Lesson 3: “Unity In Christ”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
When Adventists speak of “unity”, what does that mean? Around WHAT are Adventists supposed to unify themselves? If you say you are unified in Christ or by Christ’s example, how does that look within Adventism? What is Christ an example OF within Adventism?
I’m Colleen Tinker, and this is Former Adventist Fact Check. Today we are looking at the third lesson of the third quarter’s Sabbath School curriculum for 2026 covering 1 and 2 Corinthians. This week’s lesson is entitled, “Unity in Christ”. But first, please remember to Like, Subscribe, and share the Former Adventist YouTube channel and hit the notification bell to be alerted whenever we upload new material. Be sure you subscribe to our weekly Proclamation! email at ProclamationMagazine.com and receive our new articles and links to our podcasts—including our Former Adventist Podcast with Nikki Stevenson and me—as well as links to our videos every Friday in your inbox! And if you wish to support the work of Life Assurance Ministries and our ministry to Former Adventists, use the “Donate” tab on the homepage of Proclamation! magazine.com.
Cliques Vs. Unity
The first four chapters of 1 Corinthians reminds the believers in Corinth of the truths of knowing Jesus and of being indwelled by His Holy Spirit because of their belief in Jesus. The church was troubled, and the people had divided themselves around influential teachers: Cephas, Apollos, Paul, and some even claimed they weren’t following any teacher but Christ Himself. Paul deals with these factions by first reminding them that they have been given the wisdom of God through the gospel of Christ, and they have the mind of Christ because they have literally been given His Spirit.
The lesson, however, can’t lead with the real teaching of Paul because Adventism has united around the great controversy worldview bequeathed to them by their false prophet Ellen White. They have made Jesus the means to their Adventist success and not the actual GOAL of their life and worship. Their true identity comes from their belief in a physical human nature and a god with physical characteristics. Their true identity is defined by seventh-day Sabbath-keeping and by proselytizing Christians to become Adventists by means of lifestyle and clean living.
Consequently, the lesson leads with the dangers of forming cliques around personalities and engaging in infighting. In the process of addressing this very real danger within Adventism, the author appropriates Jesus and the writing of Paul to support his Adventist arguments. In fact, this subtle misuse of Paul’s writing is offensive and dangerous. The author misses the reality of what Paul is saying about the Lord Jesus, about the nature of true belief, and about what Jesus actually DID on the cross.
Significantly, when a person sidesteps the reality of belief and of being born again, he must twist the meaning of the plain words of the Bible. For example, by Wednesday’s lesson the author is developing his argument that Jesus’ “servanthood” is the example for Adventists as they strive to avoid cliques and live in unity. On the surface, this idea sounds plausible—but it is not what Scripture teaches. Look at what the first paragraph of Wednesday’s lesson says:
In 1 Corinthians 3:1–4, Paul hints that cliques result from a lack of spiritual maturity. However, before addressing this topic, he affirms, “We have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16, NKJV). This phrase likely refers to Christ’s way of thinking and acting. In other words, the believer has “the mind of Christ” when he thinks and acts like Christ. Putting this mind into practice in all matters of life is not that easy, though, is it?
In that passage, Paul is NOT referring to thinking and acting like Christ, practicing those good ideas in all matters of life! Paul specifically states, four verses before, what he means:
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the [depths] graciously given to us by God, of which [depths] we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual [depths] with spiritual [words]. … For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL DIRECT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.—1 Corinthians 2:12–13, 16 LSB
Context is clear: the believer has received the “Spirit who is from God”. In chapter 2 Paul explains that only the spirit of a man can know that man’s thoughts, but God has revealed to believers through the Spirit the “depths of God” (v. 10). We who believe have received the Spirit of God and in this way actually know His will and His depth. Paul concludes this explanation by stating in verse 16 that “we have the mind of Christ”.
Paul is not speaking metaphorically; he means literally that believers have the mind of Christ and by His indwelling Spirit, we know His mind and depth and will. Yet the lesson takes this remarkable and powerful statement of fact and twists it to fit an Adventist worldview, a view that doesn’t understand or teach the new birth. Adventism doesn’t believe that humans are born spiritually dead and must be brought to life, born again by hearing the true gospel of Jesus’ finished atonement and being indwelled by the Holy Spirit. In this way they appropriate the profound reality of being born of the Spirit and use it to say Adventists are to remember to follow the example of Jesus’ self-sacrifice and servanthood, giving their lives to Adventism and to making proselytes.
