Lesson 6: “Understanding Sacrifice”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine
Central Problem with this Lesson:
The depth and completion of Jesus’ atonement is missed because the great controversy equates the Law with God and makes Jesus’ death a satisfaction of the Law, not a propitiation to satisfy God.
Once again the Sabbath School lesson cannot teach the truth about Jesus and His death because the “unseen” foundation of the great controversy worldview changes the nature of reality and the meanings of the words of Scripture. Saturday’s lesson introduces the idea of Jesus’ sacrifice in the usual way: it uses emotional adjectives and makes assumptions that sound both pious and smart—yet they never say that Jesus became sin for us nor that His death fully atoned for human sin nor that when we believe, we are credited with Jesus’ personal righteousness!
Author Shawn Boonstra develops the typical Adventist picture that what Jesus did was incredibly painful, an ultimate self-sacrifice that leaves us feeling guilty and obligated. After all, if He did such a horrible sacrifice for us, we owe Him everything—and obedience to the law is a small price to pay for such a death. Saturday’s lesson introduces the week with these words:
This week we will look at some of the themes of sacrifice that inform our understanding of Jesus, the slain Lamb, the clear protagonist of the throne room scene. He is accepted as worthy, where no one else is, and His unique worthiness speaks volumes about what the Lord was doing through the sacrificial system. It reveals Him as a God of infinite love who made the ultimate sacrifice, an act that we, and the other intelligences in the universe, will marvel at for eternity.
Besides noting that this quote assumes the great controversy idea that there are multiple “intelligences” in the universe who are watching us to see if God or Satan is telling the truth and that Jesus will be marveled at through all eternity, I have one overriding reaction to this paragraph: what does it really mean?
How does the Lord who is the Lamb that was slain become reduced to merely the “protagonist” of the throne room in Revelation 4 and 5? How does His worthiness “speak volumes” about the purpose of the sacrificial system?
Once again, even this introductory paragraph is upside-down: the author manages to make the person of Christ the explanation of the sacrifices in the Bible instead of the sacrifices prefiguring the worship of the Lamb who alone is worthy to open the title deed of the earth. In other words, the direction of our attention is drawn backwards to the law and to the animal sacrifices the law demanded instead of to the Lord Jesus.
The lesson shows us a pitiable and submissive Jesus designed to elicit guilt and obligation instead of revealing the almighty God who took responsibility for us, took our sin, took the Father’s wrath, and made the law obsolete by fulfilling the death sentence it demanded.
Getting Cain Wrong
The author first discusses the contrast between Cain and Abel’s sacrifices and God’s rejection of Cain’s and His acceptance of Abel’s. First he editorializes that Cain, like apostate Israel and the godless nations, are animated by “the spirit of self-sufficiency”. He describes Cain as giving a sacrifice just to “go through the motions” and assumes that Cain viewed God “as an inconvenience” who stood in his way of living as he pleased.
The author further makes the point that Cain did not offer an animal sacrifice and would have had to humble himself and get Abel to help him obtain an animal because Cain cultivated the ground while Abel farmed animals.
Significantly, the discussion about Cain’s unacceptable sacrifice never deals with God’s telling Cain that sin was crouching, waiting to devour him, and he must overcome it. Instead the author made the entire situation a matter of Cain’s not offering a blood sacrifice.
The Genesis account never states that Cain was supposed to bring an animal. In fact, the issue of his sacrifice being unacceptable seemed unrelated to the fact that he brought vegetables. The account, however, does use different kinds of words to describe the nature of the brothers’ sacrifices. Genesis 4:3 says that Cain “brought an offering to Yahweh of the fruit of the ground.”
Abel, on the other hand, “brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.”
In other words, Abel brought the first and the best of what he raised. Cain merely brought “an offering…of the fruit of the ground.”
Furthermore, when God rejected Cain’s offering, he became livid at Abel. God directly intervened with Cain and said,
“If you do well, will not [your countenance] be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is lying at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”—Genesis 4:7 LSB
Cain ignored God’s warning, and he allowed his anger and his own sin to overcome him—and he killed Abel. The issue wasn’t the actual sacrifice, according to the biblical account; the issue was Cain’s internal attitude and his refusal to refuse to surrender to the evil desire of his rage and jealousy.
The lesson never mentions this exchange between God and Cain. Even in this account of the first murder, sin is described as the fruit of an unbelieving and rebellious heart. Cain’s sacrifice apparently was unaccepted because of his internal rebellion while Abel’s came from belief and trust in God.
Yet the lesson cannot actually deal with the biblical account because it must make this sacrifice about the law. The quotation from Patriarchs and Prophets says,
“He [Abel] brought the slain victim, the sacrificed life, thus acknowledging the claims of the law that had been transgressed. Through the shed blood he looked to the future sacrifice, Christ dying on the cross of Calvary—Ellen White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 72.
The law had not been given yet; God had directly spoken to Cain, and Cain refused to believe and obey. Abel, on the other hand, was honoring God. Abel’s sacrifice and Cain’s sin had nothing at all to do with the law. Cain sinned directly against God, and Abel died at the hands of his rebellious, unbelieving brother.
Sin and Sacrifice are Tied to Law
The lesson cannot explain sacrifice in a biblical way because Adventism denies the true nature of sin and the nature of sacrifice.
