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 4: “How God Rescues Us”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- While the lesson attempts to deal with Ephesians 2:1–3, it fails to explain reality because of the underlying assumption that man is a physical body plus breath.
- Then Teachers comments state that humans “entered a condition called dead in trespasses and sins” after they left Eden.
- The Teachers Comments devotes a full page to Ellen White’s commentary to explain “dead in sin”
This week’s lesson is almost right—and yet its confusion fails to explain humanity’s natural state and the reality of being born again. For example, in Sunday’s lesson the author states:
Since Paul writes to living people, he refers to them as once “dead” in a metaphorical sense (compare Eph. 5:14). However, their plight was very real and dire since they were once separated from God, the Source of life (compare Col. 2:13, Rom. 5:17, Rom. 6:23).
This quotation demonstrates Adventism’s inability to deal literally with the Bible’s declaration that we are “dead in sin”. They have to make it “metaphorical” because their understanding of human nature is that we are merely physical bodies that breathe. Adventism disbelieves that we literally have immaterial spirits that separate from our bodies at death.
Because Adventism does not believe we literally have immaterial spirits, they have to make “spiritual death” a metaphor. They cannot understand that Adam and Eve actually DID die the very day they ate the fruit. They did not merely “begin to die”; they literally died spiritually. They were separated from the life of God, and they died spiritually.
This spiritual death is what Adam bequeathed to the human race. Paul explains,
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive (1Co 15:22).
We are literally, not metaphorically, born spiritually dead. We are born, as Paul states in Romans 3, unable to seek, to please, or to understand God (Rom. 3:9–18). The lesson refers several times to the danger of falling into a belief in “predestination”, insisting that we do have some ability to accept God when He reveals Himself to us.
The problem with this lesson’s attempts to explain these profound passages from Ephesians without a biblical understanding of the nature of humanity is that they attempt to make the mystery of God’s election and predestination (expounded in Ephesians 1) into a “puzzle” they can solve by carefully reframing the biblical passages according to their own view of man.
In fact, God does predestine and elect, yet we are also responsible for our own sin and our own response to the Lord Jesus and His gospel. They mystery cannot be resolved by human logic. We have to accept what the Bible says even though we can’t explain it.
The lesson reveals its inner compromise in the Teachers Comments. In an attempt to make the problem of our natural condition of being “dead in sin” understandable to people who do not believe we have immaterial spirits that must be made alive, the writers devote essentially a full page to quotations from Ellen White in an attempt to explain it. Her quotes, though, are wordy and vague, and they give no clarity. After all, EGW taught that we do not have immaterial spirits, and she will only complicate our understanding.
It is telling that they cannot directly deal with the actual words of Scripture and take them at face value. In fact, after the paragraphs devoted to EGW quotes, the writer says,
First, “dead in trespasses and sins” points to a literal death. Sin is essentially antithetical to God and life. To be in sin is to negate God and life. Paul emphasizes that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Being in sin and remaining in sin leads to death (see also 1 John 5:16)—literal death—a complete annihilation of the totality of the human being. Being in sin is being condemned to death; it is tantamount to being “dead.” This death does not refer only to the body; the human being who participates, and chooses to remain, in sin will be dead in his or her entirety, in all aspects, without any surviving elements.
In the above quotation we see that the author insists that “dead in sin” is only a pointer—a figurative way of referring to the idea that people will eventually be annihilated if they persist in sin. They refuse to acknowledge “dead in sin” as literal death. To them, “death” is physical.
We see, therefore, the double heresy of refusing to acknowledge original sin—depravity—which can only be reversed by belief in the Lord Jesus, and we see a reiteration of the Adventist heresy of annihilation.
For the writer to say that humans “entered a condition” called “dead in sin” after they left Eden is to refuse to admit what the Bible clearly says: Adam and Eve literally, spiritually died the very day they ate the fruit. This literal death, this separation from the life of God, is our natural condition.
In fact, our natural condition condemns us not just to an eventual sentence from God, but it condemns us from the moment of our conception. We are under condemnation by nature, and until we believe, we are condemned. When we believe, we literally pass from death to life and no longer are condemned (John 3:18; 5:24).
This lesson is deeply frustrating. On the surface, it appears to deal with the actual words of Ephesians 2 :1–3, but if one reads carefully, including the great controversy worldview described in the Teachers Comments, we see that there is nothing new here. This lesson does not teach that we are literally dead in sin, that this death is our legacy from Adam and Eve who died IN THE GARDEN the very day they sinned. This lesson teaches annihilation and essentially mocks the idea of predestination without dealing with the Bible’s actual words. It makes metaphors out of the spiritual truths revealed in this amazing book of Ephesians.
I urge readers to ask the Lord to help you read the Scriptures using normal rules of grammar and vocabulary, and ask Him to teach you what is real and true. Each one of us is born condemned, literally, and under the curse of sin: spiritually dead. Only in Christ do we find a reversal of our natural condition. Only in Christ do we literally, at the moment we believe, pass from death to life. †
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