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: “Rewards of Faithfulness”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The author reveals Adventism’s lack of understanding of the teaching of “rewards”.
- EGW’s revelation that the parable of the talents is about preaching and money becomes the fulcrum of the lesson.
- The author states that people are “born again through conversion”.
This last lesson of the quarter concludes with a discussion of rewards for faithfulness. Although the author keeps stating that salvation is a gift, not a reward, he nevertheless is never clear about the nature of the rewards.
To be sure, Scripture does not describe them, either, but the central passage from which we learn about rewards certainly makes their significance more clear than the lesson. The lesson’s position is that faithful service yields rewards, but it never deals with the fact that people’s works can be burned up while the person himself is saved.
The biblical teaching is never clarified. Here is 1 Corinthians 3:10–15:
According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire (1 Corinthians 3:10–15).
The rewards may be assignments in the kingdom, but their direct relationship to our faithfulness to do the work God prepares for us to do for His glory is much more clear here than in the lesson. Further, this passage is written to born-again believers who have passed from death to life through belief in the Lord Jesus and His finished work.
The lesson is addressed to Seventh-day Adventists who believe a false gospel and have another Jesus—one who was fallible, could have failed in His mission, and surrendered forever His attribute of omnipresence because He took a body. This Jesus is not the Jesus of Scripture, and he cannot save.
In fact, the teachers comments state overtly that “the saints” are “born again through conversion”
This idea is never taught or stated in Scripture. In Adventism, “conversion” means turning one’s back on one’s previous life and embracing the new life of Adventism. It implicitly includes Adventist doctrines and practices such as seventh-day Sabbath-keeping as the seal of God, the health message, and the Three Angels’ Messages with their EGW-interpretation of leaving the Babylon of Sunday worship to avoid the risk of receiving the mark of the beast. Conversion also means acknowledging the prophetic ministry of Ellen White and thus inheriting the entire opus of her works as the background for understanding Scripture.
Thus, for the lesson to teach that “The faithfulness of the saints comes from the fact that they are children, born again through conversion” (p. 159) is to teach a heresy.
Ephesians 1:13: 14 states,
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.
Being born again occurs when we believe in the Lord Jesus (Jn. 6:29), in the gospel of our salvation—that Jesus died for our sins according to Scripture, that He was buried, and that He rose on the third day according to Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3,4). Being born again means we are literally brought from death to life spiritually (Jn. 5:24) and transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Col 1:13).
This final lesson, like those before it, drives home the point that people must generously give of their means to support Adventism. Furthermore, they should not expect rewards unless they give sacrificially to “the church”.
Once again, because Adventism approaches Scripture from a worldview built on the revelations of an extra-biblical prophet who taught her followers to read Scripture through a warped lens that insisted that Jesus died to uphold the law and to demonstrate that He could keep it—and so should they, they do not know the true gospel.
Adventist individuals who believe and trust their Adventism and their Adventist worldview are not born again according to Scripture. Thus the New Testament commands for “good works” and “generosity” and the teaching about “rewards” does not apply to them as a whole. The New Testament commands and promises are for new covenant believers who understand that Jesus fulfilled the law. He didn’t come to show us how to keep the law; He came to fulfill and to remove its curse from all who trust in Him.
Seventh-day Adventism is not biblical Christianity. It is a dangerous spiritual counterfeit, and those who trust its teachings are vainly believing. They cannot be saved apart from the true Jesus, from recognizing their own sin and inability to please God and trusting that Jesus died not for the law but for them—carrying their own sin in His body on the cross, suffering the wrath of God as He hung on the cross, and finally rising from death because His blood was sufficient to pay for human sin!
The lesson explains that Jesus rose from death because He fully kept the law, thus being perfect and worthy of rising—demonstrating that with His help, we also can keep the law and rise from death.
This teaching is heresy. It is not in Scripture. Because Jesus was God the Son in an incarnate body, conceived spiritually alive by the Holy Spirit, He was not born dead in sin. He had NO sin in Him.
He lived a sinless life and died the perfect sacrificial substitutionary death for us, and He rose from death because His blood was sufficient to pay the price of sin. He did NOT rise because He kept the law.
If you haven’t trusted the One who died your death and carried your sin to the cross, admit your sin to Him now. Fall at the foot of His cross and thank the Lord Jesus for His blood shed for you and for His life that removes the curse of death from you.
He is faithful. †
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