September 19–25

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.

 

Lesson 13: “A Step in Faith”

All through this quarter we have been studying the idea of making friends for God which, presumably, means telling them about Jesus. But just what Jesus are we to share? The one who could have failed and who did not even know if He would be resurrected?

“but for us took the risk of failure and eternal loss” (Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 131)

Satan with his fierce temptations wrung the heart of Jesus. The Saviour could not see through the portals of the tomb. Hope did not present to Him His coming forth from the grave a conqueror, or tell Him of the Father’s acceptance of the sacrifice. He feared that sin was so offensive to God that Their separation was to be eternal (Desire of Ages, p. 753.2)

The one who is one of three separate gods that work together so well that the group is called God? The one who never laughed, according to Ellen White, and who was often depressed?

The one who was at one time elevated to be equal with God, thus causing the jealous response of Lucifer who thought that he should have been the one honored, the one that started a cosmic war that God could still lose if we don’t help Him?

Or shall we share the Jesus of the Bible:

• The Jesus who was always God. John 1:1, 2
• The Jesus who knew before creating the world that He would come as a human, live, and die as a human and would be raised from the dead, thus defeating sin and the devil for all time.
• The Jesus who was a person that other people loved to be around. Although the Bible never mentions that He laughed, can you imagine wanting to be around someone as somber and sour as the one described by Ellen White?

Clearly, if we don’t know the real Jesus, we cannot share Him with the world.

In Monday’s lesson we read:

“Deep within all of our hearts there is a longing for something more in life. We, too, want to live for something worthwhile, for a grander, nobler purpose. Hence, Christ calls us, like Matthew, to follow Him.”

That deep longing is what is sometimes called a “God-shaped hole” indicating that we know we are lacking something, even if we don’t know what that is, and that we need something to make us whole. Romans 1 is quite clear that everyone instinctively knows that fact and all are without excuse when refusing the offer. 

The lesson says that our wanting to live for something worthwhile is the reason Jesus calls us. But is that the reason He calls us, or is there something much more important than a “grand, noble purpose”?

Let’s see what God says.

Three times in Ephesians 2 Paul points out that we were dead in our sin and needed to be made alive. That “making alive” is the purpose of Jesus entering our world as a human and dying the death we deserve. Our spirit was dead in sin, and there was nothing we could do to make it alive—no works, no noble, grand purpose or walk could make a difference or make our spirit live. 

Jesus gave up His life to make us alive in Him and promised that He would never let us go once we came to Him (John 10:28, 29). Without understanding that we are spiritually dead, there is confusion over what we need, how we can obtain it, and what we do with it once we get it.

The lines between salvation—a one-time event—and our subsequent walk with God—a continuing process—become blurred, and it is easy to confuse the cause with the result.

This confusion is clear in this statement in the lesson:

“Christianity is not primarily giving up bad things so that we can be saved”

Stressing that it is not “primarily” giving up things makes it clear that in the author’s mind, it is, at least partly, about that. Which takes us into the confusing, discouraging world of having to work well enough, live well enough and do enough to keep our salvation.

That paradigm immediately puts our faith in ourselves instead of in Christ. It makes it necessary to put out more and more effort in order to become good enough.

It produces a balance-beam mentality by which we try to decide if we are good enough to be “safe to save”. It usually leads to an endless list of rules and laws that must be followed.

It leads us to judge others against our own standard which often leads us to put others down in order to make ourselves feel better, and it says that God grades on the curve instead of by His standard which is absolute perfection.

And, if we are at all honest with ourselves, it leads to hopelessness as we realize that we will never really be good enough. 

Is it any wonder that so many either (1) become “super Christians” tied to the Law and perpetual doing (Law) instead of being (grace). Or (2) become agnostic or even atheistic when they realize the utter hopelessness of it all?

The Adventist perfection mindset leads to such silly statements as this:

“It’s hard to grasp the idea of eternity, when all we know is a tiny bit of time. But, as well as you can, try to imagine eternal life, an eternal good life—better than anything we can have here—and, thus, why nothing here, in this short spurt of time, would be worth losing the promise of eternal life that we have in Jesus.”

Only if our salvation depends on us and our behavior could we possibly think that we could lose the promise of eternal life when we have so many promises from God, many of them in Jesus’ own words, that we are secure in Him!

Let’s look at a few of these marvelous promises.

Ephesians 1:13, 14 tell us:

In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

Notice that our inheritance is given as a pledge, a down-payment that guarantees our salvation, and we are sealed by God. Can we possibly unseal anything that God sealed?

And in chapter 2 verses 8 and 9:

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Salvation is not about our work, either before, to earn it, or after, to keep it. It is all a gift. If we could, or must, work to earn it or to keep it, it would be wages, not a gift, and we would definitely have something about which to boast.

2 Corinthians 1:21 tells us:

Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge.

Again, it is God who seals us, not our good works.

And 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 tells us that when our work is tested, even if it is worthless to God and is “burned up”, we are still saved.

In John 6 Jesus spent 12 verses telling us that He will lose none of us and that we are secure in Him. Then, in John 10, He said twice that no one can snatch us out of His hands.

In Romans 8 Paul assures us that nothing can separate us from God’s love, and he goes to great lengths mentioning everything he can think of that has no power to separate us from God; followed by an all-inclusive “no created thing”. And that includes us, as we are created things which means we cannot separate ourselves from God.

Romans 10:9 and John 3:16 both tell us that if we believe we are saved and in neither place is it followed by any instructions on any behavior necessary to stay saved.

This quarter’s lessons have included some good ideas for building up the body of Christ, but is seems to be all about our works, not God’s grace. And these lessons were based largely on a false, weak Jesus who became God and needs us to validate Him so that He does not lose the war with one who supposedly used to be equal with Him. 

While not all of those anti-gospel words were in this lesson quarterly, they are still the very basis of the foundation on which Adventism is built. 

If the foundation is faulty, can the building be sturdy? And if the building is not sturdy, can our faith be sure? How much better it would be to build our faith on the sure Word of God which cannot fail. Where our beliefs and doctrines would seem to disagree with the Bible, it is our beliefs that should change, not our interpretation of the Bible.

God cannot lie (Numbers 23:19; Titus 1:2) so when He tells us that we are saved when we believe and that we are safe in His hands, how can we not believe? †