Lesson 3: “Images from Marriage”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine
Central problem with this lesson:
Adventism has a defective view of the church and thus misapplies marriage as a metaphor of human-directed relationships with God rather than of Christ’s intimacy with His Bride.
Seventh-day Adventism defines itself in its name as a religion committed to two doctrines: the supposed sacredness of the seventh-day Sabbath and the second coming of Christ. Driven by the great controversy scenario bequeathed to the organization by Ellen White’s Great Controversy Vision of 1858, the central practice of Adventists is keeping the seventh day holy. This mandate to honor the seventh day as an eternally sacred, recurring block of time translates into Sabbath-observance being the practice that will mark those who are prepared to go to heaven when Jesus returns.
Lest you think I’m exaggerating, here is one of many statements by Ellen White:
The Sabbath will be the great test of loyalty, for it is the point of truth especially controverted. When the final test shall be brought to bear upon men, then the line of distinction will be drawn between those who serve God and those who serve Him not. While the observance of the false sabbath in compliance with the law of the state, contrary to the fourth commandment, will be an avowal of allegiance to a power that is in opposition to God, the keeping of the true Sabbath, in obedience to God’s law, is an evidence of loyalty to the Creator. While one class, by accepting the sign of submission to earthly powers, receive the mark of the beast, the other choosing the token of allegiance to divine authority, receive the seal of God.—The Great Controversy, p. 605
Because of Adventism’s commitment to the interpretations of Ellen White and her great controversy paradigm, the religion has gone to great lengths to support the eternal sacredness of the seventh-day by teaching that Sabbath was given at creation. Thus this lesson, which purports to teach how marriage provides images of God’s relationships with His people, ties marriage to the Sabbath as evidence of God’s desire for intimacy with humans. Here is how Boonstra establishes this pairing in Sunday’s lesson:
Perhaps, given the importance that Scripture assigns to marriage, it is not a coincidence that the institution has always been under relentless attack. Along with the Sabbath, it is one of the two gifts bestowed on us in Eden, and both were intended to demonstrate God’s desire for an intimate relationship with His creation.
Marriage, the intimate pairing of two imperfect people, will always give cause for tension. A marriage between the church and Christ is the pairing of a perfect Savior with a very imperfect bride. Nevertheless, we can learn about God’s love from what a good marriage offers.
Here are three principles for marriage. First, forgive your spouse, however undeserving, just as Christ forgives us, however undeserving. Second, accept your spouse, faults and all, just as Christ accepts us, faults and all. Third, just as Christ put us before Himself, put your spouse before yourself. How could all three of these gospel-based principles help us not only to understand how God relates to us but also to help any marriage?
First, the Sabbath was not a “creation ordinance”. There is no mention of Sabbath prior to Exodus 16 and the giving of the manna to the nation of Israel, and the Sabbath became, one month later, the sign of the Mosaic covenant God made with the nation Israel as first recorded in Exodus 20. Yet by using this creation argument, Adventism asserts that Sabbath-sacredness is universal for all mankind, just as marriage is.
In other words, tying marriage to the Sabbath with “creation ties” is illegitimate. Yet Adventism uses this formula to interpret the Bible’s use of marriage to describe Christ’s relationship with His bride, the church. Because of Adventism’s assumption that God gave the Sabbath and marriage as His only creation legacies to humanity, they define Christ’s bride as the people who keep the seventh-day Sabbath.
This assumption leads to misusing the biblical picture of marriage to describe Christ’s sovereign loyal love for His church.
Spiritual Pride and Adultery
In Monday’s lesson the author uses Ezekiel’s vivid picture in chapter 16 of God describing Israel as an abandoned baby whom He rescued, blessed, and eventually married. He uses the picture of washing and anointing her, clothing her with fine linens, silk, and jewelry, and advancing her to royalty before she became legendary among the nations for her beauty—all because He had set His majesty on her. Yet she trusted in her beauty and “played the harlot”. The lesson ends with these questions:
What are the dangers of us trusting in our “own beauty”? That is, how might we think that there is anything in and of ourselves that gives us merit with God or makes us deserving of His love? How can we always guard against spiritual pride?
In the context of this Sabbath School lesson, the question is specifically Adventist. Adventists are taught to view themselves as God’s remnant church of Bible prophecy, the church with the most truth, the church “closest to the Bible”. Because they keep the seventh-day Sabbath and have the “sanctuary doctrine” of the investigative judgment and their unique end-times scenario of Sabbath-keepers being hunted and killed during the coming Sunday law, and of those worshiping on Sunday receiving the “mark of the beast”—because Adventists have these unique doctrines that define their view of the Bible and even of reality, they believe they are God’s true church. They believe they are God’s true “Israel”, and they are filled with spiritual pride in having the “Sabbath truth” and their spirit of prophecy revelations.
