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 6: “The Mystery of the Gospel”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- Although titled “The Mystery of the Gospel”, the gospel is never defined nor explained.
- The lesson misses the significance of the “mystery” Paul was appointed to explain.
- The Teachers Notes spend several pages explaining the Adventist view that Israel and the church have a continuity and are not distinct bodies with different commissions.
This week’s lesson again eviscerates the power of the gospel and the depth of what Paul was commissioned to explain to everyone. Although a cursory nod is given to Ephesians 3:9, the power of it is missing. Here is the text:
To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things (Eph. 3:8-9).
Paul is declaring here that God gave him the grace of being the one who was to explain the mystery of how the new covenant “works”. His job was to reveal the administration—the functioning—of the new covenant. In fact, in his epistles, he has done exactly that, but Adventism misses the details and significance of the new covenant. In fact, it twists the words of Scripture to make their religion established firmly in the law of the old covenant while trying to say that the law is eternal and applies to the new covenant.
It is significant that Hebrews 7, however, clearly reveals that the old and the new covenants are based on completely different priesthoods and thus on completely different laws. This fact is suppressed, and the lesson neutralizes the power of Paul’s words. Here is what Hebrews 7:11, 12 says:
Now if perfection was through the Levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it the people received the Law), what further need [was there] for another priest to arise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be designated according to the order of Aaron? For when the priesthood is changed, of necessity there takes place a change of law also. (Heb 7:11-12).
In Ephesians Paul makes much of the effects of believing in Jesus and the reality of the church. Adventism cannot explore this subject in any detail because, at the bottom level, it denies the existence of the human spirit that is literally born dead in sin and is by nature the cause of our being children of wrath (Eph 3:9). In Christ, however we become part of the one new man Jesus created with His own resurrection life when we believe. In Him we lose our primary identities as Jews or gentiles, slaves or free, male or female, and we become part of the body of Christ, made alive by the life of Jesus and eternally sealed with the indwelling Holy Spirit.
In the Teachers Comments, furthermore, the quarterly spends a great deal of time attempting to make the point that Paul sees a “continuity” between Israel and the church. Adventism tries hard to make the church be the next step in the development of God’s people, a bit like one generation comes out of the past and carries on genetic legacies from one’s forebears while showing individual traits as well.
Yet this idea does not describe the church and Israel. Paul is adamant that the church is something new. In Him each of us is a NEW creation (2 Cor 5:17). We have new potential, new power, a new identity as God’s own sons and daughters. We have a new position: In Christ.
Paul does not try to make the church a continuum out of Israel. He is clear that the church is NEW, that the one NEW man created in Christ through faith in His shed blood and finished atonement, is a new work of God on earth with a new assignment.
By trying to make the church continuous with Israel, Adventism protects EGWs position that Israel is no longer God’s chosen people. Yet Romans 9 through 11 clearly identify Israel as God’s chosen people and states that God’s promises and calling are irrevocable.
Further, the Teachers Comments state that Paul “imagines believers being filled ‘with all the fullness of God’”. This statement denies Paul’s words that believers ARE (not merely are imagined to be) filled with all the fulness of God. For Adventism to admit that believers are literally sealed and filled with all the fulness of God would destroy their theology. It would render their teaching that people must strive and work toward obedience and law-keeping to be useless. It would expose the fact that Adventism doesn’t believe or understand the reality that humans have immaterial spirits that are born dead, that must be made alive, and that are the place where the Holy Spirit resides in us.
This lesson actually denies the powerful truths of Ephesians.
We the true, born-again believers in Jesus, are committed to preach the gospel wherever we go. We are given God’s power through His Spirit to make clear the mystery of the new birth and our adoption by God when we trust in the Son.
The lesson cannot talk about the biblical reality of the church because Adventism does not teach the true gospel. Adventism is not part of the church; it is not part of the “one new man” created in Christ. Instead, Adventism is a deception. It pretends to be a church, but it does not have the right gospel, the right Jesus, nor born again members unless they find Jesus IN SPITE of Adventism.
Adventism teaches that the terms of the old covenant continue for the church. It requires the keeping of a day and the practice of the levitical food laws, and in spite of how they frame these requirements, they are salvational for Adventists.
I appeal to the reader to go to beginning of Ephesians, get a notebook, and begin to copy this epistle into that notebook, asking the Lord to teach you what He knows He wants you to learn.
This lesson is confusing and offers no true biblical insight. God’s word, however, is alive. It will change you when you reads it.
Trust Jesus and take His word seriously. Every word can be trusted. †
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