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 3: “The Power of the Exalted Jesus”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems With This Lesson:
- This entire lesson is premised on not understanding the nature of spiritual life in believers.
- The lesson lacks the understanding of believers being transferred out of the domain of darkness into a new kingdom of the Beloved Son.
- The lesson focusses on the Spirit’s “power” as an antidote to evil powers…like opposing external forces.
This week’s lesson manages to obscure the power of Paul’s description of God’s plan and the church’s role in God’s creation. The author analyzes the “power God makes available to [believers] in Christ this way:
This divine might is not measured in horse-power, or magic, but is seen in four cosmos-shifting, salvation-history events: (1) the resurrection of Jesus; (2) His exaltation at the throne of God; (3) all things being placed in subservience to Christ; and (4) Christ being given to the church as its Head (Eph. 1:19–23).
In context, while Paul is discussing realities that are not fully explainable to us mortals, the author of the lesson manages to diminish them into less than Paul tells us they are.
The foundational reason these “events” are significant in Ephesians is not because they represent power available to us, as the lesson attempts to frame it, but because they are the demonstrations of God’s sovereignty over all creation and even over evil. God’s sovereignty and Christ’s finished work of atonement in His death, burial, and resurrection are the sources of our salvation, not the sources of our own power that we can access through some mystical form of faith.
As is typical of Adventism, the lesson never explains how this “immensity of the power of God” becomes accessible to to us in Christ. It says that they are, but it always distills down to the idea that by acting on the idea that these are available, they will be able to pray for help and strengthen their own willpower and efforts and reap accomplishments.
This is not the gospel truth!
Born Dead
The Bible teaches that we are literally born dead in sin—and ironically this fact is spelled out in this very book, Ephesians, in chapter 2:1–3:
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest (Eph 2:1-3).
Since Adventism does not teach natural depravity, they cannot deal with the implications of this passage. Further, since Adventism does not teach that we have both material and immaterial parts to ourselves, they cannot teach the reality of literal spiritual death that requires we be literally born again.
When we take the Bible seriously, however, and see that our new birth coincides with God’s literally transferring us from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Col. 1:13), we realize that we are not just people with new ideas and convictions living in the same sinful world with God-impulses inspiring us to good deeds and good ideas and extra power.
The lesson spends significant time discussing the temptation to run after the deceptive powers of evil spirits and false gods, and it points out the necessity of distinguishing between evil powers and God’s power.
To be sure, Ephesians spends time on discussing our need to pray and to understand that we are not, as believers, fighting “flesh and blood” but spiritual powers and authorities. Yet this reality look completely different when we realize that we are born of God, that God Himself indwells us, and we are already transferred into a different kingdom with the seal of the Holy Spirit setting us apart, a visible sign to evil powers that we belong to God.
If we are born again, evil spirits cannot overtake us. To be sure, we can be deceived by false teaching and deceptive ploys, but when we are indwell by God, we are kept by the Father and the Son (Jn. 10:28), and His protection is already ours. Romans 8 makes this fact clear!
Holy Spirit Like Electricity
One of the telling quotes in the lesson that reveals Adventism’s unbiblical view of the Holy Spirit comes out of EGW’s Acts of the Apostles. Of course, Adventists would deny that this quote is unbiblical and would rationalize what Ellen REALLY meant when she wrote it.
Arguments, however, cannot undo the fact that EGW wrote about the Holy Spirit in a way that echoes the founding Adventists belief that the Holy Spirit is not a person. In Friday’s lesson we read this quote:
“When Christ passed within the heavenly gates, He was enthroned amidst the adoration of the angels. As soon as this ceremony was completed, the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples in rich currents, and Christ was indeed glorified, even with the glory which He had with the Father from all eternity. The Pentecostal outpouring was Heaven’s communication that the Redeemer’s inauguration was accomplished. According to His promise He had sent the Holy Spirit from heaven to His followers as a token that He had, as priest and king, received all authority in heaven and on earth, and was the Anointed One over His people.”—The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 38, 39.
Only electricity, or other immaterial power, runs in “currents”. For Ellen to have described Pentecost in this way is to reveal that she understood the Holy Spirit to be “power”, not a full Person who gave ALL of God to believers in a miraculous way that equipped them for the service He created for them.
Furthermore, Pentecost was not merely a signal that Jesus completed His ascension and enthronement and exaltation. It was literally the equipping of the new body, the church, comprised of people who believed in God and who were born of God, to function as Christ’s body on earth.
The metaphor of marriage representing Christ and the church found in Ephesians 5 is not just a picture; it is a description of HOW the body works. We are literally His body because we are intimately and truly, not just figuratively, connected to Him by His own indwelling us.
Pentecost was NOT the people having the Holy Spirit descend on them in “rich currents”. A PERSON came and indwell them permanently!
The fact that this particular quote occurs in this lesson reveals that Adventism does not understand the role of the Holy Spirit in believers, nor does it understand the gospel. It certainly does not understand the new birth!
This lesson eviscerates the power of Ephesians and the work of Jesus in dying for His people and creating His body, the church. This lesson also reveals that Adventism doesn’t know the true meaning of “belief” or of being made alive.
To Adventists, the new birth involves a change of mind and an embracing of “truth”—the doctrines of Adventism. Biblically, however, the new birth is literally passing from death to life when we believe (Jn. 5:24).
In spite of lofty-sounding (but confusing) language, this lesson does not explain or understand the true power of the exalted Christ. Once again, our Lord Jesus is diminished, and the people’s personal accessing of power is the central theme. †
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