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: “Christ in the Crucible”
[COLLEEN TINKER]
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson asserts that God chose to bear our sin to preserve our individual freedom of choice.
- This lesson is based on the assumption that Jesus’ death saves all humans, but individuals must choose to accept His saving sacrifice or be annihilated.
- The lesson teaches that the Son of God’s death represented God’s judgment on sin rather than He as a sinless human atoning for each of our sins.
The underlying assumptions behind this final week of the quarter’s lessons was most clearly revealed in the Teachers Comments. Saturday’s introduction, however, did establish the theme of Adventism’s reverence for man’s “free will” when the author said,
The freedom of all His intelligent creatures was so sacred that, rather than deny us freedom, God chose to bear in Himself the brunt of the suffering caused by our abuse of that freedom. And we see this suffering in the life and death of Jesus, who, through suffering in our flesh, has created bonds between heaven and earth that will last throughout eternity.
The errors are subtle, but the issue of Jesus’ becoming incarnate and dying for human sin was not about denying us freedom. He didn’t come to relieve our supposed self-inflicted suffering caused by our own abuse of our freedom. Scripture tells us, rather, that He was not willing that any should perish. He loved us an gave His Son so that, if we BELIEVE in Him, we would not perish.
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (2 Peter 3:9).
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
The issue was not that we abused our freedom and plunged into suffering. Rather, the issue was that, the very day they ate the fruit—just as God had said—Adam and Eve died spiritually. That death is their legacy to each one of us (1 Cor. 15:20-22), and God sent His Son who was never dead spiritually to die as a perfect Sacrifice to atone for our sin. Thus, by believing and trusting in Him, we cross from death to life the moment we believe (Jn. 5:24).
The issue with our sin was that we DIED, and God loved His creation. He chose to take the full penalty for our sin, experience the death our sin deserved, and restore us to His eternal, resurrection life when we believe in Him.
The issue was never our individual free will. Our personal “freedom” is not what God has worked to preserve. Rather, Jesus’ incarnation and death was the revelation of God’s sovereign authority over us. He chose to rescue us from our death—into which we all are born (Eph. 2:1–3).
Do We Opt Out of Salvation?
The teachers notes in this week’s lesson articulate a liberal teaching which is assumed among many progressive Adventist congregations. Ironically, this assumption does not mesh easily with Adventism’s core doctrine of the investigative judgment, but it harmonizes with it much more easily than it reflects the biblical gospel. Here is what the teachers comments say:
In both cases (Creation and salvation), however, we have a choice to accept or reject His action of grace. After being created by grace, Adam and Eve made the decision to reject God’s act of creation and chose the path of rebellion that leads to annihilation or death. After being saved by grace through Christ’s death on the cross, each one of us has a choice to accept God’s sacrifice in our place and return to His kingdom of light, grace, and love, or to reject His great salvation and disappear into eternal nonexistence. Choose today. But choose love, choose grace, choose life. Choose God’s love, God’s grace, and God’s life. This will make you happy, this will make your loved ones happy, and this will make God happy (Sabbath School Bible Study Guide September 17–23, 2022, Teachers’ Comments, p. 171).
Notice the illegitimate equation the author makes between Adam and Eve’s sin and our sin. In each part of this equation, the author assumes a decision which Scripture never affirms. First, the reader is deceived by the assumption that Adam and Eve DECIDED “to reject God’s act of creation and chose the path of rebellion that leads to annihilation or death.”
There are at least two serious errors in that sentence. First, Adam and Eve did not decide “to reject God’s act of creation”. In fact, there is no hint that their sin was premised on rejecting God as their Creator. There is no hint in Scripture that they ever doubted God’s sovereign role as their Creator not that they wanted to doubt His identity.
Rather, they chose to DISBELIEVE His word! We do know that Eve was deceived and thus became a transgressor (1 Tim. 2:14), but Adam is held responsible for human sin. He was with Even, and he ate the fruit with his eyes wide open. It was to Adam that God had given the command about not eating lest they die that very day (Gen. 2:17), and Adam stood by and did not protect Eve from the serpent’s deceptive discussion.
No, Adam and Eve weren’t rejecting God’s authority as Creator; they were disbelieving His word. They knew God, and they knew who He was. They rationalized His word—and that led them down the path of self-deception and sin. In fact, their sin of discussing God’s word instead of obeying it BECAUSE God said it is described in understandable terms in Romans 1:18–22. This very disbelief and refusal to acknowledge and be thankful for what we actually know of God’s revelation of Himself is what plunges people into futility and spiraling sin:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things (Romans 1:18–23).
Second, the highlighted sentence in the quote above contains a second serious heresy besides the unsupported claim that the first couple rejected God’s act of creation. It says Adam and Eve, by supposedly rejecting God’s creative power, chose the path of annihilation. This assumption, also unsupported but stated as an a priori fact, is false. The Bible is clear that humans are never annihilated, yet this belief is at the core of the Adventist worldview. Their doctrine that defines man as a body plus breath, that when the breath ceases the person ceases to exist, twists every other doctrine: the nature of Christ, the nature of sin, and the nature of salvation. This assumption—which feels familiar to the Adventist reader—is utterly false. John 5:25–29, Revelation 20, 2 Peter 3:9, and many other passages reveal that annihilation is not the end-game for the wicked. Humans are not annihilated.