These details of doctrine and special knowledge are the things that cause Adventists to believe they have special “merit” if they observe these requirements. These questions are asking Adventists to guard against “spiritual pride” even though they know they have the special doctrines God supposedly expects of His people. There’s never an acknowledgment of Adventism’s exceptionalism without concurrent guilting for feeling pride.
The underlying idea that Seventh-day Adventism IS “the church” colors the way the readers will automatically interpret the illustrations and metaphors used to build the idea that “marriage” provides a symbol for how Adventists should relate to God.
For example, Tuesday’s lesson camps on the story of Hosea being told by God to marry a harlot—an actual prostitute—and to continue to go find her when she would leave the prophet and find her past lovers. The story of Hosea is a picture of God’s persistent, loyal love for His apostatizing nation Israel.
After introducing the story of Hosea, the lesson asks:
What lessons can the Christian church learn from the story of Hosea? In what ways has the church repeated the sins of the Old Testament?
The author then uses the example of the problem of Arianism creeping into the church in the early centuries and how the church intervened to root out the heresy of a created Christ. The day’s lesson ends with this question:
What are the ways today that any church, even our own, can be dallying with spiritual fornication?
These questions and arguments reveal that Adventism does not understand the true definition of “the church”. To further establish this fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the bride of Christ, Wednesday’s lesson uses classic Adventist reasoning to explain why Abraham did not allow his servant Eleazer to find a Canaanite wife for his son Isaac. These paragraphs are from the center of Wednesday’s study:
However exclusivist his admonition could seem, the issue for Abraham was spiritual, not ethnic; it was theological, not national. Abraham knew very well the moral degeneracy of Canaanite religious practices, not to mention their worship of false gods, and he knew how easy it would be for his son to fall into these practices were he to marry from among them.
Indeed, the story of so much of ancient Israel, and even of the Christian church through the centuries, has been one in which God’s people—who should have been witnessing to the world—get caught up instead in the world and in its false teachings and religious beliefs. Perhaps the greatest example of this sad reality has been the introduction of Sunday, the pagan day of the sun, in place of the biblical seventh-day Sabbath, a reality that will play a prominent role in the last days.
And there you see it: Adventism’s complete lack of understanding of what the Church really is! Further, the lesson reflects Adventism’s understanding that whatever the Old Testament patriarchs did is a moral example for us to follow.
Patriarchs are not moral examples for us
First, the heroes of the faith in Scripture are not primarily our moral examples. Most of the great people of the past were deeply flawed men and women who behaved very badly much of the time. Their stories are not for us to see them as examples but for us to see how God faithfully intervened and taught them to trust Him and to believe His word. God saved and preserved those people; their lives were not our examples of godliness but were the platforms on which God’s righteous faithfulness was displayed. We were taught to see their stories exactly inside-out and upside-down.
Second, regarding Abraham’s instruction not to find a Canaanite wife for Isaac we have to understand that none of the wives of the patriarchs were necessarily believers at first. Their religion wasn’t the primary reason for either the permission or the prohibition of marriage. Rather God was building His covenant people through Abraham and his descendants, and the wives of the patriarchs came from the same family that Abraham came from. They were literally genetically related by God’s design.
One of the most evident reasons for this restriction was that God had literally promised Abraham that his descendants would inherit the land of the Canaanites. If the patriarchs had married Canaanite women, they would have immediately taken on competing claims to the land. A Canaanite wife would have brought family claims on the land of Canaan to the offspring of the patriarchs, and there could have been internal disputes when God eventually brought the nation of Israel into Canaan. The Canaanites would have had reason to attempt to make deals with the Israelites so that they would retain possession of their families land—but God had decreed that the Canaanites would be destroyed and Israel would take the land.
Third, in the quote above we see the inevitable Adventist argument: that the church has embraced, in an ultimate act of supposed spiritual adultery, the “pagan day of the sun, in place of the biblical seventh-day Sabbath, a reality that will play a prominent role in the last days.”
This is where Adventist arguments almost always go. The church has apostatized and embraced Sunday-sacredness, and the Adventists are clearly the only church keeping God’s law and commandments and seriously preparing for the second coming.
Here, in this typical Adventist reasoning, we see that Adventism does not understand the definition of “the church”. Further, without a correct understanding of the church, we cannot properly understand the Bible’s teaching that marriage is a picture of Christ and His bride, the church.
What is the church?
In order to understand what the church is, we have to understand the nature of man. Importantly, the Bible reveals that humans are NOT naturally “good”. We are all born condemned, dead in trespasses and sins:
And you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.—Ephesians 2:1–3 LSB
Before we can see the church, we have to see that every single human born on earth (except the Lord Jesus) is born dead in sin. Importantly, this spiritual death is not figurative or metaphorical. It is literal, and it is spiritual—meaning our immaterial spirits, our identities, are born dead in sin, disconnected from life and relationship with God.
Furthermore, we are born under the influence of the “spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience”, the “ruler of the power of the air”. We are unable to know, to seek, or to please God. We are dead, citizens of the domain of darkness (Colossians 1:13) and under condemnation and the wrath of God (John 3:18, 36).
