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 7: “Rest, Relationships, and Healing”
This next week’s lesson is again using the story of Joseph—this time to make a case for forgiveness. Unfortunately, however, this lesson can’t really help its readers with real forgiveness because Adventism doesn’t offer its adherents the true gospel. Without the gospel—without the truth about God’s provision for our sin in Jesus’ shed blood—all Adventism can offer is “therapeutic forgiveness” which doesn’t really address the core issues of betrayal and destruction caused by abuse and trauma.
The Foundation
Before forgiveness can make sense or “work”, we have to understand that the Lord Jesus took all our sins and the sins committed against us to the cross in Himself. Jesus propitiated for all our sin and, as David said,
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s (Psalm 103:2–5).
Because the Lord Jesus took the penalty for sin in Himself, His death, burial, and resurrection heals the deep wounds in our souls when we repent of our own sin. What this lesson does not address is the fact that, when we have been sinned against, as Joseph was by his brothers, that trauma often leaves us with wounds that lead us to sin against others, often without thinking, as we attempt to protect ourselves from further abuse.
The lesson dealt with Joseph’s forgiveness by speculating on dynamics Scripture never states. Genesis does not tell us the ways in which even Joseph may have been reactive to his brothers—and it doesn’t mention the things Joseph may have done that initially irritated his brothers, either.
All to say, we cannot truly forgive another unless we have known the Lord’s forgiveness of us. Unless we trust the Lord Jesus with our life—our well-being, our peace and joy because we have repented and have accepted His shed blood as the sufficient payment for our sin, we can only perform a superficial, therapeutic act of forgiveness.
Without having submitted our own hearts and acknowledged our own sin to God, we cannot forgive.
Adventism does not teach that Jesus finished His work of atonement on the cross and that, when we repent and trust and believe in Him, we pass at that moment from death to life. Rather, Adventism teaches that Jesus is continuing the atonement in heaven, “applying His blood” every time a professed believer repents of a sin. Until and unless a person remembers and confesses every sin, Jesus’ blood does not cover them. According to Ellen White, only those sins we remember to confess are forgiven.
The gospel, however, teaches that when we acknowledge our sinfulness and repent, trusting Jesus’ finished work of atonement purchased by His shed blood, all our sins—past, present, and future—are forgiven. We are given the resurrection life of Jesus, and we pass from death to life (Jn. 5:24). We receive eternal life at that moment, and we will never die, even in our bodies die. Our spirits which have been made alive in Christ never die (John 11)!
Giving up the right to get even
When we have been made alive, we know that we are God’s adopted child, and we realize that we have a new inheritance and parentage. We are transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Co. 1:13), and we are no longer in Adam but now are in Christ (1 Cor. 15:22). We have a new identity and security, and part of our inheritance as God’s adopted and born-again children is the permanent presence of the Holy Spirit who guarantees our eternal future with the Lord (Eph. 1:13-14). We no longer have that sense of not belonging, of being vulnerable and victimized. God gives us Himself, we no longer go through life feeling empty and rejected, desperately trying to make amends with people who have rejected us even when they are unrepentant.
When we are the Lord’s, we can trust Him to fill the holes in our hearts that others’ abuses have left. We can now see that if a family member or other trusted friend betrays us, that betrayal does not steal our identities. If they remain unrepentant, we can give to God our “right” to have a mutual and loving relationship with that person and, instead, ask God to fill that space in our hearts that the betrayer left in us.
When we know Jesus, we can give up what SHOULD have been our natural right: to have a mother or father or brother or sister love us unconditionally. We can acknowledge that the other person will never be able to fill the hole or heal the wound they left in us, but our true Father can.
Even though we will always carry the scars of the wounds we have suffered at the hands of people we should have been able to trust, we give up our right to expect that the other will ever “understand” us or be able to relate to us in a way that affirms us. We give up our expectation of what should have been normal, and instead we trust God to make us whole.
We let the offender “off the hook” not because we just decide to be nice and “forgive”; we let go of our rightful relationships because we trust God to deal with them and to care for us instead.
We can entrust those from whom we’ve been estranged to Him. He will deal with them, and He will be all we need.
If we carry the desire for revenge, it is a load that is too big for us and will ultimately kill us. Only the Lord Jesus who took all our imputed sin into Himself is big enough to carry that load. Only He can effect justice—and He will!
We give up our right to get even, and we allow the Lord to carry that load and to know that He will never leave any sin unresolved. Those who have hurt us will be dealt with justly. If they do not turn to the Lord in repentance, the Lord will judge them according to their deeds—justly. We can trust Him to do that because He said He would! “Vengeance is mine; I will repay,” says the Lord (see Romans 12:19; Hebrews 10:30).
Meanwhile, the Lord will redeem the pain in our lives. He will strengthen our hearts and fill us with the certainty that He is with us, and nothing will separate us from His love (Rom. 8). He will give us His power, and His power will be perfected in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). Because our sins are forgiven, we no longer cringe in shame and victimhood.
We can forgive another because we let go of our right to have them treat us the way they should. We give up our expectation of having a healthy relationship with an unrepentant person, and we trust God to deal with them and to heal our hearts. He will redeem those wounds, and we cannot extract justice or vengeance ourselves.
Adventism, though, cannot teach this biblical view of forgiveness because it does not teach the truth about Jesus and His forgiveness of us. It does not teach the truth about Jesus’ atonement or about our need to believe in Jesus ALONE. Instead, the most an Adventist can do is to decide to suppress the anger and grief that underlies trauma and to “live above it”, deciding to be the “bigger person” and to go through life keeping a hard little spot of pain encapsulated in their hearts, packed away from consciousness but robbing them of vulnerability and joy.
In Jesus, though, we may allow our self-protection to thaw, and Jesus is faithful to heal our inner fear and grief with His own presence. At the same time, He convicts us of our sin in refusing to surrender our rights that we have lost—and He brings us to repentance and reconciliation with Himself.
This lesson is hollow and frustrating because it lacks truth. It does not offer the foundation for true forgiveness—the propitiatory sacrifice of the Lord Jesus for our sin.
The gospel, however, offers us soft hearts instead of hearts of stone. Jesus’ own blood washes our scarred hearts and brings us to life. He gives us our true emotions, and He gives us Himself in those places where others sowed resentment and loss and anger.
Only in Jesus can we know what it means to be forgiven and to truly forgive. Only in Jesus will we find that our lives are redeemed and our hearts are whole. Only the blood of Jesus can wash away our sin and the detritus of others’ sins against us.
For further reading I recommend the article by Gary Inrig “When There’s No ‘I’m Sorry’” on page 8 of this January/February, 2006, issue of Proclamation! †
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