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 12: “Dying Like A Seed”
[COLLEEN TINKER]
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson ignores the literal spiritual death bequeathed to humanity by Adam and Eve when they ate the forbidden fruit.
- The author focusses on giving up one’s rights and desires as a way to follow Jesus’ example and thus to die to sin.
- The lesson doesn’t understand dying to sins of the flesh as a consequence of being born again because the author doesn’t understand being born again.
To begin discussing the lesson’s twisted understanding of dying to sin, we must say again that the foundational worldview behind this lesson is Adventist physicalism. Although the lesson and the Teachers Comments discuss the consequences of Adam and Eve’s eating the forbidden fruit, there is no understanding that they LITERALLY died spiritually the day they ate.
The lesson explains “death” as the consequence of eating the fruit, but it suggests that this “death” is the eventual loss of physical life because they have set themselves up as their own “moral authority” instead of God, thus rebelling against God and establishing their own “self-sufficiency and autonomy from God” which was an “act of sedition that constituted replacing, or substituting, God with ourselves or somebody or something else” (Teachers Notes, p. 159).
The notes continue:
Second, and consequently, eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, rebelling against God and attempting to sit on His throne, leads to death. That is why God immediately warned Adam and Eve that eating from the forbidden tree leads to death (Gen. 2:17). God is the only Source of life (Gen. 2:7; Deut. 30:20; John 1:1–4; John 4:13, 14; John 6:32–35; John 11:25–27; John 15:1–5; Rom. 6:23; Col. 1:16, 17). For a creature to sit on the throne of God is tantamount to removing himself or herself from the only Source of life, which is the same as consigning oneself to death.
But such death is not an ordinary death. It is a willing separation from God, a decision not to live according to God’s government (1 John 3:4; Isa. 14:9, 10, 16; Ezek. 28:2, 9, 16, 17). This separation is the essence of sin and of death. We do not know what Adam and Eve thought when they heard the word “death,” but they surely thought of something grim. But we, after 6,000 years, know all too well that death is a tragedy.
In other words, the logic developed here explains that Adam and Eve made a decision that removed themselves from God, who was the source of life, and this removal was a decision “not to live according to God’s government”. This decision to live in rebellion and autonomy led to death—and to an Adventist, this “death” is purely physical. Adventists deny that humans have literal immaterial spirits that survive the death of the body.
The biblical teaching that we have spirits that go to God they undermine by saying such a belief leads one into “spiritualism” and the occult.
The result of this elaborate philosophizing to explain that Adam and Eve DIED and that thus all humanity inherits DEATH means that the point of this lesson is that each person has to make a decision to give up his or her own desires and rights and submit to God’s will. What is not explained but is implicit in the Adventist understanding, however, is that “God’s will” and “God’s government”, to an Adventist, is the “eternal” Law: the Ten Commandments—a law which, according to Ellen White’s declarations as she laid out her great controversy paradigm, existed in heaven from eternity and was the point of controversy that led Lucifer to rebel and launch the Great Controversy between Christ and Satan.
Furthermore, Adventism teaches (and the lesson ASSUMES) that this “eternal Law” is the law that defines even God’s morality.
Significantly, this lesson explained Adam and Eve’s sin in terms of “morality”, not righteousness or belief or obedience, and it explained that they opted to be their own “moral authority” instead of recognizing God as their “moral authority”.
God is not our “moral authority” in the sense of Adventism’s worldview. God is the sovereign, righteous GOD, and His essence is RIGHTEOUS, not moral. Adventism reduces “righteousness” to “morality” and explains ideas such as dying to sin in terms of “morality”, not in terms of “righteousness”.
The issue here is that no human is capable of “morality” apart from trusting in Jesus’ finished work and being spiritually born again. The act of believing and of being born of God means we are counted righteous, as Abraham was when he believed God (Gen. 15:6), and we receive the literal imputed righteousness of Christ credited to our eternal accounts when we trust Jesus (Phil 3:9; Rom. 3:20–26).
The lesson never deals with “righteousness”. It only deals with “morality” and with “dying to sin” in the sense that one must surrender his tendencies to sin and his selfish desires to God.
The Bible, though, teaches that dying to sin is what occurs when we trust Jesus and are credited with Jesus’ own death. We are counted as having died with Christ to our old selves. We have been crucified with Christ when we are in Him.
The description in Romans 6 of having been crucified with Christ is describing the imputed reality that is ours when we believe and trust Jesus. It is not describing our decision to be baptized and to signify turning our backs on our old way of life and now deciding to live in obedience to Adventism: keeping the Sabbath, eating vegetarian, observing the health message and evangelizing the neighborhood.
No!
Dying to Sin is only for the born again
The lesson challenges the reader to follow the example of Jesus, who “condescended” to come to earth as a man and to die for us. By following His example, they explain, a person can learn to let go of the things they love that actually keep them indulging themselves and living in sin.
