Lesson 9: “Reconciliation and Hope”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
Adventists, I have a question for you: what is the gospel? While we’re at it, I have another couple of questions for you too: what does it mean to “accept Jesus into your heart”, and when a person is saved—what is he saved FROM? Do you have a part to play in securing your salvation?
“Mystery” Lost in Adventist Worldview
This week’s lesson attempts to explain, from an Adventist, physicalist perspective, how people are “reconciled” to God through faith. This lesson is an example of how normal Christian words are confused by being articulated within an Adventist framework to support the Adventist belief about salvation. We see in this lesson that while they say salvation is by faith, they fail to get the foundation right: there is no concept of humans being literally spiritually dead and unable to please God. We have to be born again—not merely by hearing and acquiescing and committing to “the truth” but by understanding what it means that Jesus “died for our sins”.
Saturday’s lesson set the stage for this confusing study:
On the individual level, the cross, far from being a passive symbol, becomes an active reality, with God’s love transforming people as they hear the gospel and receive Christ Himself, the hope of glory.Paul also talks about “the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations” (Col. 1:26, NKJV). What is this mystery, and what all does it envision—for the individual and for the universe? How does this “mystery” relate to the gospel that Paul has so passionately proclaimed?
On the surface, it’s hard to explain what is “wrong” with those words from the lesson. Yet from an Adventist perspective, what does it mean that God’s love transforms people as they hear the gospel and receive Christ Himself? Notice how the author directs us away from these formulaic words and addresses Paul’s discussion of God’s mystery which has been hidden from past ages. He then asks what this “mystery” is and how it relates to the gospel.
This introduction to the week’s studies reveals how unable Adventists are to understand or teach what Paul is saying. Adventists with their belief that humans have no immaterial spirit separate from the body have no framework for understanding the nature of “sin” nor of the gospel. Without a biblical understanding of the nature of man nor of the definition of the gospel, there is no path towards understanding this mystery which God had hidden but has now revealed. In fact, Paul defines his own terms, but the author explains them to mean something different than they mean in context.
Let’s unpack this confusing lesson by looking at how Sunday’s lesson defines “the gospel”:
The gospel has three parts:
First, because we are helpless to save ourselves, Jesus came and died for our sins. (See Rom. 5:6–8.)
Second, by accepting His death as ours through faith, repentance, and baptism, we are justified and set free from the condemnation of sin. (See Rom. 5:9–11; Rom. 6:6, 7.)
Third, the life we live now is the result of being united with Christ, experiencing His re-creating power, and His living His life in us. (See 2 Cor. 5:17–21, Gal. 2:20.)
These are not necessarily separate steps or events. They can happen all at once, as soon as we are ready to accept Jesus into our lives. And they can be renewed every day as we give ourselves to Him each morning.
Let me summarize these three steps: First, God takes the first step as Jesus comes and dies. Second, we take the second step by accepting Jesus’ death, repenting, and being baptized. Then we take the third step and begin living a life of obedience because Christ is in us. Finally, we can repeat these last two steps every day to make sure we stay connected to Jesus, giving ourselves to Him each morning, over and over.
Do you see that? The gospel involves Jesus’ death and our willful acceptance and subsequent life of obedience and daily recommitment. It’s a gospel of personal participation, a two-way “agreement”, if you will, between the person and God.
Does the Bible define the gospel as a synergy between Jesus’ death and our response? Let’s look at how Paul defines the gospel:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.—1 Corinthians 15:3–5 LSB
Adventist Gospel Compared with Biblical Gospel
Look at that: the gospel has absolutely no hint of personal participation. The gospel is ENTIRELY the work of God, and it involves no “acceptance” or “obedience” or “recommitment”. The gospel of God’s good news for us is that everything necessary for our salvation is already done: Jesus died for our sin according to Scripture; He was buried, He was raised on the third day according to Scripture.
Whether or not a person responds to the gospel is not part of the gospel. Yet Adventism must include the personal response because Adventism does not teach the biblical doctrine of propitiation or completed atonement. Instead it is a gospel of personal participation, not an objective event accomplished once for all.
Even more, Adventism does not teach that Jesus died for our sins because God demanded human death for human sin. Jesus’ death fully propitiated—satisfied—God’s justice. Paul tells us in Romans 3:21–26:
But now apart from the Law [the] righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even [the] righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith, for a demonstration of His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.—Romans 3:21–26 LSB
Adventism often says that Jesus died in order to ransom us from Satan’s grip; Jesus’ death silenced Satan’s accusation and untied God’s hands so He could reach down and help us by sending His Spirit. Other Adventists say that God didn’t need Jesus to actually shed blood in order to forgive us, but He let Jesus die to demonstrate His love for us, His willingness to suffer for us so that we would be drawn to love Him back.
