Lesson 10: “Complete In Christ”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
This week’s lesson deals with one of the clearest declarations in Scripture that the law and the fourth commandment are fulfilled in Christ and obsolete for the church. Yet the author refuses to deal with the normal reading of Colossians 2:11–23 and reinterprets it to mean Sabbath and the Law continue to be required of Christians. In fact, the dishonest philosophy and application of the text is actually an example of the very kind of deceptive teaching Paul warns about in this passage.
Adventism Doesn’t Understand the Context
Before the lesson deals with the heart of this passage—Jesus taking the law to the cross in His flesh, and Sabbath being realized in Him—the lesson addresses Colossians 2:1–7 and misses its meaning. Paul opens chapter 2 by reminding the Colossians that they are already born again, that they HAVE Christ Jesus and all His treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and he reminds them to walk with Chris Jesus “as they have received” Him—by faith.
Paul is not challenging them to stay connected to their right belief and teachings as the lesson suggests; rather he is reminding them that they ALREADY have Christ. The lesson, however, reminds readers to hold onto their “solid biblical foundation” that will “help protect them from the errors being promoted by the false teachers.”
In order to understand the inside-out and upside-down skew with which the author addresses this passage, I will first read what Paul wrote in verses 4–7:
I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument. For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the stability of your faith in Christ. Therefore as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, [so] walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and being built up in Him, and having been established in your faith–just as you were instructed–[and] abounding with thanksgiving.—Colossians 2:4–7 LSB
Notice the things Paul affirms: his readers have received Christ and have true faith. They have already been firmly rooted in Him and are being built up in Him because their faith is already established. They are living their born-again life by faith, just as they received Christ by faith. They are walking according to the instruction they received when they heard the gospel and were born again.
The lesson, however, cannot teach this passage correctly because they do not believe in being literally spiritually born again. They do not believe a person can be truly rooted in truth and be alive in Christ eternally by faith in His completed atonement. Paul, on the one hand, is reminding the Colossians that a new birth and eternal security are theirs already and is reminding them to keep focussed on what is already true, not being distracted by deceptive teaching.
The lesson takes this passage and twists it to remind Adventists to hold onto their doctoral distinctives and “correct” church decorum to stay safe from teaching that would lead them away from Adventism. This quote is from Sunday’s lesson:
As a result of the correct teaching that the Colossians had received from Paul’s associates, they had “steadfastness” of faith. It cannot be shaken because it rests on a solid biblical foundation that, if adhered to, would help protect them from the errors being promoted by the false teachers.
The Adventist reader would understand “solid biblical foundation” to include the seventh-day Sabbath, the food laws, and their distinctive Adventist forms of lifestyle and worship. They would also perceive the warning that they must adhere to their “solid biblical foundation” in order to resist false teaching. They would be reminded that loyalty to Adventism was their own responsibility, and being pulled away from Adventism would be the result of their own lack of commitment and their own carelessness. Once again, the Adventist is warned with guilt and threats of shame to stay loyal and not question their Adventism.
The reader would not understand from this lesson that Paul was commending the Colossians for a spiritual reality that was already theirs: a new identity formed by their new birth, their transfer from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son, on the basis of their trust in Jesus’ blood. The Adventist would be drawn to remember their “correct teachings” and unique doctrines; they would not see the spiritual confidence and reality that Paul is reminding the Colossians to embrace. The meaning of Colossians 2:1–7 has been completely obliterated.
What Was Nailed to the Cross?
Next the lesson addresses verses 11–15. Significantly, the lesson does not directly address verses 9 and 10 in which Paul emphasizes that “all the fullness of Deity dwells in [Jesus] bodily”, and he reminds the Colossians that in Him they are complete, and He is already the head over all rule and authority. Adventism cannot teach the plain meaning of these verses because they do not teach that Jesus has the same substance as the Father—overtly teaching that He forfeited His omnipresence by taking a body. Further, they cannot teach that they are complete in Christ because they are NOT in Christ. They believe they are working toward salvation, and they will not be complete until they learn at the second coming whether or not they are saved.
Even more they do not believe that Jesus is already the head over all rule and authority. They believe Jesus is still carrying out the investigative judgments in heaven and that He is still embroiled in an ongoing controversy with Satan to see who will finally win the conflict. The Adventist Jesus is not God; He is not complete nor are His followers complete, and He is still fighting the devil for dominance!
Below I will quote Colossians 2:9–15, the part the lessons leaves out and the part it includes but misinterprets:
For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells bodily, and in Him you have been filled, who is the head over all rule and authority; in whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you being dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive with Him, having graciously forgiven us all our transgressions. Having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us which was hostile to us, He also has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them in Him.—Colossians 2:9–15 LSB
Christian scholars agree: the “certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us which was hostile to us” refers to the Mosaic law. According to all its regulations and laws—of which the Ten Commandments were the very words of the covenant (Ex. 34:27, 28)—every person on earth is revealed to be under condemnation. Everyone is in debt to God—a debt which none can pay.
