “Thou are become guilty before God, and therefore shalt not escape the judgment of God,” (Romans 3:19, Romans 2:3).

But the gospel says, “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son” (John 5:12).

Guilt, Grace & Gratitude

In a society that consistently teaches “love of self” as a solution to almost every problem, is focusing on guilt before a Holy God counterproductive?  Does acknowledging our guilt before God have any place in the Christian experience, when so often we are given the message that we must live victoriously, naming and claiming God’s promises so that we can lead abundant and fulfilled lives?  Will admitting our guilt before God undermine our self esteem or our pursuit of an optimal Christian experience?  Conversely, if grace is preached too freely, will this remove the motivation for Christians to live a holy life?  Will grace without strings attached open up the door to lawlessness?  When does gratitude for the finished work of Christ come into play?  These questions have received widely different answers in the Christian world and are particularly divided along denominational lines.  Dr. Michael Horton, professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, tackles these important issues in a prologue to a broadcast of the White Horse Inn.  His insights are profound and help us to understand our position of guilt before God, the grace He freely gives in Christ, and the life of gratitude Christians live in response.

Dr. Michael S. Horton
Westminister Seminary California

”Grace is the essence of theology and gratitude is the essence of ethics.” So declared one of the greatest Reformed theologians of this century, G.C. Berkouwer.  It sounds so simple, and yet it is such a difficult business to arrange all of our thoughts, affections, convictions and actions around these two poles.

You see, we fear that making God’s grace alone in Christ the essence of our theology, it will lead to imbalance and apathy in the Christian life.  And by making gratitude the essence of ethics, where does the fear of punishment and hope of rewards have any place?  Therefore we hear the cry again and again, “Balance!  We need balance!” as if the good news were just too good and the bad news were just too unbearable.

Most of our contemporaries would like to believe that either God is too nice or that we are too nice to merit divine wrath.  As it has been in many self-satisfied periods in history, our day is given over to feel-good religion and there is little place in feel-good religion for recognizing our guilt before a Holy God.

Guilt, in fact, is a dirty word in our feel-good culture.  This may be because many of us were raised in strict churches where guilt was a tool for keeping us in line.  But for the wider culture, guilt is one of the casualties in this “triumph of the therapeutic”.  The idea of guilt just isn’t warm and affirming.  As the great Saturday Night Live theologian Stuart Smalley would tell us, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and doggone it, people like me!”

But denying it doesn’t make it go away.  We feel it, but we can’t explain it, because we aren’t allowed to believe anymore that we feel guilty, since maybe we are guilty.  While the world pokes fun at feel-good religion, the church seems to be thriving on it these days.

While we may not relish a toothache, it’s the pain that pushes us into the dentist’s office and maybe saves the tooth.  We can deny the tooth’s pain or pretend that it doesn’t exist, as the Christian Science or Pentecostal faith healers might expect us to do, but the Bible paints the picture of the human condition with warts and all.  Like the toothache, our feelings of guilt are meant to lead us to recognize that there is in fact an objective problem of guilt before a Holy God.

Let’s put it in the following terms.  Do you believe in God?  Let’s start with the very basic.  If so, do you believe that this God thinks that the actions of Hilter and the Nazis were wrong and deserve severe punishment?  If there is a God, and He didn’t consider those actions worthy of the severest punishment–whatever that happened to be–would there be any sense of justice in the world?  Could you believe in a God like that?

Even the most committed secularist secretly harbors the hope that a serial rapist who beat his rap on earth will nevertheless get his due sometime, somewhere, somehow in the next life.

So what do you think?  Can you accept the idea that there is a final judgment, at least for some people at the end of it all?  Is evil ever finally judged and vanquished, or will the slaughter of millions in Nazi Germany never be avenged?  Can we live with the existence of a God who is that callous to our existence?