The next verses of Ephesians 2 explain how we are rescued from our natural state of death. Paul explains it this way:
But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly [places] in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, [it is] the gift of God; not of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.—Ephesians 2:4–10 LSB
God Himself intervenes in our spiritual death by revealing Himself and showing us that we are helpless and need a Savior. He literally makes our dead spirits alive and places us IN CHRIST. By His grace He saves us through faith when He gives us the ability to believe that He has died for our sin, that He was buried, and that He rose from death on the third day according to Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3, 4). He gives us life through the finished work of Christ. We become His exhibit A to the universe of His grace and kindness toward us expressed in Jesus. Even more, He gives us His work to do—work which He prepares in advance for us to do!
Even more than bringing our spirits to life, He literally indwells us. Paul explains our being indwelled and sealed this way:
In Him, you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation–having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, unto the redemption of [God’s own] possession, to the praise of His glory.—Ephesians 1:13, 14 LSB
When we hear the gospel of our salvation—the work of Christ in completely atoning for our sin on the cross and breaking our curse of death by His resurrection—He seals us in Him by placing His Spirit in us. We become filled with God Himself—and in this way we become part of His true church!
There is no member of the body of Christ who has not placed his or her full trust and belief in the Lord Jesus and His blood shed on the cross for us. No one who has not understood that he is helpless to please God and has trusted his sin and fear and hopelessness to Him is part of the church.
Only those who have believed and been sealed with the Spirit
The bride of Christ consists of all those who have entrusted themselves to the Lord Jesus, have believed in His finished atonement for their sin, and has been filled with the Holy Spirit of promise who teaches our newly-alive spirits to call God our Father!
This phenomenon of believers becoming part of the church was first experienced on the Day of Pentecost described in Acts 1, when Jesus’ disciples were praying and waiting in an upper room after Jesus’s ascension, and the Holy Spirit came on them, filling each one with Himself. That day the apostles preached in Jerusalem, and 3,000 Jews came to faith and were filled with the Holy Spirit and were baptized (see Acts 2).
In acts 8 we read of the second “phase” of Pentecost, when the Samaritans first received the Holy Spirit and were baptized, and in Acts 10 we read of the first group of gentiles—the household of Cornelius the Roman centurion—who believed the gospel and received the Holy Spirit.
The church is not an organization of people claiming to believe in Jesus and coalescing around certain practices and traditions. Even more significant, the church is not an extension of Israel. It is not a group of people who carry along the Ten Commandments and commit themselves to keep them.
The church gathers around the risen Christ, the Lord Jesus whose blood has inaugurated a new covenant, a new and living way to the Father.
The church consists of all who have places their faith in the finished work of Jesus and have been born again. When we are born again, we answer to God Himself. His Spirit in us teaches us the truth about Jesus and teaches us to trust and apply His word to our lives. He makes Scripture come alive, and we no longer focus on keeping requirements. Now we live by the Spirit, literally committing every moment of life to Him and learning to lean on Him and trust His word when we encounter the hardships of life.
Adventism is not the church
Adventism is not part of the church. Adventism has organized itself around a false definition of humanity, of the Trinity, of the Lord Jesus, and of what God expects of us. Adventism is committed to keeping the Ten Commandments, especially the seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment.
Marriage is a symbol of Christ and His bride, those who have believed the gospel and have been filled with the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus is intimately related to the church as a husband is to his bride: He literally lives IN each person who is alive in Him. Jesus is the Head of the church, and the church is organically connected to Him.
Marriage is not a symbol that describes Christ and Adventism became Adventism has a different Jesus who did not complete the atonement at the cross. Adventism has different members: they do not know they are dead and need life. Adventism has a different gospel: one that demands its members keep the Sabbath if they want to be saved.
The church literally KNOWS Jesus. He indwells them by Him Spirit, and they are sealed and eternally secure, alive forever with their Savior and adopted by the Father.
This Sabbath School lesson once again is based upon an unbiblical worldview that obscures reality and soothes Adventists into believing they are specially qualified to be favored by God. Yet they do not know Him, in general.
Adventists need to know the trust gospel and to know who they really are.
If you have never understood that you are helpless to qualify for salvation and that Jesus has already completed every detail needed for your eternal security, you need to face the facts now.
You were born dead in sin. You need to be rescued. You need to let go of your belief that your law-keeping is a requirement for your salvation. You need to know that the Lord Jesus became sin for you, hung on the cross and endured God’s wrath for your sin, and that He died according to Scripture and was buried. Then, on the third day, He rose and shattered your curse of death because His blood was sufficient!
Face yourself today. Admit that you need to be rescued, and the Lord Jesus is your substitute. Trust and believe today—and you will be sealed by the Holy Spirit and be placed into the body of Christ where you will live forever as part of His beloved bride. Trust Him today—and live! †
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.
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