The lesson suggests two possible interpretations, neither of which fits the context and both of which deny the clear meaning. Here is what the author says in Monday’s lesson:
To help understand these texts, two main interpretations have been proposed by Seventh-day Adventists: First, the “handwriting” nailed to the cross is the list of charges leveled “against us,” similar to the writing Pilate hung on Jesus’ cross (Matt. 27:37; John 19:19, 20). Or, second, the ceremonial law written by Moses (see Deut. 31:24–26) was nailed to the cross.
Notice that the author ascribes these two ideas to Seventh-day Adventists. Adventists cannot allow Jesus to have taken the law in His body to the cross to have fulfilled it as He took its death sentence and the guilt for human sin. Clearly this is what Paul is saying, but Adventism can’t let its members believe what the words actually say.
First, the Bible never separates the “moral law” from the “ceremonial law” or the “civil law”. These divisions are artificial and human; never designated in Scripture. In the Bible, the law is a whole unit—also called the Mosaic Covenant. It was a covenant with the nation of Israel, and the Ten Commandments were the heart, the core, the very words of the covenant (Ex. 34:27, 28).
Furthermore, the terms of the covenant were that if even one law were broken, all of it was broken. In other words, whether the law was one of the Ten or one of the other 603 laws contained in the covenant, such as do not mix linen with wool and do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk, the penalty for breaking one command was the same: death. The entire law was breached if one command was broken.
For the nation of Israel, there were not laws that were merely “ceremonial” or “civil” as compared with “MORAL”. For Israelites, all laws were moral because God commanded that they be kept on penalty of death! They were equal in importance because they comprised the covenant God made with the nation.
We cannot say that Jesus took the ceremonial laws to the cross and made them obsolete but not the moral ones. Jesus Himself was the REALITY which the entire law foreshadowed. Look, for example, at these texts:
For the Law, since it has [only] a shadow of the good things to come [and] not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near.—Hebrews 10:1 LSB
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;—Romans 3:21,22 LSB
The entire Law—including the Words of the Covenant, the Ten Commandments—was as a unit a SHADOW of the good things to come. Jesus was the fullness of that reality. In fact, the Law, along with the prophets, WITNESSED of the coming Messiah. They were shadows, witnesses, of Jesus, and when He came, His life revealed that He was the One who perfectly fit the shadow of the law. Only He could touch lepers and not have to be ritually cleansed because He was the Source of health and wholeness. Only He could touch dead people without becoming ritually impure; He was the Source of Life. Only He could heal and make those healed carry non-Sabbath loads on the Sabbath without sin—because He was the REALITY and the Source of righteousness and healing foreshadowed by Sabbath rest!
No Jesus was the Living Torah, the Word of God in flesh that fulfilled the righteous requirement of the law: death for human sin—and by fulfilling the demands of the law for perfect justice, He rendered the law obsolete.
He became the Living Law, the One to whom believers look for righteousness and strength and identity. His fulfilling the law’s death sentence and shattering death humiliated and disarmed Satan. He didn’t win over Satan by resisting His temptations and finally dying to vindicate the law’s eternal necessity, as Adventism says. His death did not prove that humans can keep the law and thus silence Satan. NO!
Jesus REMOVED Satan’s weapon by fulfilling the law. He can no longer accuse believers of being unworthy because in Jesus, the law has been fulfilled, and they are complete in Jesus. Satan has been disarmed. He is a defeated foe!
Explaining Away the Words of Scripture
In Wednesday’s lesson the author addresses verses 16–19, and once again the author uses Adventist obfuscation to keep the reader from seeing the clear context: Paul states in verse 16 and 17 that food, drink, festivals (yearly feasts or sabbaths), new moons (monthly sabbaths) and “a Sabbath day”—the weekly sabbaths—are all shadows of the substance of Christ Himself! The lesson attempts to say that Paul was pushing back against “a number of regular Jewish practices” that were being continued as well as unique gnostic practices common at the time. Yet the words of the the passage are clear. They mean what they say:
Therefore, no one is to judge you in food and drink, or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day—things which are [only] a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, going into detail about [visions] he has seen, being puffed up for nothing by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.—Colossians 2:16–19 LSB
The lesson blatantly refuses to deal with Paul’s actual argument, saying this:
Crucial to our understanding of this verse is Paul’s own interpretation: that these “are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ” (Col. 2:17, NKJV). These ceremonial days, like the sacrifices, pointed to the work of Christ (see 1 Cor. 5:7, 1 Cor. 15:23). The seventh-day Sabbath, in contrast, was instituted in Eden, before sin, and long before the ceremonial sacrifices of the sanctuary were adopted; therefore, it was not a shadow to be done away with after the Cross.
