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 5: “Horizontal Atonement: The Cross and the Church”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- Although the author says the cross is the means of Christ’s uniting Jews and gentiles, he never explains HOW.
- The author denies that Ephesians 2:14–16 describes the fulfillment and removal of the law and denies that the law was the barrier separating Jews and gentiles.
This lesson erases the reality of what Jesus did on the cross and holds up the Law as a continuing necessity for the church. Readers of the lesson will never understand what Jesus’ death actually did, and they will also fail to understand that Jesus’ death actually broke down and removed the actual barrier of the Law.
I will copy below the week’s passage, Ephesians 2:11–22. Then I will outline what Paul is actually saying here. The lesson goes to great lengths to insist that Paul is not saying Jesus abolished the law in His flesh.
Here is the passage:
Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision,” which is performed in the flesh by human hands– remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.
AND HE CAME AND PREACHED PEACE TO YOU WHO WERE FAR AWAY, AND PEACE TO THOSE WHO WERE NEAR; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit (Eph 2:11-22).
First, Paul reminds his gentile readers that before they knew Jesus, there were excluded from the “commonwealth of Israel” and from the covenants of promise God had made with Israel and their fathers. Without God’s promises and provision, they were “without hope and without God in the world.”
Before Jesus came, when gentiles wanted to serve the true God, they had to become part of the Israelites community, becoming circumcised and submitting to the Mosaic covenant and to the law God gave Israel at Sinai.
The law was what contained the shadows of Christ and atonement through the tabernacle, the rituals and sacrifices, and the means of foreshadowing the perfect atonement that God would bring through the coming Messiah.
Gentiles were excluded from these promises because they were not under the law that dictated the shadows of atonement. Only if they converted to Judaism could they have access to the law and to the rituals of cleansing and atonement.
Now, Paul says, “in Christ Jesus” gentiles, who were “formerly” far off “have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” In other words, gentiles could now come directly to God by trusting in Jesus’ shed blood which propitiated for sin (Roman 3:26). Jesus’ death paid IN FULL the price God demanded for human sin, and while He hung on the cross, He experienced God’s wrath against sin.
Now gentiles do not have to become Jews to experience God’s promises. When Jesus hung on that cross, He fulfilled ALL the shadows of the law, including the moral requirements of the commandments.
Now gentiles do not have to become Jews to experience God’s promises. When Jesus hung on that cross, He fulfilled ALL the shadows of the law, including the moral requirements of the commandments. Every ritual and uniquely Jewish practice was fulfilled by Jesus in the flesh. Jesus the living Word, or Torah, hung on the cross and literally became the reality the law foreshadowed.
He literally took human sin imputed to Him and paid for it, and when He fulfilled the law, the law with its requirements and rituals became obsolete. (Hebrews explains this fact as well.)
In His flesh Jesus removed the wall of division that kept Jews and gentiles apart. Jesus BECAME the fulfillment of the law, and in Himself He made peace between humanity and God.
The lesson attempts to say that Jesus reconciled the gentiles and the Jews, but that is not what the Ephesians passage says. Rather, Paul says that “in Himself He might make the two into one new man, [thus] establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.”
The reconciliation of Jews and gentiles is a secondary accomplishment that is the consequence of His reconciling all who believe in Him to God! By becoming sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21) and propitiating for our sin, Jesus reconciled everyone who trusts Him to God by removing the curse of sin from each believer.
When we believe, we are born again. Once again, the lesson misses this important fact: we are born literally, not metaphorically, dead in sin. Our immaterial spirits are dead, separated from God, and when we believe, we are literally made alive and united with God IN CHRIST. When either a Jew or a gentile believes in Jesus and His finished work, we are placed IN Christ. When we are in Christ, we are thus reconciled to each other as well because we are all made alive by the literal life of Jesus.
Jesus’ cross wasn’t a figurative means of dealing with ephemeral sin. It wasn’t something that declared we are no longer separated from God and each other. Rather, it literally changed reality and all of time.
When Jesus died, He paid the full price of the curse of the law, and the law has no more power. It was a shadow of the good things to come (Hebrews 10:1) in Jesus. Now we have the reality, Jesus Himself. If we hold onto the law when we have Jesus, it’s equivalent to a traveler clinging to a sign post saying “Yosemite: 100 miles ahead” instead of actually going to Yosemite and wading in the ice-cold water and experiencing the shade of the ancient trees and gazing at the grandeur of Half Dome. The sign post is a promise of the reality just as the law was a sign post of the reality that would come in Jesus.
When people hold onto the law instead of FULLY trusting Jesus, they lose the joy and freedom and reality of their new life in Christ—and this incudes their holding to the Sabbath. Sabbath was a shadow of Christ; the reality is found IN HIM (Col. 2:16, 17).
Paul means what he says: Jesus Himself IS our peace, “who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall.”
He didn’t arbitrarily say that both groups were one; He literally makes them one in Himself when they believe in Him. It’s not just a matter of people’s accepting the historical fact of Jesus; it’s a matter of recognizing they are sinners and trusting Jesus’ shed blood as the payment for their sin.
When Jew or gentile trusts Jesus, he or she is made alive in Christ and adopted by the Father. They become brothers and sisters in Jesus, and they are reconciled to each other through the work of Jesus’ blood.
The lesson utterly misses this central fact. It doesn’t deal with he efficacy of Jesus’ blood to forgive and pay for sin, and it doesn’t deal with the new birth that is the THING that makes us alive and places us in Christ.
The gospel is missing from this lesson. Instead the author reinstates the law as the core of the “church’s” belief and practice.
Yet this passage states that Jesus’ cross abolished the law of commandments and thus made gentiles and Jews one new man in Him.
Believers are a new “race”, in a sense. They are spiritually alive with the life of Jesus, passed out of death into life and transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Col 1:13)!
This lesson eviscerates the gospel out of one of the most powerful and profound passages of the New Testament.†
For further information, listen to Former Adventist Podcast as Nikki and Colleen talk through Ephesians 2 during December of 2020 and January of 2021. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/former-adventist/id1482887969
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