This comparison is wrong. Jesus’ coming to earth is not an example of how to be saved or worthy of salvation. It is, in fact, the singular event that is the MEANS of salvation.
We don’t follow Jesus’ example to be saved; we trust Jesus’ sacrifice and repent. When we trust that He has done everything necessary for our salvation, when we repent of our sin and allow Him to be our Savior and acknowledge that we cannot repay Him or make ourselves worthy of Him, He makes us alive.
We are born dead in sin, “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3), and we are unable to rise above our natures to try to seek or to please Him. We are helpless to be saved.
We have TRUST Jesus, and when we do, He seals us with His own Spirit (Eph. 1:13,14). The Father literally transfers us out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son (Col 1:13), and we are made alive eternally (Jn. 5:24).
We aren’t on probation. We aren’t saved provisionally provided we expunge sin and learn to keep the law. We are saved IN our sins, and with the new life God gives us, bringing our dead spirits to life, and with His presence permanently sealing us, He teaches us to trust Him instead of indulging the flesh.
Romans 7 explains that born again people still have mortal flesh with a “law of sin” in it, but the Lord Jesus saves us from this “body of death”, and “there is now no condemnation for those who believe” (Rom. 8:1).
Dying to sin happens when we trust Jesus and His completed work of atonement and are born again. Jesus’ personal death is credited to us; we “die with Him” and come to spiritual life with His own resurrection life (Roman 8:1–12).
The Irony Of It All
The lesson asks this thought question at the end of Sunday’s reading: “Pray for wisdom from the Holy Spirit, asking, ‘What rights am I holding on to right now that actually might be a barrier to submitting to Jesus’ will in serving my family, my church, and those around me? To what extent am I willing to endure discomfort to serve others more effectively?’”
The thing an Adventist must be willing to give up in order to die to sin is his belief that he has the “right religion”. The Adventist worldview gives the Adventist a false Jesus—a Jesus who could have failed and could have sinned, a Jesus who ceased to exist while He was dead and who had no immaterial spirit (besides breath—which is material) that went to God as Jesus Himself said it would.
Adventism has a false view of the nature of man and the nature of Jesus—and thus a false view of sin and of death AND of salvation.
The fundamental thing to which an Adventist must die is the belief that Adventist theology is correct.
I will never forget the impact of realizing that I had always heard Adventists say I had to “die to the world”. I was shocked when I realized that the world to which God called me to die was ADVENTISM.
Adventism was the world. It was a false religion—as false as Mormonism or Jehovah’s Witnesses or Buddhism. It was the world!
I had to trust Jesus when He revealed Himself to me through His inerrant, eternal Word, and I had to let go of my belief that I was keeping the Law and believing the Bible better than other religions. I had been WRONG!
The lesson’s author does not imagine that the reader might need to renounce Adventism itself. Yet the real answer to the questions, “What rights am I holding on to right now that actually might be a barrier to submitting to Jesus’ will in serving my family, my church, and those around me? To what extent am I willing to endure discomfort to serve others more effectively?” is fundamentally this: I am holding onto my right to believe that Adventism is the only religion that follows “the whole Bible”—that Adventism is the religion that is “most right”.
Adventism is perhaps the most deceptive religion, masquerading as “Christian” and keeping its members bound in slavery to their flesh, rejecting the finished atonement of Jesus and leading them back to the Law—the very thing that curses all who claim to keep it, the very thing that was given to Israel to be a tutor to lead them to Christ.
“Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for those who believe,” Paul said (Rom. 10:4). This fact is what Adventists will not embrace.
The lesson adds another gossamer layer of the veil hiding the beauty of the Lord Jesus.
We cannot die to sin without admitting we are unable to please God and that we need Jesus alone for life and forgiveness.
The commands of the New Testament are only for the born again; for those who think they can please God and keep His law, there is only ONE command: BELIEVE. Jesus said that the work of God is to believe in the One whom He [the Father] sent (Jn. 6:29). Paul told the Philippian jailor that one must “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ”, and one would thus be saved (Acts 16:31).
I urge the reader of the lesson: ask God to show you the truth. Ask Him too reveal to you the finished work of the Lord Jesus and to show you your hopeless, dead spirit that cannot seek, please, or know God. Ask Him to reveal your own need, and ask Him to make Jesus very real to you.
You cannot die to sin. You have be made ALIVE in Christ before there is even a shred of ability to submit one’s flesh to Jesus.
Jesus did not come to show us how to die to sin. He did not come to make us good or to show us how to become worthy to be saved. He came to fully atone for human sin and to make dead people alive.
He came to make YOU alive—and that can only happen when you trust Him alone.
Trust Him today! †
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