Although the seventh-day Sabbath is not at issue here, how might you apply Paul’s counsel about not passing judgment on others?
Instead of reading Paul in context, using the normal rules of grammar and vocabulary, the author punts to traditional Adventist sleight-of-hand: he blatantly denies that Paul is referring to the weekly Sabbath and states that the Sabbath is NOT a shadow “to be done away with after the Cross”! He uses the familiar but illegitimate argument that the Sabbath was “instituted in Eden”, when in reality there was no Sabbath-command in Genesis, and the word “sabbath” was not even used until God gave Israel the sabbath in Exodus 16 in the wilderness when He gave the manna along with it.
In fact, the lesson refers the reader to Leviticus 23:11, 24, and 32 to support the idea that Paul is referring to “ceremonial days” which included “ceremonial sabbaths”. In fact, the author completely omits the first verses of Leviticus 23. It is true that Leviticus 23 is the chapter that names and describes all of Israel’s sabbath days—the yearly festivals and feasts that God required they observe. Adventists use this chapter to “prove” that the weekly Sabbath wasn’t “ceremonial”. Yet the chapter opens with these words:
And Yahweh spoke again to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘The appointed times of Yahweh which you shall proclaim as holy convocations—My appointed times are these: “For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation. You shall not do any work; it is a sabbath to Yahweh in all your [places of] habitation.’”—Leviticus 23:1–3 LSB
The weekly Sabbath is the very first sabbath listed in this chapter identifying the ceremonial sabbaths of Israel! If Passover and Pentecost were “ceremonial” on the basis of this list in Leviticus 23, then the weekly Sabbath is also ceremonial!
We must conclude that the weekly Sabbath, although it was the sign of the Mosaic covenant and recurred every week, was as much a shadow of Christ as were all the other sabbaths of Israel. They were listed together, and Israel was equally commanded to keep all of them.
Now, in Colossians 2:16, 17, Paul explains that ALL of Israel’s sabbaths—including the weekly Sabbath—were shadows of Christ. Now, in Christ, the shadows are obsolete and have been fulfilled in the person of the risen Christ!
Commandments of Men
Ironically, the lesson nearly ignores verse 18 where Paul warns the Colossians against false prophets who defraud them by “taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind”. The warnings against angel worship and the reliance upon someone’s claim to be receiving visionary revelations is too plain to be missed.
Adventism comes perilously close to angel worship as it identifies Jesus with Michael the Archangel (Ellen White even said that before He came to earth as a man, Jesus became an angel to attempt to save the devil), and it overtly depends upon the visions of EGWs fleshly revelations! This verse alone condemns Adventism!
Furthermore, the lesson deflects away from verses 20–23 by saying it was prohibiting practices that were not necessary in “the new world promised us in Christ”. It tries to say the prohibitions against touching, tasting, and handling are worldly ideas that are no longer “divinely required” and are not part of salvation.
Yet this obfuscation is a lie. Adventism’s health message is the “right arm” of its gospel. The laws of clean and unclean meat are still part of Adventism’s belief system, and although they try to say these restrictions are “health laws”, in reality they are dictums of their prophet’s fleshly mind and demonic dreams, and they believe that if they eat meat—especially unclean meat—they will be vulnerable to cancer and shortened life spans. They also believe that eating meat excites the “animal organs” of their brains, as EGW said, and they believe that since they are only physical bodies that breathe, they perceive the Holy Spirit via the neurons of their frontal lobes of their brains. In this way meat-eating compromises their spiritual perception and growth because it makes their brains unhealthy. The Holy Spirit is limited in access if the Adventist is eating meat and drinking stimulants such as coffee, tea, and alcohol.
Yet the lesson does not acknowledge this contradiction with verses 20–23 and instead attempts to say those verses apply to ceremonial and worldly practices that have no bearing on us today. They keep their health message firmly in place but make Paul out to be speaking against pagan or ancient Jewish religious practices.
The dishonesty is clear.
There is one thing that can clear up this Adventist confusion: a commitment to believe God’s word on the basis of its clear meaning.
Only asking the Lord to teach us truth and to show us what His word means will reveal the contextual meaning of Scripture.
I urge you: if you have not trusted Jesus alone and repented of your attachment to Ellen White and to her worldview, come to Jesus today. See Him taking your sin in His body on the cross as He fulfilled the law’s death-sentence. See Him taking God’s wrath for your sin, and see Him dying your death. Then see Him shattering your curse of death by rising on the third day according to Scripture! His blood was enough! His sacrifice was the complete atonement for human sin, and when you trust and believe Him, you will pass from death to life!
Look to Jesus today; believe that His word reveals everything you need to know for life and godliness, and trust the One who took your sin and died for you. Repent of your Adventism, and receive the new life that the Lord will give you when you place your trust and eternal future in His hands.
His blood is enough; His grace is greater than all your sin.
Believe Him today—and you will be born again! †
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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