If you can accept the idea that there is a final judgment of at least some people, the next question is this: If there is a final judgment of some people, why not you? If you grant that there is a final judgment at all, and that evil is finally judged, and the wicked are sentanced, there must be some reason why you think that you don’t belong there.

Maybe you’re not Hitler or Stalin.  Maybe you think of yourself as a pretty good person who gets along with people well enough.  But do you have any objective, solid reason to believe right now, right where you’re sitting, that you are good enough to avoid God’s judgment?

Do you know how good you must be to receive His approval instead of His sentance?  These are tough questions, and since eternity is one heck of a long time, you ought to have some reasons to believe whatever it is you believe about this whole subject.

The problem is, we–and by “we” I mean the Christian church at the end of the twentieth century–haven’t been terribly clear ourselves.

The Scriptures are quite plain about the whole business.  We are born sinners and we die sinners.  At no point in between are we righteous enough to stand before God.  And God’s holiness and justice requires the punishment of all sinners.

So no one escapes God’s wrath, because God doesn’t “grade on a curve”.  The biblical view levels the playing field.  There is, says Scripture, no one who is righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:10-11).

No other religion has such a pessimistic, or as we would say, realistic view of human nature and the possibilities of salvation by human effort or goodness.  But the good news is that no other religion has such an optimistic view of God in His grace!  While the world’s religions may all point you in the direction of heaven, telling you that you aren’t helpless and that you can save yourself by pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, Christianity tells you that Christ has come not just as a moral leader to show us the path to God, but to be our way, our truth and our life (John 14:6).

That’s what I mean when I say that everybody else tones down both the bad news and the good news.  The bad news isn’t as bad as Christianity’s portrait, but the good news, therefore, can’t be as good either.

The problem is, we know, deep down, when we put our head on the pillow, we don’t have the foggiest chance of getting close to God by our own resolutions or good intentions.  We know that our heart is deceitful and our thoughts are far from loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourself.  Deep down we know, as Adam and Eve knew when they fled from God’s presence and tried to cover up their nakedness with fig leaves of their own making that things aren’t that simple and God isn’t pleased with our lives.

We know–in every culture, in every religious tradition, that there must be an atonement–a peace offering, and either we will have to stand judgment for our sins, or we must throw ourselves on the mercy of the court, trusting in Christ alone to provide us with the justice and righteousness that we need before the heavenly Judge of all the earth.

If grace is the essence of theology, then as Berkouwer said, gratitude must be the essence of ethics.

John Wesley once declared that if we took grace too seriously, especially the doctrine of election, it would undermine our only basis for pursuing a holy life–fear of punishment and hope of rewards.  But isn’t that a selfish motivation for the Christian life?  That’s always been the fear–“Too much grace!  It’ll throw a wrench in the whole process of Christian growth.”

But the Scriptures insist that a legalistic view of the Christian life is what leads us right back to fear and bondage.  Since the Law, though good, in and of itself can never give us the power to perform what it commands, the gospel not only reconciles us to God in the first place, it’s the only fuel we have to keep us going in the process of sanctification.  Therefore, gratitude–not fear of punishment or hope of rewards–is the only proper basis for pursuing a holy and God-glorifying existence.

If our salvation depended upon us for one moment, even in the slightest degree, we would eventually either become self-righteous, pretending that we were actually pulling it off, or we would despair of ever knowing whether God really accepted us.  How could we possibly love God and serve our neighbor freely if we were still caught up in the saving of our own skin?

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Used with permission from Dr. Horton and the White Horse Inn.

Has God Really Said?