The Cross as Example?
Thursday’s lesson moves into the Adventist perception of the cross and of what Jesus did by dying. This whole idea is expanded in the Teachers Comments as Jesus is presented as the ultimate example of self-sacrifice in order to show us how to live.
Realizing that the cautions against forming cliques around charismatic leaders might actually work against the Adventist mandate to follow the Adventist blueprint, the author does a mini-course-correction in Thursday’s lesson:
The fact that we should not form cliques, especially around human leaders, does not mean we should not support our leaders. We are supposed to appreciate and help those who lead out in church work. God commissions people to do His ministry on earth. Church leaders who display a lifestyle that reflects the submissions represented by the Cross are worthy of being heard and followed.…
According to Paul, faithful Christian ministry must be grounded upon what we can call a theology of the Cross. The Cross is God’s revelation of His wisdom and power to save. At the same time, it also displays human wisdom as foolishness.…
Christian leaders follow the footprints of Jesus by being willing to suffer for their fellow brothers and sisters, and even if need be die for the sake of their ministry.
Notice that the author speaks freely of the Cross. The Cross is the revelation of God’s wisdom, power to save, and the display of the foolishness of human wisdom. Yet how exactly the cross is a “revelation of His wisdom and power to save” is never explained. What happened at the cross? Why did the CROSS have to happen? How did it display God’s wisdom?
These questions are never asked nor answered. It is assumed that the Adventist readers will “know” what is meant, but full and finished atonement is never meant. Adventists teach that the atonement was NOT completed on the cross but that Jesus continues the atonement in heaven since 1844 by applying His blood to the sins “believers” (meaning Adventists from their perspective) remember to confess. There is no sacrifice that is one and done. Jesus’ cross-death was just a down payment, a display of the lengths to which God would go to show that He was willing to help humans vindicate His character against Satan’s accusations of unfairness.
The author betrays his Adventist perspective of the cross as a behavioral example when he says that “Church leaders who display a lifestyle that reflects the submissions represented by the Cross are worthy of being heard and followed.” Notice that he does not say leaders who know and love the Lord are worthy of being followed. Instead he specifically identifies leaders those LIFESTYLE reflects “the submissions represent by the Cross” are the leaders worthy of following. What does that even mean?
The author explains a bit more a few paragraphs down: “Christian leaders follow the footprints of Jesus by being willing to suffer for their fellow brothers and sisters, and even if need be die for the sake of their ministry.”
So—leadership displaying “submissions represented by the Cross” are leaders who sacrifice themselves utterly for Adventism and for their “ministry”. They have to be willing to sacrifice their time, their family life, their hobbies, their everything to the point of being willing to DIE “for the sake of their ministry”!
Really? THAT is the message and purpose of the cross? Adventist leaders are to be willing to suffer the loss of all things up to the point of death for the sake of their Adventist ministry? This level of personal sacrifice for the Adventist cause is the example the people in the pews are to follow?
What WAS the cross about? It was not a demonstration of submissions or servanthood or an example to be followed. The Lord Jesus went to the cross to atone for our sin. Paul puts it this way:
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, [he is] a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all [these] things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their transgressions against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. So then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as God is pleading through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin [to be] sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.—2 Corinthians 5:17–21 LSB
Jesus went to the cross NOT to demonstrate how to be a servant-leader nor to demonstrate the lengths to which God would go to save man and defeat Satan and vindicate Himself. No! He went to the cross to offer His own body as a human sacrifice for sin: the sinless man who was God in flesh, offering an eternal and sufficient sacrifice for human sin, satisfying God’s demand of death for sin. Furthermore, the Father was IN HIM as He endured the wrath of God. God was NOT counting our sins against us because He was counting them against Christ. Christ became sin for us and took God’s punishment for sin so that in Him, we who believe and trust might become the righteousness of God!