Yet these ideas are heretical. Scripture says that Jesus satisfied not Satan but God Himself, and by dying Jesus showed that God is Just. He couldn’t forgive without the appropriate blood sacrifice that He required for sin, so God the Son became flesh in order to shed that sufficient sacrifice to pay for human sin. Thus Jesus’ death showed that God is JUST—He forgives only when justice is satisfied and not by an administrative decision to ignore sin. At the same time, God Himself is the Justifier. He Himself took His own punishment in the person of the Son.
Adventism does not teach the biblical gospel. We don’t look at the cross and decide that because Jesus was so willing to suffer, we need to love Him back. Furthermore, Adventism doesn’t teach that Jesus’ atonement was competed at the cross but that it continues in heaven in the “sanctuary”.
The Adventist “gospel” includes all of these unbiblical ideas: that Jesus did not complete the atonement at the cross; that Jesus ransomed us from Satan and that God didn’t need His Son’s blood in order to forgive us. So when they say that the gospel’s first step is that Jesus died for our sins, those words do not mean what Scripture says when Paul tells us Jesus died for our sins according to Scripture. They deceive people, making their words sounds recognizable but meaning something very different.
The Adventist gospel is a formula for an Adventist to satisfy their great controversy worldview: a person must accept that Jesus humiliated Himself on the cross to elicit our gratitude, and then we must “accept” that self-sacrifice and change the way we live, recommitting ourselves daily to endorse Jesus and give back to Him what He deserves: our continued loyalty to the law and the Sabbath. The law and the Sabbath are the ultimate demands on us within the Adventist gospel. We show we are loyal by suffering scorn and even death to faithfully honor the Sabbath and prove to Satan that we, too, can keep the law as Jesus did.
Mystery Defined
When Adventism’s gospel is understood to be a two-way participation between God and man, Paul’s words in Colossians 1:26, 27 about God’s previously-hidden but now-revealed mystery cannot be understood at face value in context. Here is what Paul says:
Of [this church] I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the [preaching of] the word of God, [that is,] the mystery which has been hidden from the [past] ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.—Colossians 1:25–27 LSB
In context Paul is clear: the mystery which was hidden in past ages is that God was sending His Son to reveal His eternal plan in His saints—those who would trust and believe Him—that He always intended to restore people to Himself and to literally indwell believers. “Christ in you—the hope of glory”!
The indwelling Christ through the permanent residence of the Holy Spirit as Paul explains in Ephesians 1:13,14 is God’s gift to those who trust Him and are made spiritually alive. Adventism does not teach this biblical truth.
The Adventist worldview is that man is born with a body that breathes; man’s spirit is literally his breath, and when his breath ceases, the person ceases to live or exist. Scripture teaches, however, that we are born physically breathing but LITERALLY spiritually dead in sin:
And you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.—Ephesians 2:1–3 LSB
We cannot “accept Jesus into our hearts” when we realize that He came and died; in fact, on our own we have no understanding that we even need to “accept Jesus”. Furthermore, the Bible never teaches us to “accept Jesus”. Rather, it teaches us to believe Him.
We are by nature spiritually dead and children of wrath, condemned by God and under His curse until we believe and trust Him (John 3:18, 36). We are by nature citizens of the domain of darkness; when we believe, we are made alive and pass out of death into life (John 4:24). The Father then transfers us from one kingdom to another: from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of the beloved Son (Colossians 1:13).
We cannot accept Jesus and come into the gospel. The gospel is an already-completed work of God alone. When He reveals Himself, He asks us to believe—and we throw ourselves on His mercy and receive His resurrection life in our dead spirits. We become born again by an act of God. We do not participate in coming to life. Ephesians 2:4–9 tells us what happens:
But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved– and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly [places] in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, [it is] the gift of God; not of works, so that no one may boast.—Ephesians 2:4–9 LSB
It is not we ourselves who negotiate our salvation; it is all an act of God—and He even givers us the faith to believe when we realize our spiritual depravity and our need. By nature we have no ability to seek, please, or “accept” Jesus. We need a rescue—and rescue is exactly what Jesus did.
Furthermore, if the atonement were not completed at the cross, what Jesus did would not be a rescue! It would only be a first step, a “wish” and a “hope” that we might be saved. In Adventism, we keep ourselves saved by recommitting ourselves to Jesus every morning and then diligently increasing our obedience and security by living by the law’s demands.
Because Adventism does not teach a completed atonement or the complete depravity of man and the need of a new birth—a literal spiritual new birth—it mocks the idea that a Christian can know and trust that he or she is saved, and it must reinterpret Paul’s words about God’s now-revealed mystery.
