Yesterday Americans celebrated Thanksgiving, a holiday with a heritage uniquely rooted in that nation’s history. It helps to remind ourselves, of course, that the traditional Thanksgiving narrative is fraught with inaccuracies, especially with regard to the relationship between the early settlers and the natives [1]. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to Seventh-day Adventists, as Ellen White confirms the unpleasant historical fact that despite their consecration and courage, the Pilgrims failed to understand the principle of religious liberty [2]. The dispossession of native peoples and the spirit of religious intolerance most assuredly go hand in hand.
But the imperative of giving thanks is an essential Christian virtue, and however imperfectly the original settlers of the North American continent lived out their Christian faith, the spirit attending the Thanksgiving holiday is one that warrants our focus, and not merely one day out of the year. In the next few moments we’re going to consider how the spirit of Thanksgiving lies at the heart of the Bible doctrine of righteousness by faith, and thus at the heart of the gospel itself.
“All Things Come of Thee”
Many Bible students, whether inside or outside of Adventism, aren’t aware that one of the most powerful Bible verses on the subject of righteousness by faith and the relationship of faith and works is found, not in the writings of the apostle Paul, not even in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament. In his final prayer for the nation of Israel just before he died, King David uttered these words:
But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee (I Chron. 29:14).
Often we use this verse with reference to the returning of tithes and offerings. But in reality, this verse encompasses much more than that. The doctrine of Christian stewardship involves much more than the management of one’s finances, and the principles involved in this doctrine teach more about the plan of salvation—and the imperative of giving thanks—than many suppose.
This is because a key feature of the Bible doctrine of salvation is the question of earning, and how Biblical salvation is not an earned reward. Paul writes in Romans: “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt” (Rom. 4:4). The fact that those who earn just wages deserve their reward is, of course, a Biblical principle—and a cornerstone of social justice. Jesus declared, “The laborer is worthy of his hire” (Luke 10:7; see also I Tim. 5:18). Sadly, human history has often been traced in the blood of those to whom this justice has been cruelly denied. From Spartacus to Haymarket, from the Goshen brickfields in Moses’ time to the 19th-century shingle factories of the Pacific Northwest, from the cotton fields of the pre-Civil War South to the global slave trade of our own time, needless misery has seared the human heart through the withholding of workers’ just due. The continuing strife of capital and labor in our contemporary world is a notable progeny of this injustice. One can’t help recalling these shameful chapters of history when reading verses such as the following:
And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not Me, saith the Lord of hosts (Mal. 3:5).
But the reason Biblical salvation is not a matter of earned—and therefore deserved—wages is found in David’s declaration noted above: “All things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee” (I Chron. 29:14). A wager-earner gives of his own time and effort to the one for whom labor is rendered, and in turn, the latter gives of his own resources as recompense to the former. David’s statement explains why this cannot be the case with humanity and God, simply because everythingh men and women possess, from the moment of birth, is a gift from God. Not only the power and grace bestowed at conversion, but everything throughout life, is in fact a divine gift. Thus it is impossible for humans to exchange any of this for something belonging to God, for everything man has ever had—whether before or after conversion—was always God’s to start with.
In one of her best-known treatises on the subject of justification by faith, Ellen White elaborates on this point:
There has been too little educating in clear lines upon this point. The Lord has lent man His own goods in trust—means which He requires be handed back to Him when His providence signifies and the upbuilding of His cause demands it. The Lord gave the intellect. He gave the health and the ability to gather earthly gain. He created the things of earth. He manifests His divine power to develop all its riches. They are His fruits from His own husbandry. He gave the sun, the clouds, the showers of rain, to cause vegetation to flourish. As God’s employed servants you gathered in His harvest to use what your wants required in an economical way and hold the balance for the call of God. You can say with David, “For all things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” I Chronicles 29:14. So the satisfaction of creature merit cannot be in returning to the Lord His own, for it was always His own property to be used as He in His providence should direct. . . .
