HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2009 / FALL / Are you standing in the place of God?

FALL 2009
VOLUME 10, ISSUE 4

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A R T I C L E S

Are you standing in the place of God?

Yen Cress

 

You may have heard it said, "Jesus is our example." When we look closely at this claim, however, we find some inherent problems.

If Jesus is our example, are we expected to be able to live sinless lives? Should we not get married because He didn't? Ought we to raise the dead as we travel from town to town? Because Jesus is our example, are we to conclude, as many of us learned, that we "stand in the place of God" to our younger-than-the-age-of-accountability children, teaching them what God is like by our example to them, expecting from them explicit obedience as to God Himself?

 

Example or Substitute

Jesus did demonstrate a life lived blamelessly before God. We, however, are born into sin from a long line of other sinners, and thus we are inevitably doomed to be sinful ourselves. The fact that we are promised forgiveness does not imply that we will or can live sinlessly from now on. Indeed, we will go on sinning and needing forgiveness until Jesus returns.

Romans 8:10-11 describes this reality: "If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you."

In other words, the perfection of Jesus is an ideal that no other human ever has or ever will reach while this earth lasts. The good news, though, is that God gives us His own life when we accept Jesus even though we still have sinful flesh.

Jesus is our Savior! Rather than being merely our example, He is our Substitute bearing the guilt of our inevitable sins, sacrificing Himself so that we might escape the eternal punishment we deserve. As holy God and perfect Man, He was the only one who could atone for us, taking the punishment that we all deserve, so that we can look forward to life eternal in a sinless state. Aspiring to this future means continuing to deepen in our relationship with Him, studying His word, and letting Him guide us every moment, but it in no way implies that we can achieve perfect sinlessness here and now. To harbor any illusions that we can become worthy of salvation through imitating Jesus is to blaspheme His whole life and death. The same is true if we willingly persist in sin.

Furthermore, we are not expected necessarily to imitate His miracles. Yes, through His power we may be able to do extraordinary things, but 1 Corinthians 12:4-12 explains that God does not give all of His children the same gifts. Rather, He distributes them to each believer according to His will. While we all receive the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13-14), we will not all do the same things for Him. Performing miracles is not the evidence that we are saved. Jesus is our Savior and Substitute, the One we worship and honor. He is not primarily our example.

 

Parents as stand-ins for God

Supposing that we can live by following Jesus' example leads us to a type of grandiosity and away from the humility that comes from knowing we are in complete debt to Him for His sacrifice for us. This misunderstanding is especially damaging when we believe, as Ellen White taught, that parents stand in the place of God to their children.

At birth infants have no concepts at all, but they are created to be able to begin comprehending trust, love, honesty, faith, and kindness. They are not like jellyfish, without mind or spirit. As they grow they will be continually developing their concepts of the world around them. As pre-toddlers, they can begin to understand, in simple ways, the weightiest of matters. They begin to learn to control their tempers, their voices, their loyalties, and their desires.

One day a child about one year old demonstrated to me this early comprehension of abstract values. I watched as the tiny boy, not yet walking, curiously observed a blind child his own age sitting nearby. The sighted child watched for a few minutes, then he crawled away. He crawled back moments later with a small toy which he placed gently in the lap of the blind child. Even at his age, that child had an understanding of kindness.

Although babies and very young children may not comprehend God and His will, their parents, being human and thus imperfect, should never imagine that they "stand in the place of God" to their children, as Ellen White has stated:

Parents stand in the place of God to their children, and they will have to render an account, whether they have been faithful to the little few committed to their care. Parents, some of you are rearing children to be cut down by the destroying angel, unless you speedily change your course, and be faithful to them. God cannot cover iniquity, even in children. He cannot love unruly children who manifest passion, and He cannot save them in the time of trouble. Will you suffer your children to be lost through your neglect? Unfaithful parents, their blood will be upon you, and is not your salvation doubtful with the blood of your children upon you?—children who might have been saved had you filled your place, and done your duty as faithful parents should.1

Little ones need their parents as human parents, and they need God as God! Moreover, God is not helpless to reveal Himself even to infants. Luke tells the story of John the Baptist, still in his mother's womb, who leaped in recognition when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, came into his mother Elizabeth's presence (Luke 1:39-45).

The humility that God requires leaves no room for any person to entertain so much as a hint that he or she can ever "stand in the place of God" to another. It is God who saves parents, and it is God, not parents, who saves children. Believing parents can trust that God, their heavenly Father, interacts directly with their children just as He did with the still-unborn John the Baptist, and just as He does with each adult.

Parents' responsibilities include teaching their young ones that only God is perfect and that even "big people" are imperfect and in need of God's grace and forgiveness. To take any other position may give children a false idea of the character of God.

Most of all, parents need to teach their children from an early age that they can talk with God, that when they need help they can go to Him. They need to teach their children that Jesus died for their sin and that He asks them to accept His sacrifice for them. They need to know that when they ask the Lord Jesus for forgiveness, He will forgive them. They need to know they can trust God and that God loves them.

Praise God, none of us ever stands in the place of God for another. He alone is God, and He is not far from each one of us (Acts 17:27). †

 

1. Review and Herald, March 28, 1893 par. 4. Retrieved from http://www.egwtext.WhiteEstate.org/cgibin/egw2html?C=118067291&K=193041102010903170

 

 

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Yen Cress attended Golden Gate Academy in Oakland, California, and Pacific Union College. After her marriage failed, she left Adventism, began teaching English as a second language, and embraced Buddhism. Jesus eventually led her to Himself, however, through singing and worshiping with a variety of Christian congregations. In 2007 He arranged a happy connection for her with Former Adventist Fellowship and Trinity Church in Redlands, California. She has three children and nine grandchildren.