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.
Commentary on “Keys to Family Unity”—Lesson 7
The lesson this week visits a topic which the Sabbath School lessons often discuss in various contexts: Unity. In this case, unity in the family is the focus.
The author is absolutely right, that unity within a family is the “thing” that makes intimate relationships safe and rewarding. The problem, again, is that this subject is built upon the foundation of an Adventist worldview instead of a biblical one.
The lesson opens with a statement establishing the foundation of the discussion:
Whether as parents or children in a family, we all struggle with the same thing, and this is our sinful fallen natures, which can make unity in family life very challenging, to say the least.
Yes, in the body of Jesus Christ on the cross all humanity has been reconciled to God and to one another (Eph. 2:13–16, Col. 1:21–23), but on a daily practical level we must appropriate for ourselves the grace of Christ, which alone can make family unity a living experience for all who seek it in faith. This must be a daily experience in our lives. Fortunately, through the grace of Christ, it can be.
What’s wrong?
This lesson assumes that Jesus’ death reconciled “all humanity” to God and to one another. In other words, everyone born is born reconciled to God because of Jesus’ death. Then, because of this universal reconciliation, people just need to appropriate God’s grace every day.
This view of reconciliation says that all people are essentially born saved—reconciled—and will only lose their state of reconciliation if they refuse to appropriate God’s grace in an ongoing way.
This belief does not explain HOW one appropriates God’s grace. It’s a concept that’s repeated as if everyone should know how to do it, like eating and breathing, yet Adventists are left helpless to understand how to experience and stay in God’s grace.
Generally they understand staying in His grace to mean they must pray every day to be good, to do the right thing, and to obey God’s law and do the things commanded in the Bible. Yet even this concept is wearying and unfruitful.
What’s true?
The whole problem of living in God’s grace and experiencing unity among people is only understood if one has a biblical understanding of the nature of man.
Jesus’ blood was shed for the remission of sins and for the reconciliation of heaven and earth. Indeed, His blood was sufficient for every person who ever lived to have his sins paid for and to be reconciled to God. The problem with the Adventist view, however, is that people do not receive personal reconciliation unless they BELIEVE in the Lord Jesus and His sufficient sacrifice for sin and His resurrection from the curse of death.
Here is the truth taught in Scripture: no one is righteous; no one understands or seeks for God. All have “turned aside” and become “worthless”; no one does good. They deceive, curse, kill, and they have no peace nor fear of God (Rom. 3:11–18).
We are all born—not reconciled but dead in sin, following the devil as the “prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now “working in the sons of disobedience”—“by nature children of wrath”(Eph, 2:2—3).
In Adam ALL died (1Cor. 15:21).
As Adventists we were taught that if we prayed and trusted the Holy Spirit enough, we would eventually be able to avoid sin. This belief, however, is false.
We need something besides a boost of supernatural power to avoid sin and access grace. We need a Savior. We need a completely new life, a new heart, a new identity.
We need to be born again. Because we are born literally spiritually dead (not figuratively as Adventists teach—they say we have “inherited propensities to sin”, not a literal dead spirit that CANNOT obey or even seek God) we must receive new life in order to please God.
When we hear the gospel, that the Lord Jesus has born our sins in His body on the cross to pay the price for our sin and to be a propitiation for the Father, we realize that only Jesus can address our sin. Only Jesus can make us alive.
When we believe, we pass from death to life and will never come under judgment (Jn. 5:24). When we believe, we are born again and indwelled by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14). When we believe we are transferred OUT of the “domain of darkness” into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son.
When we have been born again, we are truly alive for the first time. Our immaterial spirits are born again and connected to the life of God. We go from being in the darkness to being in Christ, “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3).
Our new birth is the key to being reconciled to God. While Jesus’ blood is sufficient for everyone, it is efficacious ONLY for those who believe in the finished work of the Lord Jesus. We are not automatically reconciled to God; we receive reconciliation through Jesus’ blood shed for us. When we believe in Jesus, our sins are covered by His blood as we are washed by it. They are removed from us and we are forgiven. Our sins are nailed to the cross in the body of Christ, and in Jesus we receive the life that brought Him up from the grave because His sacrifice had been sufficient!
We are completely new creations when we believe. We receive life and a new inheritance: sons and daughters of God. (Rom. 8:14-17).
When we believe we are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise who is the guarantee of our eternal inheritance (Eph. 1:13-14). It is the indwelling Holy Spirit who seals those who have been born again of the Spirit, and the result of this new life and indwelling Spirit true unity.
Paul says this in Ephesians 4:1–3:
Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
In other words, no group of people, no matter how intimately related, can truly achieve real unity apart from being born again and sealed with the Holy Spirit. Even among those who have been born again there remains a struggle with the “law of sin” in our still-mortal flesh (Rom. 7:23). But only if we have been born again can we submit our temptations and struggles to the Lord.
If we have NOT been born again, any struggle we have with sin is a losing battle. We cannot pray enough or “trust God” enough to stamp out our sinning. Only if we have been made spiritually alive through belief in the finished work of Jesus’ shed blood and resurrection can we hope to have victory over the sins of our flesh.
When we are born again, we have new natures and are spiritually alive. We have literally passed eternally from death to life (Jn. 5:24). Our flesh will still struggle, but for the first time we have new power and potential, and we can respond by trusting God instead of with a flurry of self-discipline and will-power. We can submit our temptation to the Lord instead of fighting with it.
It is the Holy Spirit who brings true unity. The Adventist paradigm that we are born reconciled (which Scripture denies) and then must DAILY “appropriate for ourselves the grace of Christ” is entirely a works paradigm.
When we are born again we receive the grace of Christ, and we do not have to “appropriate” it ongoingly. Christ’s grace toward us was expressed as He carried our sins to the cross, and when we trust Him and believe, His grace covers our sins and makes us His. We then live in His grace, even when we struggle and even give in to the law of sin in our flesh. We don’t stop being the recipients of His grace if we have been born again.
Receiving God’s grace isn’t accessing power to obey; rather, it is receiving the gift of His blood shed for us and being born again. It is being forgiven and made alive. We can’t “appropriate” God’s grace; it has to be given to us. Our only “job” is to believe Him!
Family unity
The only way it is possible to have true unity and peace in our families is if we have trusted Jesus and received the gospel of our salvation. Adventism is not the gospel; we have to trust in Jesus alone.
Unless we are born again, our best efforts to be civil will ultimately fail because we have no spiritual life in ourselves. If we have been born again, however, the presence of the Holy Spirit unites everyone who is spiritually alive in Christ. Because we have His life, we have the potential to address our differences and to submit them to the Lord Jesus. He unites our hearts around our honor of Him and His glorifying Himself in our lives.
As long as we live on this earth, humanity will struggle with unity. Only those who truly know Jesus, however, who trust His finished work and receive His resurrection life in their spirits will be able to experience the unique unity that the Lord gives those who know Him. The Spirit in us recognizes the Spirit in a fellow believer, and the unity between them is greater than any bond created by blood or common interests.
The good advice for family life is actually discouraging unless a person has understood the true gospel and has been born again. Only in Him is there hope for true unity. †
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