Now not a soul can give God anything that was not already His. Bear this in mind: “All things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” I Chronicles 29:14. This must be kept before the people wherever we go—that we possess nothing, can offer nothing in value, in work, in faith, which we have not first received of God and upon which He can lay His hand any time and say, They are Mine—gifts and blessings and endowments I entrusted to you, not to enrich yourself, but for wise improvement to benefit the world.
The creation belongs to God. The Lord could, by neglecting man, stop his breath at once. All that he is and all that he has pertains to God. The entire world is God’s. Man’s houses, his personal acquirements, whatever is valuable or brilliant, is God’s own endowment. It is all His gift to be returned back to God in helping to cultivate the heart of man. The most splendid offerings may be laid upon the altar of God, and men will praise, exalt, and laud the giver because of his liberality. In what? “All things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” I Chronicles 29:14. No work of man can merit for him the pardoning love of God, but the love of God pervading the soul will lead him to do those things which were always required of God and that he should do with pleasure. He has done only that which duty ever required of him [3].
Notice why she says human merit is impossible. Not because we have nothing to do to secure salvation, but because everything we possess—before and after we come to Christ—is a gift from God. The conditions necessary to obtain the salvation Scripture offers do not earn us anything, for all the strength by which these conditions are met is the Lord’s and not ours. As sinful mortals, the only thing we have earned is eternal death. This is why the result of sin, unlike salvation (Rom. 4:4), is in fact described in Scripture as an earned wage (Rom. 6:23). It is why Ellen White can say that “by our disobedience we have merited God’s displeasure and condemnation” [4]. Rebellion, unlike righteousness, does in fact originate with us. But the righteousness which fulfills the conditions of salvation, both imputed and imparted, originates entirely with God.
Thanksgiving and the Gospel
The ultimate antidote to legalism—a heresy which reduces salvation to a transactional exchange in which something belonging to us is presumably exchanged for something belonging to God—is recognition on our part of the truth described above. Nothing we possess at any time, either before or after conversion, belongs to us. It is all a divine gift. The notion that the believer earns God’s favor through the obedience identified by Scripture as the condition of salvation (Matt. 7:21; 19:16-26; Luke 10:25-28; Rom. 2:6-10; 8:13; Heb. 5:9) is patently absurd, as all the power—both from divine grace and cooperative human effort—comes from God to begin with. It is all His, and none of our own. As a friend of mine once said years ago, legalism is truly nothing but a vacuous figment of human imagination.
Gratitude—the giving of thanks—thus lies at the heart of the plan of salvation. Repentance, forgiveness, transformation, and the practical conquest of sin thus made possible, are each and all the Lord’s, with no credit accruing to the human recipient. One need not reduce the saving process to a declarative act of justification, as some have mistakenly done, in order to eliminate the illusion of human merit. Nor, as a means of forestalling prideful boasting, need we subtract all human effort save passive submission from the work of overcoming sin. All one needs to acknowledge is that every factor in the work of salvation, whether from God’s side or ours, originates with God first and foremost.
Nothing for which we render thanks, whether around the Thanksgiving table or elsewhere, can measure with the gratitude warranted by God’s saving grace. From the initial sorrow we experience when convicted of sin by the law to the practical triumph brought by total sanctification, it is all a gift of God. Just as this truth reveals, in Ellen White’s words, the cross of Christ reflected in every water spring and stamped on every loaf of bread [5], so it transforms every day into Thanksgiving Day, every moment an occasion for the most profound of gratitude.
REFERENCES
1. David J. Silverman, This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019).
2. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, pp. 292-293.
3. ----Faith and Works, pp. 20-23.
4. ----Sons and Daughters of God, p. 53.
5. ----The Desire of Ages, p. 660.
Pastor Kevin Paulson holds a Bachelor’s degree in theology from Pacific Union College, a Master of Arts in systematic theology from Loma Linda University, and a Master of Divinity from the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He served the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for ten years as a Bible instructor, evangelist, and local pastor. He writes regularly for Liberty magazine and does script writing for various evangelistic ministries within the denomination. He continues to hold evangelistic and revival meetings throughout the North American Division and beyond, and is a sought-after seminar speaker relative to current issues in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He presently resides in Berrien Springs, Michigan