Adventism does not teach this reality about the cross.
This lesson reveals Adventism’s Christian-counterfeit worldview. Adventists do not teach their members that they are by nature dead in sin and must be made alive. They do not teach their members to believe and trust Jesus’ death on the cross as the one sacrifice that paid for sin once for all at that time. Furthermore, they do not teach that trusting in Jesus’ shed blood and His resurrection which broke the curse of death is what gives them new spiritual life. They do not teach that trusting Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection is the only thing necessary for salvation.
So we see here what they do with the cross: ultimately, the cross has provided for them a theological system that they appropriate to uphold their Adventist worldview and behavior. It is not the core of their belief system; they have a different gospel, and the cross is a means to promoting their religion, not the pinnacle of God’s provision for the world.
On The Authority of the Prophet
Friday’s lesson, as so often happens, concludes the week with quotes from Ellen White. After the subtle but distinct morphing of the cross and of the biblical concepts of unity taught in the studies throughout the week, we read Ellen White’s overt Adventist directive from Testimonies for the Church, vol. 1, p. 327:
“The oneness and unity of God’s truth-believing remnant people carries powerful conviction to the world that they have the truth, and are the peculiar, chosen people of God. This oneness and unity disconcerts the enemy, and he is determined that it shall not exist. The present truth, believed in the heart and exemplified in the life, makes God’s people one, and gives them a powerful influence.”—Testimonies for the Church, vol. 1, p. 327
After the week’s lessons which used Paul’s words about the new birth and the unity of the church in Christ to argue for Adventist “unity” around Adventism, this quote from Ellen White confirms that the lesson appropriates Scripture. This quote is used to give authority to the week’s instructions to avoid cliques and follow the example of leaders who sacrifice their lives to Adventist agendas, and we see in Ellen’s words her references to “God’s truth-believing remnant people”, to “the peculiar, chosen people of God”. We see also her reference to the Adventist teaching that Adventist doctrine comprises “present truth” which will “make God’s people one” and will give “them a powerful influence.”
Ellen White defines Adventist identity. Adventism with its “present truth” of seventh-day Sabbath mandates, the health message, the investigative judgment, and the urgent imminence of Jesus’ return in that little black cloud—all of this defines God’s “remnant people”, His chosen ones—and these Adventist beliefs, when believed and practiced, unite Adventists and make them a threat to Satan.
It is dishonest and deceptive to base these Sabbath School lessons on Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and then to take Paul’s words out of context, to twist his meanings, and to force the words of Scripture into the authors’ deliberate attempts to guilt his Adventist readers into more and more observant Adventist living. Paul’s words to the Corinthians do NOT teach Adventism! In fact, these letters to the Corinthians deconstruct Adventism. They actually expose Adventist false teaching and present the Lord Jesus and His finished atonement as the answer to all their spiritual needs.
There can be no true unity among Adventists except superficially. They can only rally around their Adventism, and the Sabbath School lessons are intentional in their attempts to convict and guilt the members into submission to their doctrines.
Factions and disagreements are inevitable, and without the true gospel and the indwelling Holy Spirit, Adventists have no way to successfully resolve their internal differences. Only when people are born again and have the indwelling Holy Spirit can people find common ground.
Only the Lord Jesus can bring unity among mortal humans. Only the eternal life of the risen Christ can transform us from self-centered humans into spiritually alive people who live by the Spirit and in submission to God’s word as He teaches us to trust Him and to know His will.
Adventists are doomed to ongoing internal struggles and distrust because they do not teach or know the true gospel. I challenge you, Adventist, to bring your frustration and personal struggles to the Lord. Ask Him to show you what is real and true, and trust His death on the cross as God’s full provision for your salvation.
See Jesus taking your sin in Himself as He hung on the cross, enduring God’s wrath in your place. See Him dying your death and being buried—and then, because His death was sufficient to pay for all your sin, rising on the third day and breaking your death sentence!
Turn from the vague and frustrating demands of Adventism and its guilt. Repent for having believed a false gospel and trust Jesus alone. He will give you life, and you will finally know what it means to be able to experience true unity with those who also trust the blood of Jesus alone.
Believe, and you will pass today from death to life! †
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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