HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2011 / OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER / THE LIFE EXAMINED WITH CAROLYN MACOMBER
October November December 2011
VOLUME 12, ISSUE 4
D E P A R T M E N T S
The life EXAMINED
with Carolyn Macomber
I NEED YOU
Carolyn Macomber
Since coming out of Adventism, Jesus' birth has taken on extra special meaning to me. I am often brought to tears around Christmas as I contemplate Almighty God (in the person of Jesus Christ) coming to redeem me. Incarnation is not just a big word to me; it is incomprehensible to my human mind. It takes my breath away and causes me to fall on my knees in worship.
As an Adventist I understood that Jesus came to earth to show how God's law can be kept and to die for my sins. Yes, I had the language right—"die for my sins", but the meaning was twisted around the priority of Jesus coming to earth as an example of perfect law-keeping. God's law, I believed, could be kept with the help of the Holy Spirit. I had the same resources that Jesus did to keep the law perfectly. Jesus' coming to earth, I believed, was to refute Satan's accusation against God's law. According to E.G. White, prophetess of the Adventist Church, Satan accused God of requiring perfect obedience to a law that was impossible to keep. Ironic isn't it? Can you see the twisted thinking in the above paragraph? Do you see truth mixed with error? Deceptive, isn't it?
The facts of Scripture are clear, though. I am doomed without Christ. I am born on earth as an enemy of God (Rom. 5:10). Romans 3:9-18 describes what I was at birth: I didn't seek God; I wasn't righteous; I didn't understand God; I couldn't do anything good; I didn't know the way of peace. Pretty depressing, don't you think? It gets worse. Ephesians 2 tells me that I was "dead" in my transgressions. Have you ever seen death up close and personal? It is not pretty; nothing moves, nothing breathes, nothing speaks. My pastor described "dead in my transgressions" as me lying in the water with my face down, arms outstretched. Drowned people don't move. He shared that God intervenes in my dead condition and gives me a choice: I could ask the Rescuer to rescue me by simply saying, "I can't make it to shore without your help; I need you!"
Scripture clearly states: "For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin"(Rom. 5:20). Some Adventists would argue that reading further in Romans 5 we come to this, "Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law."
Was the law given to be kept? Yes! The problem is you and I never could keep it. Sin was in the world before the law was even given (Rom. 5:13). Then why was the law given? Paul asks the same question in Galatians 3:19. He also answers that question: the law was given to point us to the need of a Redeemer/Rescuer. "It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made" (Gal. 3:19b). The offspring to whom Paul is referring in this passage is Jesus!
Paul further expounds by writing that the law was "our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith." Paul becomes even stronger in his use of language, "You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace" (Gal. 5:4).
What then of this conundrum? I had been taught "Sunday" Christians claimed Christ abolished the law on the cross. I have since learned that Christ fulfilled the law—something I couldn't do! Jesus says in Luke 24:44, "‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.' Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.'"
Why am I amazed at the incarnation? It is so much more than I thought it was: an encouragement to keep the law. Rather, the incarnation means God came to be among us—to do what I couldn't do! I am no longer dead, but alive in Christ! I am rescued, because God entered His creation to redeem it. Hallelujah! †
Copyright 2011 Life Assurance Ministries, Inc., Casa Grande, Arizona, USA. All rights reserved. Revised December 3, 2011. Contact email: proclamation@gmail.com
Carolyn Macomber was a doctoral student at Andrews University when she discovered inconsistencies between Adventism and the Bible. She withdrew her membership from the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 2009. She is a member of The Chapel Evangelical Free Church in St. Joseph, Michigan, where she is the leader of a Former Adventist Fellowship. She teaches at an inner city private school in Benton Harbor, Michigan, and a small group leader for Bible Study Fellowship in Granger, Indiana. She shares her discoveries in this column, and you can read her experiences of processing out of Adventism into the Christian community at her blog or watch her testimony HERE.
