Jesus said, "It Is Finished"

As an Adventist I learned that “Jesus died to pay for sin”, but that death was not the full atonement we needed. Adventist doctrine teaches that Jesus’ death is a necessary component of our salvation, but although His death was the complete “sacrifice” for sin, it was not the complete “atonement” for sin. 

This teaching says that after His resurrection and ascension, Jesus continues atoning for our sins IN HEAVEN. He “applies His blood” to every sin we confess, and if we keep “overcoming” our sins by keeping the law more and more perfectly, perfecting our characters throughout our lifetimes, Jesus will make up for what we lack by His grace. 

Thus, in Adventism, Jesus’ death was necessary if we were to have any hope of being saved. We had to “accept Jesus” and be grateful that His blood paid for our past sins, but we had to perfect our characters and obey more and more perfectly, confessing our sins so they would not be held against us, so Jesus could “apply His blood” to our ongoing sins and finally, if we were sincere and tried our best, He would fill up whatever we lacked before God when we finally died. 

If we successfully overcame and passed the “probation” in which we lived during our lives as Adventists, we would one day be resurrected to spend eternity in heaven.

This would put us on a never-ending path of doing something for salvation when on the cross, our Lord declared, "it is finished, and His resurrection conquered death for us all! Now that is something to celebrate!

—Colleen Tinker (Life Assurance Ministries)