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 11: “Jesus, Author and Perfecter of our Faith”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- Faith is explained as a quality learned through examples, not as a gift from God.
- It sees reality as human-centered instead of God-centered.
- It introduces the idea that creation “ex-nihilo” is not the same as by God’s word—suggesting that God’s word organized something pre-existing
This lesson attempts to teach living by faith (Hebrews 11) and by God’s discipline without an understanding of the requisite new birth and without an understanding of faith being God’s gift to us. Rather, “faith” is vague and is explained as a learned response and as a creative intellectual leap suggesting an idea that would not be possible naturally. For example, the lesson refers to Abraham’s being asked to sacrifice Isaac after being told he was the son of promise. The lesson for Monday states,
God’s instruction in Genesis 22 seemed to flatly contradict God’s promises in Genesis 12–21.
Hebrews concludes that Abraham amazingly solved the conundrum by arriving at the conclusion that God would resurrect Isaac after he had offered him. This is amazing because no one had yet been resurrected. It seems, however, that Abraham’s previous experience with God led him to that conclusion. Hebrews 11:12 notes that Isaac was conceived by the power of God from one who was “as good as dead.” Paul also noted that despite Abraham’s being “as good as dead” and Sarah barren, Abraham believed “in hope . . . against hope, that he should become the father of many nations” because he believed that God “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom. 4:17–20, ESV). Thus, Abraham must have assumed that if God in some sense already had given life to Isaac from the dead, He could do it again. In God’s leading in the past, Abraham saw an intimation of what He could do in the future.
In the context of the entire week’s lessons, the above excerpt clearly reveals Adventism’s lack of understanding “faith”. Not once in these lessons does the author deal with Genesis 15:6 when God covenanted with Abraham, and “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Rather, Abraham’s faith is explained as something akin to “sanctified reason”, or creative conclusions based on things he had already seen.
To be sure, watching God work and believing His word builds faith—but this kind of spiritual “knowing” is not how the lesson describes Abraham’s faith nor the faith of any other saint. Rather, it is intellectual reasoning based on accumulated data.
This intellectual decision attributed to Abraham is the natural conclusion of the Adventist worldview. In fact, in the last paragraph of Saturday’s introduction to the lesson, we read this statement:
Hebrews 11 explains that faith is confidence in God’s promises, even if we cannot see their fulfillment yet. This lesson will explore what faith is and how it is obtained through the examples of the past and, especially and centrally, through the example of Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2, ESV).
The problems contained in these two short sentence are multiple. First, this paragraph is preceded by the statement that Jesus “provides inspiration as well as the ultimate example of how the race is run. He is the ultimate Witness that the reward is true ad that He is the Forerunner who opens the way for us.”
This introduction to the lesson establishes the foundational argument: Jesus is the Example that shows us how to practice faith and win the race. We can get to heaven just like Jesus has done by following His example.
This entire idea is unbiblical. When we read Scripture in context, we learn that no human except Jesus is spiritually alive by nature. Rather, we are “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3) and unable to please, seek, or honor God (Rom. 3:9–15). We cannot rise above our natures. Rather, the Father has to draw us, and we have to acknowledge our sin and trust the finished work of Jesus: His death for our sin according to Scripture, His burial, and His resurrection on the third day according to Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3, 4).
The lesson, however, states in Thursday’s entry that “Jesus is the reason we have faith. As one with God, He expressed the faithfulness of God toward us. God never gave up in His efforts to save us, and that is why we will reach the reward in the end if we don’t give up. Jesus ran with patience and remained faithful, even when we were faithless (2 Tim. 2:13). Our faith is only a response to His faithfulness.”
NO! Jesus did not live to show us we, too, can live a sinless life of faith! Our faith is NOT a response to His faithfulness. Rather, our faith is a gift from God!
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:8–10).
Our entire new birth, our faith, our new life and our work for God is HIS work! It is not what happens because we decide to “obey” the law and “honor God”. All of our spiritual life is the reality He gives us when He shows us who Jesus really is, what He has done, shows us our need, and gives us faith to believe.
Abraham believed God not because he intellectually added up the evidence and decided to believe. He believed because God enabled him to see who He was and to know He is the eternal God whose divine nature and invisible power created all things (Rom. 1:18–20). Abraham believed God and acted on that belief. It wasn’t Abraham-centered; Abraham didn’t figure it out because he had good willpower and moral impulses. He believed because God revealed Himself to him, and Abraham trusted Him because he saw that God was GOD! It was revealed to him—just as the reality of Jesus is revealed to each person who believes.
Our faith is from the God who reveals Himself, not from our own smart data-processing. God is sovereign over us and our salvation; we are not at the center of our spiritual lives.