In Colossians 1:26, 27 Paul tells us that the mystery that is already revealed in new covenant believers in the Lord Jesus and His completed atonement is the indwelling Christ, the spiritual life secured by the Holy Spirit indwelling us. The Old Testament foretold this mystery but in veiled terms; until Jesus came and fulfilled the law, becoming our curse and taking its death penalty for humankind, the spiritual new birth with the indwelling Holy Spirit was not yet a reality. Yet this new birth and the guarantee of the indwelling Holy Spirit IS the new covenant promise for everyone who believes!
When we trust Jesus and receive His spiritual life in our dead spirits, we become revealers of the mystery hidden in ages past. We become the means of God’s showcasing the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus!
Adventism cannot teach this truth. See what Wednesday’s lesson says:
“Christ in you” (Col. 1:27) refers to Christ’s dwelling in the heart by faith (Eph. 3:17; compare Gal. 2:20). This spiritual union with Christ enables believers even now to “sit together in heavenly places” (Eph. 2:6) and taste “the powers of the world to come” (Heb. 6:5). Through Christ’s presence in our lives, He is already beginning to unite us with heaven. It is the gospel working in the hearts of believers that “has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light” (Col. 1:12, NKJV).
Yet as we have seen, Adventism does not mean the same thing the Bible means when it talks about “spiritual union” or “Christ’s presence in our lives”. Adventism means things figuratively, metaphorically, not literally and spiritually. Adventist do not believe they are spiritually dead needing a new birth. Rather they believe they have sinful tendencies and must find in Jesus’ death the inspiration to commit to the principles of Adventism and to obey the law more and more perfectly. This internal commitment to obedience and morality is what they mean when they refer to living by Christ’s presence in their lives.
Without believing they are spiritually dead, literally, none of Paul’s words make literal sense. They are, instead, metaphorical pictures designed to help Adventists maintain salvation. Without a gospel that is objective and done and outside themselves, they have no hope except for their own commitment.
Friday’s lesson quotes Ellen White saying:
“More than this, Christ changes the heart. He abides in your heart by faith. You are to maintain this connection with Christ by faith and the continual surrender of your will to Him; and so long as you do this, He will work in you to will and to do according to His good pleasure…”—Steps to Christ, pp. 62, 63
There it is in the prophet’s own words: WE maintain our connection with Christ by faith and continual surrender. As long as we DO THIS, He will work in us to do His pleasure. In fact, Friday’s lesson poses this question at the end:
Dwell more on the question of “once saved, always saved,” which many Christians believe. Why do we believe that this is a false doctrine? What obvious dangers does it present to someone who believes this? How can we, even while rejecting that doctrine, still have assurance of salvation?
Right there we see the double-speak of Adventism. They clearly do NOT teach the security of salvation; they insist we are responsible for maintaining our connection to Christ. At the same time, they realize that Scripture teaches the security of the believer, so they change the words’ meanings and teach that an Adventist can have “assurance” on a daily basis if one remembers to recommit and obey each day. In other words, Adventist assurance still depends upon the individuals sincere effort and continual acts of obedience. Yet what does Scripture say?
[For I am] confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.—Philippians 1:6 LSB
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish–ever; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. “\My Father, who has given [them] to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch [them] out of the Father’s hand.”—John 10:27–29 LSB
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to [obtain] an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, having been kept in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.—1 Peter 1:3–5 LSB
God Himself keeps us when we have been born again. Adventism cannot teach the necessity nor the literal reality of the new birth. It does not teach the completed atonement of the Lord Jesus on the cross. It does not teach that the resurrection occurred BECAUSE the atonement was complete and sufficient, nor that the resurrection is the thing that breaks our curse of death. It does not teach that we literally pass from death to life when we BELIEVE in the finished atonement of the Lord Jesus.
Jesus’ blood satisfied the Father’s demands and wrath against sin. He did everything necessary for us to be saved, and only His blood can open a new and living way to God by which our dead-in-sin spirits can be made alive on the basis of His atonement. We do not work with Christ to show we are worthy to be saved. Rather we lay down our works and BELIEVE. When we do, we are born again and pass from death to life.
Only after we are born again do the commands of the New Testament apply to us. Unbelievers have one command: BELIEVE. Believers have many commands—but these flow from salvation, not towards it.
When we believe, our eternity is secure. God Himself indwells us, and God’s mystery is revealed in us, His saints, as He places His family mark in us, giving us new birth and adopting us.
Have you believed? Have you laid down your participation in being good and obedient and recognized that you cannot please God? Have you seen Jesus dying for your sin and breaking your curse of death?
If not, believe today. When you believe, you will be kept by God for your inheritance in heaven. You will pass from death to life, and you will know what it means to be God’s true child. †
This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
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