June 27–July 4

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.

Quarter Three: Making Friends For God

 

Introduction and Lesson 1: “Why Witness?”

Dedicating 13 weeks to the goal of sharing the gospel is an ambitious undertaking. The introduction and the first week’s lesson do a good job of expressing the need, the obligation and the joy of doing just that. 

In the introduction, there are wonderful expressions of the love of God in drawing us to Himself and His love which He demonstrated by providing a way of forgiveness and restoration by taking our place on the cross.

There is also an encouraging description of the joy in heaven when even one person comes to Jesus. This is beautifully demonstrated in the gospels by Jesus’ parables of the widow searching for a lost coin, the Good Shepherd who goes out to search for even one lost sheep and the father of the prodigal son who ran with joy to welcome home the lost son.

After these high, inspiring proclamations of God’s love, we come crashing down to earth in the first (of many) quotes from Ellen White:

“In the councils of heaven, before the world was created, the Father and the Son covenanted together that if man proved disloyal to God, Christ, one with the Father, would take the place of the transgressor, and suffer the penalty of justice that must fall upon him” (Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, November 15, 1898).

This is just the first of many times when the sovereignty of God and His foreknowledge are discounted. Notice how it says that the plan of salvation, devised before the creation, the plan that IF man fell…

You may think I am just nitpicking, but I have become very sensitive to any attempt to limit God or to lower God to the level of man with any lack of knowledge of the future. The plan was not devised, or “covenanted” as the lesson put it, just on the off chance that sin might intrude. God knows all and always has; He didn’t have to make a plan just in case things fell apart. He always knew and yet He created everything from His heart of love knowing how it would turn out.

One other typical “Adventism” they slipped in was earlier in the introduction when the lesson says this:

“When an individual is born into this world, God places a desire for eternity deep within the fabric of that person’s being.”

It has to be stated that way in order to support the Adventist concept of the “whole man” which believes that body, spirit, and soul are one indivisible whole, with the “soul” being nothing more than just our breath. Without an understanding of being born soul-dead—that is, separated from God—they have to come up with an alternate idea of how God draws us in and they express it as a kind of “God-shaped hole” that makes us want to come to God.

But our natural problem is so much more than just a desire for eternity somewhere deep in us. Romans 5:12-21 tells us 5 times that from Adam we are dead but in Christ we are alive. Since Romans was written to living people, it is obviously not the body that is dead. Paul gives it emphasis by saying it over and over—we (our souls) were dead until Christ came and gave them life. It could not be any more clear.

Week 1: Why Witness?

This week starts out well by stating some of God’s characteristics of mercy, love, forgiveness and compassion. All of these are correct, of course, but the lesson immediately falls back into what was stated in the introduction about our longing to come to God. It does it by saying:

“No matter how much we desire to be saved, God longs to save us more.“

This understanding reduces God to One who simply responds to our longing by saving us because we have come to want it. That makes salvation something that comes from our initiative, our “desire”, which is just another way to elevate mankind while subtly lowering God to nothing more than a reactionary force. It says that He put the desire, the “God-shaped hole” in us, and once we want it enough, then He gives us His grace. 

That is exactly backwards. While we were sinners and dead in our sins (and remember, this means our souls, not our bodies) Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). He provided the solution before we even knew we needed it. It is entirely the work of the Holy Spirit to draw us and give us that desire; it does not come out of our fallen, sinful nature.

In Sunday’s lesson, there is a very good summary of some of the main points in the book of Romans: God is seen in nature; salvation is by grace through faith alone; the grace that justifies us also sanctifies us; anyone who calls on God in faith will be saved, leading up to the conclusion that people need to hear about God which is our task and commission. That is good, as far as it went.

While this is a good summary of part of the message of Romans, sadly, it leaves out things like the fact that the Law brings only death, Chapter 2. Further, the righteousness of God comes apart from the Law, not through the Law, Chapter 3. The Law brings only wrath, not justification, Chapter 4. We stand safely and firmly in God’s grace, and we are saved by His life, not our law-keeping, Chapter 5. And of course, the entire thought culminates in Chapter 5, verses 12-14: 

“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 

Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.”

It could not be clearer—the was no law until Moses. I know that these might have been left out because they were not the emphasis of this study, but I have never seen an Adventist study of Romans that dealt with those points that Paul so clearly makes. Previous Sabbath School lessons on the book of Romans have never done a verse-by-verse study; instead, they jump around and take things out of context.

In Tuesday’s lesson we come to another favorite idea from Ellen White: 

“…but in order for us to develop a character like Christ’s, we must share in His work.”

Jesus is God, and as such, He is perfect and without sin, so for us to develop a character like His to to say that we must become perfect. That is one of her favorite themes, the perfection of character that we must develop in order to be saved. She said it many, many times in many different ways, each time hitting us over the head with an impossible goal and a threat that drains us of all hope.

How much better to believe what the Bible says about how we are in Christ and counted perfect. 2 Cor. 5:21 says it well: 

“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

It isn’t our perfection that God sees, but that of Christ in our place. This is imputed righteousness, not imparted.

So, after one week, we have a pretty good summary of the reasons for us to witness to others. The only question is this—just what does the author see as the things to be shared with others? Is it God’s unmerited grace? Is it the salvational work of Christ when He died on the cross to take the penalty for all our sins? Is it our utter helplessness to come on our own or to become more Christ-like? Is it the Holy Spirit that God seals in us at the moment we believed which rescued us from death and planted us firmly, and permanently, on the throne in heaven beside Jesus?

Or will it be the necessity of “keeping” the Sabbath? Or the requirement of becoming “without spot or wrinkle” before we can be saved? Or the need to become healthy just so God can communicate with our physical brain cells? Or the idea that Jesus will contradict His own words by withdrawing from being our Advocate and leaving us to depend on our own perfection?

If you don’t have truly good news to share just what is the point of sharing at all? There is so much bad news in the world already, why would be share an uncertainty about something as important as eternal life? We will see where this leads us this quarter. †