Creating Out of Nothing
I admit that the comments in the Teachers Comments about whether or not God created ex nihilo surprised me. I had not encountered this particular question within Adventism before, but it makes sense that it is surfacing because an evolutionary leaning has been present among Adventist university biology departments for many years. This is what the Teachers Comments say:
This phrase portrays the view that the universe was created by God out of nothing. One of the classical texts to support a creatio ex nihilo is Hebrews 11:3: “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible” (NRSV). This passage can be interpreted that way. We will, however, look at an alternative understanding of this text.
After the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1, Paul moves to the people of old who were commended for their faith (Heb. 11:2). The catalog of the faithful does not begin with Abel, surprisingly, but with us (that is, “we,” the audience) and Paul, the author. “By faith we understand” (Heb. 11:3, NRSV) expresses the intellectual outlook of a faith reality. We understand that the universe (literally the worlds) were created by God’s Word. Creation can be grasped only by faith, Paul asserts. Furthermore, that which is visible was not made from things that are visible. In other words, the world of Creation is visible, but its origin is not. Its origin is intellectually comprehended only by faith.
What is this invisible origin? Is it ex nihilo, “out of nothing,” that God created the visible worlds? The text says, “What is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Heb. 11:3, ESV), which means that the things that are not visible are not necessarily nonexistent. For example, just because we do not see the wind does not mean the wind is nonexistent. Could it be that the invisible things out of which the visible worlds were made are a reference to the spoken “word of God”? If so, this is a clear allusion to the Creation account in Genesis 1, where God’s Word is the source of Creation. (“And God said” is repeated in Gen. 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26.) In other words, the sensory world is derived from a power that remains inaccessible to our senses—God’s powerful creative Word.…In sum, we can say that God’s invisible Word produces visible worlds and our universe. This does not mean that God did not, or could not, create ex nihilo, but only that this text seems to be saying something else.
The lesson ends with a set of “thought questions”. The first two are these:
- What would be the consequences if we as Seventh-day Adventists gave in to the belief system of evolution or theistic evolution? Discuss.
- Does the biblical Creation account necessitate a creation ex nihilo?
This discussion seems to hint at something it refuses to state overtly. What, you may ask as I did, is the difference between God’s creating “ex-nihilo” and by His word?
It appears that the reader has to be privy to extra details which might be dangerous for the lesson authors to print. In searching online for a description of this distinction, however, I gathered that the two ideas which have existed within Christianity regarding God’s creating are that He created out of nothing, and that His word organized some sort of matter or energy which predated creation, which existed with God from eternity past.
Now, admittedly, the lesson is not stating the second notion, but it is distinctly raising the question about whether or not God’s creating by the word of His mouth means that He created all things out of NOTHING. Furthermore, the second notion that something existed which God’s word organized is an idea that was largely abandoned by the fourth century among Christians.
Yet here it is: the Sabbath School lesson is opening the door for Adventists to conclude that God’s creation was NOT ex-nihilo but that it was His organizing word making the worlds.
The obvious question, however, is: where did the supposed pre-existing material or energy come from?
The Bible’s point is that NOTHING (and that includes matter and energy) was made apart from God’s word declaring it.
The implications of this open door to non-ex-nihilo creation are serious. First, it provides an alternative for the Adventist biologists who believe the earth cannot be young. Instead of embracing evolution, they will be able to embrace a “Word of God” creation that is not ex-nihilo.
Second, this idea definitely impacts one’s understanding of the new birth. Scripture says that when we believe, we are new creations (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal 6:15). John 1:12 says that God gave us the right to be born “of God”. But if God does not create out of nothing, then our “new birth” is not a completely, brand-new existence, either. Rather, if God just rearranges something already there, the Adventist view of a new set of ideas and beliefs makes more sense. For Adventism, the “new birth” is a term they don’t like to use. They prefer “conversion”, or becoming convicted of a new set of beliefs and ideas. They use the word in the sense of coming to see things through the lens of Adventism instead of through any other lens.
If God’s creation is not ex-nihilo, then the lesson’s arguments about faith and endurance and discipline and obedience make sense. For an Adventist, a person simply has to see the evidence and decide to compile the data and belief. This approach to “faith” negates the miracle of God’s new creation, of His giving us a new heart, a new spirit, and His Spirit.
Altogether, this lesson tips its Adventist hand. The worldview of Adventism is man-centered, not God-centered. Man observes Jesus and figures out how to please God.
Yet Scripture tells us that God draws us to Jesus, and when we see our sin and Jesus’ propitiation for our sin and trust His shed blood, God seals us with His own Spirit. He gives us NEW LIFE—the same eternal life that raised Jesus from the dead! He creates us brand new; He doesn’t just rearrange our feelings and desires and clean up our minds and perfect our will power. No! He shows us that Jesus fulfilled the law, and He places us in the kingdom of His beloved Son!
This lesson reveals the physicalism of Adventism. Under the hood, Adventism does not understand the miracle of God’s intersection with humanity in the man Christ Jesus.
Come to Jesus—the real Jesus—and know what it means to be transferred out of death into life! †
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