This week’s White Horse Inn radio program (January 21, 2007, available for download here) entitled “Has God Really Said?” explores distortions of truth within Christianity, using the example of the serpent talking with Eve in the Garden of Eden, opening the door to the first sin by asking the question “Has God [really] said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden?’” (Genesis 3:1).  In focusing on distortions of truth within Christianity, one of the natural questions that arises is, “Why are there so many denominations?” In discussing this issue, some important points were raised that have ramifications for Adventism; in fact, the Adventist church was specifically mentioned in one of the examples that is reproduced below.  It is remarkable that the members of this panel, who are from the Reformed tradition, were able to find agreement that it isn’t what a denomination confesses that reveals the hearts of individual church members.  Even the reformer John Calvin was able to identify a “church within a church” in the Roman Catholic tradition that held to the true gospel.  In the final analysis, what binds Christians together is their confession of Jesus Christ as Savior and their belief in the gospel.  Both current and former Adventists can learn something from this discussion and perhaps be more careful about the labels we apply to each other.

Panelists in this dialogue:
Kim Riddlebarger (KR) is Pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Anaheim, CA
Ken Jones (KJ) is Pastor of Greater Union Baptis Church in Compton, CA
Michael Horton (MH) is Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary

KJ: ...we must recognize that the fact of denominations and the various number of denominations is a fact of our own limited understanding and sometimes, flat out sin on our part.

KR: We lease our church facility from a Seventh-day Adventist congregation and there’s an associate pastor on their staff who was in prison in Cuba for eight years because he was an Adventist.  And he made the point to me, “You and I can debate which day we go to church on and some of the stuff we eat, but [if] you find yourself in a prison camp with Baptists and Pentecostals and Roman Catholics–and all of the sudden its what you have in common against an atheistic secular state [that’s important].”

KJ: Amen.

KR: And I think a lot of this discussion takes place because we’ve had it so easy; it’s easy to be divided over non-essential things.

KJ: Well...[now that] you mention that, when I was in Nigeria two years ago we did a pastor’s conference.  It was the first interdenominational pastor’s conference in Joss, Nigeria.  Here [the pastors] were, meeting other clergy from different denominations for the first time.  And it just so happens, two or three weeks prior to our coming there, a whole Christian village had been annihilated by the Muslims.  It’s at times like these [that] where we worship, the day upon which we worship, who we baptize–all of those issues become so secondary to what the essential message is, and that is the person and work of Jesus Christ.  And throughout that week, they were able to find strength as [we] were able to lay out the basic claims of the gospel–the riches of God, in the person of Jesus Christ.

...

MH: How about [The Council of] Trent?  This is harder because there are so many different versions of Roman Catholicism.  I know many Roman Catholic folks including priests and theologians who really do deep down agree with justification, who do embrace the gospel.  But when you ask them what they think of the Council of Trent, which says it was anathema–condemned the view that it is heretical that we are justified by faith alone, through grace alone, on the basis of Christ alone.  What do we do in a situation like that?  Is it an outright denial that constitutes heresy?

KR: I think Calvin helps us greatly on that one, he says, “Rome has ceased to be a true church although a true church exists in her midst.” That the official church, by anathematizing the gospel, at that moment is no longer a true church–it is a false church based on its profession of faith–it denies Paul’s gospel for Pete’s sake!  However, there are many people within the Roman Catholic church, who, when their head hits the pillow at night, are saying “Thank you Lord that Christ died for my sins” and that there are numbers of believing Christians within the Roman church.  And so there’s this blessed inconsistency.

MH: So you can have a heretical confession of faith on the part of a church, and yet a person within that body can demur, even implicitly, and really trust in the gospel. ... We can’t extend the right hand of fellowship to that person, unless and until their visible profession of faith–by joining a church that truly confesses the faith–is consistent with their personal confession.

KR: And they’re stuck in a situation where–even though they may be believers–they do not hear the word preached in the proper sense, they’re not getting any of the benefits of membership in a true church, they’re hearing things that are conflicting with what they know in their heart to be true and what they believe.  They’re going to be buffeted by false doctrine and they’re not going to find consolation for their guilt and their troubled conscience there.  So they’re going to live a very impoverished and miserable Christian life, unless and until they get out.  But they still should be numbered among the elect and they still confess in their private moments that Christ is their all-sufficient righteousness.