There is an even more obvious serious error in the quoted paragraph above as well: the assumption that Jesus’ death paid for ALL sin (not personally and individually but “representatively”), so all are born into “salvation by grace” and must exercise that free will to decide if we will accept that sacrifice and enter eternal life or reject it and go into annihilation.
This idea is supported by the illegitimate assumption that as Adam and Eve supposedly rejected God’s creation by grace, we now must decide if we are going to reject His salvation by grace. The implication is that just as Adam and Eve were created by God into life but rejected that divine creation, so we are all born into salvation and must decide whether we will appropriate it or reject it.
This teaching is a form of universalism. It assumes that Jesus’ death paid for all sin for all time, and we are born into a situation where we are actually forgiven and must decide if we will keep that status (as Adam and Eve could have kept their gracious creation by God) or reject it.
It is a clumsy comparison and really doesn’t make sense—yet it is an increasingly common way for Adventism to speak of Jesus’ atonement. They make it a universal, representative death that applies to all people for all time, and individual “free will” must decide whether or not to accept the status that is already there.
This scenario places the responsibility for individual salvation on the individual. It makes Jesus’ death a universal event that took care of some cosmic debt, but the individual has to decide whether or not to keep the gift of grace.
This “formula” is heretical and opposes Scripture. The New Testament is filled with explanations of how we are saved—and importantly, God’s foreknowledge and election are the foundation of our eternal life. Adventism shies away from these words—predestination is almost a bad word for Adventists—yet God’s foreknowledge of His own makes is very clear that Jesus didn’t save everyone and then leave it up to each person to decide whether or not to opt in. Ephesians 1 and 2 are very clear how we are to understand our standing before God. First, let’s look at Paul’s revelation in Ephesians 1:3–14:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory (Ephesians 1:3–14).
Notice that what we have in Christ is ours not by our choice but by “the purpose of His will”. He predestines His own, and He doesn’t disclose to us how this fact works in eternal parallel with our command to believe. Yet it does. We who are saved have been predestined according the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.
Furthermore, when we hear and believe the gospel of our salvation, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit—the very person of God who is the Author of the Law and our triune God’s GUARANTEE of our eternal future!
This description is not the same as the Sabbath School lesson’s explanation that Jesus saved everyone by grace and we choose (with our free will) whether or not to accept Him. No, this description says that God foreknows us. He chooses us to be conformed into the image of His Son—and concurrently, we are asked to BELIEVE. Our choices are real choices, even though God predestines His people.
Scripture does not reveal to us HOW these parallel truths work together, but from God’s perspective, they are not opposed or contradictory. From our perspective, though, we are asked to BELIEVE these words. In fact, God’s command to us is the same as His command to Adam and Eve in essence: we are to BELIEVE and to act on His word, even if we don’t fully understand it, knowing that He cannot lie and will not trick us.
We can leave the unanswered questions up to Him.
Ephesians 2 reveals even more:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 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 2:1–10).
Here Paul reveals that every single person is born dead in sin. This is not a statement of physical fact—it is not saying we have degraded genes that pre-program us to sin—it is saying that BY NATURE we are dead. Our spirits are dead in sin—this is Adam’s legacy to us. We are BY NATURE children of wrath.
And yet—the good news of God’s sovereign authority and grace is that HE makes us alive with Christ when we believe. It is by grace we are saved!
In other words, when we hear the word of our salvation and believe, God makes us alive. This is not the same as the process suggested by the lesson. There we learn that everyone is essentially born saved and then either opts in or out. The scenario in the lesson leaves our salvation up to us.
The Bible tells us that God takes responsibility for us and makes us alive. Moreover, Paul explains that even our faith to believe is a gift from God so that no one can boast. In other words, we are not born with the ability to choose God. We are born spiritually dead, by nature doomed to God’s wrath!
We cannot rise above our natures. Our natures are DEAD. We can’t choose to opt in or out on the basis of a universal “salvation”. No, Jesus’ death and atonement is sufficient for all humanity, but it is applied only to those who respond to the Spirit’s prompting and BELIEVE.
No one can believe apart from God’s intervention. In fact, Jesus Himself said,
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day (John 6:44).
So, when we hear the voice of our Father calling us to believe in the finished work of Jesus, the only proper response is for us to believe. When we believe, we are literally new creations, created “in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
The issue has never been that Adam and Eve rejected God and became “bad”, or that we have to choose rightly or wrongly about Jesus. The real issue is that we are BORN DEAD in sin, and we have to be made alive.
Being made alive depends upon our hearing our Father asking us to believe in Him, to believe in His provision for our natural sin, and to repent and place our faith entirely in Jesus’ finished work of atonement.
The reality of what God did in sending Jesus as a perfect human to be a perfect sacrifice for our personal, individual sin is reality-shifting. God knows us. Jesus came and knew exactly for what and for whom He died. As He hung on the cross, He knew each of us who would believe by name. He knew what He was propitiating. He knew from what He was saving us, and He knew the fruit of His sacrifice was bringing many sons to glory.
To end this quarter’s lessons, let’s read Isaiah 53:10–12 and Hebrews 2:10–18:
Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors (Isaiah 53:10–12).
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying,
“I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”
And again, “I will put my trust in him.”
And again, “Behold, I and the children God has given me.”
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted (Hebrews 2:10–18).
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