BY J. DAVID NEWMAN

oris Kornfeld was a Jewish physician who had fallen victim to Stalin's purges. We do not know his "crime" except that he was sentenced to a concentration camp for political subversives at Ekibastuz.¹

Kornfeld was an ardent Communist, a cultural Jew, and an atheist. Because he was a doctor, he lived a little better than the other prisoners--the prison authorities needed doctors to care for the prisoners who were constantly dying under the primitive conditions of their imprisonment.

While in the concentration camp Kornfeld began to reexamine his beliefs in Communism. One of his patients was a Christian who witnessed to him the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. He struggled over giving his life to God.

One day as he worked to save the life of one of the prison guards who had been knifed, he was tempted to suture the severed artery in such a way that it would reopen shortly after the surgery. The guard would die, and no one would be the wiser. As his hands paused while tying the suture he suddenly became appalled by the violence and hatred in his own heart toward the guard and all those like him. He despised his persecutors. He could gladly kill them all. He then realized that he was trapped by the very evil that he despised.

He began to retie the suture properly, and as he did, he found himself repeating the words he had heard from his fellow prisoner: "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." These were strange words for a Jew. But he continued to pray the Lord's Prayer and recount other passages about God's love and forgiveness.

One day he discovered an orderly stealing some of the food meant only for the patients. Orderlys were quislings, prisoners who had betrayed some other prisoner. The prison authorities used them to keep order, and turned their backs when they abused other inmates. Kornfeld reported this infraction to the prison commandant.

The commandant placed the orderly in three days of confinement. Kornfeld knew that his life would not be safe once the orderly was released. But eventually he found he was not afraid. A remarkable peace had come into his heart. He wanted to share his new faith.

One afternoon he examined a prisoner who had been operated on for cancer of the intestines. The eyes of this man were filled with sorrow, and his face was etched with years of misery. Kornfeld felt mysteriously attracted to him.

Kornfeld shared what had happened to him, how God had transformed his life. The patient drifting in and out of consciousness did not catch it all. But he heard enough to know that this man, this doctor, was different.

The next morning the young patient awoke to the sound of running feet and a great commotion. That very night someone had bludgeoned Boris Kornfeld to death. But his testimony did not die. The patient pondered the testimony of the doctor and became a Christian. He survived that prison camp and went on to tell the world about it. His name was Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He is most famous for his massive exposé of conditions under Stalin in his book The Gulag Archipelago.

Even though Kornfeld did not live long, he followed the path of the apostle Paul, who also was transformed by grace from a persecutor of Christians to a Christian himself.

"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18).*

Think for a moment about your greatest need--emotional and relational. The cry of humanity, the cry of every individual, is acceptance for who they are. We want to be loved, to be valued, and to be accepted just as we are.

When Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit, they knew they had done something wrong. They were afraid that God would no longer accept them as they had become, so when God came looking for them, they hid. We have been hiding ever since. We are afraid that God will not love us.

We find it difficult to confess our sins, our problems, and our difficulties, because we are afraid that others in the church will look down on us. We are afraid of rejection just as Adam and Eve were. Yet we need each other in order to grow in Jesus.

So how do we find the power, the resolve, to lose our fear? How do we become transformed to be like Jesus and to conquer the sin in our lives? It comes from understanding the grace that transformed the life of Boris Kornfeld.

What Is Grace?
Grace begins with acceptance: "Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God" (Rom. 15:7). What did we have to do for Christ to accept us? Nothing! Paul tells us that "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). Christ does not wait until we are good before He accepts us. The Bible is clear that no one is good or will never be good enough (see Rom. 3:10-12, 23).

If no one is good enough and there is nothing that we can do that will make God love us, how then are we saved? "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:30, 31).

Believing in Jesus means that you have come to the place where you recognize that you are helpless and there is nothing you can do to get to heaven. You realize that you are guilty and you deserve to die. You are sorry for your life of sin. So you place your full trust in Jesus. You accept as yours the perfect life Jesus lived, and you change from being dependent on yourself to being dependent on Jesus.

Questions for sharing: 1. What does Kornfeld's life tell us about the reward and consequences of living a grace-filled life? 2. How do grace and transformation relate to each other? 3. How has the grace of Christ made a difference in your life?

When God gives you His grace, His pardon, He does not expect you to keep on living the same way as you lived before. Your surrender to Him allows Him to place the Holy Spirit in your life. He transforms you so that you desire to do good things. You desire to follow Christ's commandments because you love Him (John 14:15). This is why the apostle Paul said that God had commissioned him to "call . . . the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith" (Rom. 1:5).

Boris Kornfeld knew when he became a Christian that he would change, and that his behavior would change. When you accept Christ, your life will change. God always accepts you as you are, but He never leaves you where you are. When you accept His gracious gift of salvation, He places all the resources of heaven at your request so that you can grow to become more like Jesus.

What does a person who is growing like Jesus look like? Just because a person has accepted the seventh-day Sabbath, or changes how they dress, or returns tithe to God does not make them a Christian. A person can do all these things without surrendering to the lordship of Jesus. There is something more basic that Jesus wants.

Back to Basics
At the Last Supper just before He died, Jesus explained how people would know who His followers were. He said that everyone would know them by how they loved one another (John 13:35).

Ellen White endorsed what Jesus said when she stressed how God's people are to live in the last days: "Those who wait for the Bridegroom's coming are to say to the people [the world], 'Behold your God.' The last rays of merciful light, the last message of mercy to be given to the world, is a revelation of His character of love."²

"A loving, lovable Christian is the most powerful argument in favor of the truth."³

A Bicycle Built for Two
I like to illustrate the connection between grace and transformation to a bicycle. A bicycle has two wheels. If we separate the wheels, we no longer have a bicycle, but it is important to distinguish the difference between the wheels. One steers the bike and the other powers the bike. Both are equally important and necessary.

Salvation is made up of two parts--grace and transformation. Both are necessary for heaven, and if we separate them we no longer have salvation. But just as with the bicycle, it is vital that we distinguish their unique functions.

Grace is what saves us. Grace comes entirely from God. It is outside us and is given to us freely when we place our trust in Jesus.

Transformation begins to take place the moment we receive grace. Transformation takes place inside us. We always look to grace for the assurance of our salvation, yet are always conscious that we are growing in obedience to God. As we cooperate with God He changes us into His image.

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*Scripture references in this article are from the New International Version.

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¹ This story is condensed from Charles Colson, Loving God (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1987), pp. 19-29.
² Ellen G. White, Christ's Object Lessons, p. 415.
³ White, Manuscript Releases, vol. 21, p. 25.

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J. David Newman is the senior pastor of New Hope Seventh-day Adventist Church in Burtonsville, Maryland.