From A Current Adventist
Hi there! I was born in Adventism and am still a member of this denomination. Lately I’ve started to recognize certain unbiblical patterns within the Adventist church and started asking questions about doctrines and practices. Always there are the vague circular reasonings and “Adventistly correct” answers. In search of truth, I sought to have an opposite opinion to at least confront by biases myself. This is when I came across your podcast.
I was shocked about how much your experiences and mine were similar! My eyes seem to open more and more concerning the SDA church, but some elements of doctrine are still blurry to me. Could you help me understand 1 John 3:9 and 1 John 5:8 (cannot sin if born again). I’ve been taught those passages, but I feel like the SDA doctrine seeps into the explanations I received—especially when I asked the person teaching me, “Do you sin?” The answer was vague—never a yes or a no. Also, the teaching of the investigative judgement isn’t yet clear. How much of an false teaching is it?.…
I really want my eyes to stay open to the truth from now on.
Thank you for you time, and may God continue to bless your ministry in Jesus name!
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you for writing! How well I understand your situation and the confusion as you begin to read the Bible with new eyes. It is particularly hard when you sit in the environment of Adventist teaching and try to sort things out!
I will address your questions and also give you some links that may help you with underlying Adventist worldview issues.
First, here is 1 John 3:9 in the NASB95 version:
No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
The LSB (which we usually use) says “does not sin” instead of “practices sin”—the underlying meaning is the same, but the choice of “practices” help me understand what John is saying. The point in this text is that the person who is born again is completely new and different. Instead of being dead in sin, as we all are by nature, we are now born of God. We literally have our dead-in-sin spirits made alive by the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus, and our curse of death has been shattered by His resurrection which was the proof of the sufficiency of His blood sacrifice. The Holy Spirit indwells us, and although we still have “a law of sin in our members” (as Paul says in Romans 7:23), our still-mortal bodies do not define our identities. Our identities are our immaterial spirits. They are born dead, separated from the life of God as Adam’s legacy to us, and only when we believe and trust Jesus’ finished work are we given spiritual life. Jesus’ blood opens to us a new and living way to God, and He indwells us and changes our natures and identities when we believe. As Jesus said in John 5:24, we pass from death to life, and we do not come into judgment.
John is referring to this very real (but invisible) literal change that occurs to true believers. Believing does not refer to a set of practices and doctrines but to complete trust and dependence upon the Lord Jesus and His finished atonement. When we are born of God, our natures are no longer DEAD in sin and under condemnation and the wrath of God (see John 3:18 and 36) but alive. We are adopted children of God and joint heirs with Christ (Romans 8:14–17). We are citizens of a new kingdom, no longer in the domain of darkness but in the kingdom of the beloved son (Col. 1:13).
Because we have been made alive, because we have God Himself indwelling us and making us alive with His eternal life, we are by nature no longer sinners although our flesh still tempts us. But because we are alive and literally connected to God (Eph 1:13, 14), we have the ability for the first time to turn to Him and trust Him when we are tempted to sin. For the first time we actually have Choice! We are no longer unable to resist sin because we have God’s life in us. We will sin because our flesh has not yet been glorified, but as we live with Jesus and learn to trust Him and His word and to rely on the Holy Spirit to plant us in truth and reality, we learn to discern between good and evil and to say no to ungodliness.
What John is saying here is that the born again will no longer be identified by persistent sin. Instead we are identified by the life of Jesus and the presence of His Spirit teaching us to trust Him. This is not a passage saying we will overcome all sin, as SDAs say it is. Rather this is a passage assuring us that we will be increasingly changed from the inside-out as the Lord convicts us and shows us how to trust Him and His word in moments of temptation. We are no longer defined by sin. Sin, at the bottom line, is spiritual death. That is what Jesus meant when He said to “let the dead bury their own dead” in Luke 9:60. The dead are the spiritually dead, the unbelievers who have not trusted Jesus and believed in Him. When we are believers, we are now saints and children of God. Sin no longer is our identity.
1 John 5:8 is similar. Here is 1 John 5:6–8:
This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that bear witness: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.
I am going to copy the text notes for verse 6 from the NASB study Bible; they have helped me with this passage:
“Water symbolizes Jesus’ baptism, and blood symbolizes His death. These are mentioned because Jesus’ ministry began at His baptism and ended at His death. John is reacting to the heretics of his day (ie gnosticism) who said that Jesus was born only a man and remained so until His baptism. At that time, they maintained, the Christ (the Son of God) descended on the human Jesus, but left him before is suffering on the cross—so that it was only the man Jesus who died. Throughout this letter John has been insisting that Jesus Christ is God as well as man (1:1–4; 4:2; 5:5). He now asserts that it was this God-man Jesus Christ who came into our world, was baptized and died. Jesus was the Son of God not only at His baptism but also at His death (v. 6b). This truth is extremely important, because, if Jesus died only as a man, His sacrificial atonement (2:2; 4:10) would not have been sufficient to take away the guilt of man’s sin. The Holy Spirit testifies that Jesus is the Son of God in two ways: (1) The Spirit descended on Jesus at His baptism (John 11:32–34), and (2) He continuers to confirm in the hearts of believers the apostolic testimony that Jesus’ baptism and death verify that He is the Christ, the Son of God (2:27; 1 Cor. 12:3).”
The Old Testament said that no charge or claim could be brought without two or three witnesses. John is emphasizing that there are three witnesses to the identity of the Lord Jesus as God.
I believe you may find this week’s Former Adventist Fact Check video podcast helpful as well as those coming in the next two weeks
This article may also help you understand the Adventist worldview which invisibly underlies the way the talk about Scripture:
This video addresses the Adventist problem of not understanding why the law cannot continue in the new covenant:
Although we are not currently publishing a printed version of Proclamation! magazine, all our back issues are online here: ProclamationMagazine.com
We have also added your name to our weekly Proclamation! email updates. You may need to add the email address mail@LifeAssuranceMinistries.org to your contacts in order for the email not to be directed toward your Spam folder. These emails will arrive every Friday. Articles are available at our website.
Both podcasts are also on our YouTube channel above.
Please feel free to email anytime!
Food Laws Were Temporary
In response to “It’s All About the Insides”: In all of the 47 years I was an Adventist, I never saw Leviticus 20:24-26 which tells WHY God made a distinction between clean and unclean. Notice the “therefore’”!
If you read that and Peter’s vision on the rooftop, you’ll see when that distinction was removed.
That’s what it took for me to fully understand why nothing was unclean anymore.
I pray God gives you all many blessings this year. Thank you for your dedication to sharing truth and exposing error.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you for that! That is so true!! What a great juxtaposition of Leviticus 20 and Acts 10!
Thank You For Your Resources
I appreciate your weekly Friday night FAF discussions even though I can’t always make them.
You should know that even though you don’t hear all the ways FAF reaches people, we see it at work. A couple here in our local Christian congregation are using your resources (videos online) to inform themselves in talking with a child who married an Adventist that is attending Andrews U. They are finding your channel very helpful. My wife has been talking with the wife over the past few months, and we are going to meet with her and her husband after the Christmas holiday. We’re praying that God can give us wisdom in how to best to support them.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you for the encouragement. That is wonderful to hear! We pray for the Lord to lead your conversations and for this couple to understand what they need to know. We also pray the Lord will intervene in the younger couple’s marriage and bring them both to trust Jesus alone. †
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