Friday’s lesson drives home this law-based paradigm that warps the nature of sin and of sacrifice. It opens with these two sentences that seem almost innocuous at first——but they actually reveal Adventism’s physicalist worldview:
The Scriptures make it clear that Christ is the only One worthy to secure our salvation. His life was the only sinless human life, the only example of a life that rendered perfect satisfaction to the glory of the Father.
First, the Bible never describes the Lord Jesus as “worthy” to “secure our salvation”. Rather it describes Him as worthy of eternal honor as the angels and elders and creatures worship Him in the throne room:
Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.”—Revelation 5:11, 12 LSB
Jesus was ALWAYS worthy. He didn’t have to come and prove that He could keep the law and thereby become our Savior. He came as a sinless man, God the Son in human flesh, and His sinlessness was never in doubt. He came spiritually alive—never dead in sin like all the rest of us born into Adam.
He was born of God, and His spirit was never dead in sin. He didn’t have to prove His worthiness by overcoming tendencies to sin and being noble enough to keep the law.
Yet this very idea is what Adventism teaches. In fact, Tuesday’s lesson says this:
Jesus lived the one human life that satisfied the holiness of God; the rest of us have sinned, and the way we live our sinful lives quite literally tells lies about the nature of our Maker.
Jesus, however, became the “last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45). Where we had failed, He lived perfectly. In His humanity, He was everything the human race was supposed to be. He reflected God’s glory perfectly.
The Bible never describes the Lord Jesus this way. His life was never an “example”, as the quote above from Friday’s lesson says. He did not BECOME the last Adam. He came already sinless, already victorious. There was never any doubt that He would accomplish what He came to do!
He did not come to show us how to keep the law nor to “satisfy the holiness of God”! In Adventist terms, satisfying the holiness of God means perfect law-keeping. Yet Jesus was the Author of the law; He was not a sinner being kept in custody by the law as Galatians 3 explains. He came under the law as a Jewish man—but as the sinless Son of Man and God the Son, He was never in danger of sinning because God cannot sin. Jesus came to FULFILL the law!
Jesus was the “last Adam” from the moment He was conceived in Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit. He came fully prepared and equipped to be the Sacrifice. He came as the Lamb of God. He didn’t “become” the last Adam. He didn’t become worthy to save us, and He is not an EXAMPLE of an obedient life. He lived a life of perfect obedience to the Father, but that obedience was never defined by the Ten Commandments or by His successful behavior.
Adventism teaches that Jesus came as our example for how we can keep the law. The Bible teaches that He came already equipped to be our Savior because He had no sin nor propensities to sin in Him.
Jesus’ One Act of Obedience
Paul tells us how Jesus, as the second Adam, brought justification to us. He describes the difference between Adam and the Lord Jesus this way:
So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were appointed sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be appointed righteous.—Romans 5:18, 19 LSB
Jesus’ “one act of righteousness” was His death on the cross. That is the ONE act of obedience to the Father that resulted in our justification! Every human ever born (except Jesus) is born in Adam, dead in sin. Our natural spiritual death is our legacy from Adam. Yet when we believe in the finished work of the Lord Jesus, we receive justification. Jesus’s one act of obedience—death on the cross—is the one thing that causes us to be justified and saved.
Jesus is our Savior BECAUSE He came without any sin or sinful tendencies, and He came to do one thing: die for our sin. He died for our sin because He was already sinless. He was never in danger of failing. He was always the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
He didn’t have to satisfy God; He didn’t have to be become the Lamb of God; He didn’t have to become worthy to be our Savior!
Adventism has learned that Jesus came and had to overcome human flesh and sinful tendencies and demonstrate perfect obedience to the law. This idea came from the prophetess Ellen White. She said this among many other statements:
Think of Christ’s humiliation. He took upon himself fallen, suffering human nature, degraded and defiled by sin. He took our sorrows, bearing our grief and shame. He endured all the temptations wherewith man is beset. He united humanity with divinity: a divine spirit dwelt in a temple of flesh.—Youth’s Instructor, Dec 20, 1900 par 7.
The first Adam was a free moral agent. But he abused His freedom. He allowed himself to be overcome by appetite. By disobedience he lost his innocence. By his own free will he became a sinner, separating himself from the favor of God.
The second Adam was also a free moral agent, held responsible for His conduct. Surrounded by intensely subtle and misleading influences, He was much less favorably situated than was the first Adam to lead a sinless life. Yet in the midst of sinners He resisted every temptation to sin and maintained His innocency. He was ever sinless.17 LtMs Ms 132, 1902, p. 5, 6
Ellen herself taught that Jesus came with sin-corrupted flesh. Because she taught that humans have no immaterial spirit, she had no way to deal with spiritual life and death. For her—and for all of Adventism—righteousness and sinlessness consists of correcting one’s thinking and desires, exercising will power and prayer, and strong-arming oneself to obey the law!
The Adventist Jesus was our EXAMPLE who had to demonstrate His worthiness to be our Savior by His perfect law-keeping.
Yet Scripture reveals that Jesus’ “one act of obedience” that fulfilled His purpose was His death on the cross!
Law Equated with God
Friday’s lesson quotes Ellen White in Patriarchs and Prophets:
“The broken law of God demanded the life of the sinner. In all the universe there was but one who could, in behalf of man, satisfy its claims. Since the divine law is as sacred as God Himself, only one equal with God could make atonement for its transgression. None but Christ could redeem fallen man from the curse of the law and bring him again into harmony with Heaven. Christ would take upon Himself the guilt and shame of sin—sin so offensive to a holy God that it must separate the Father and His Son. Christ would reach to the depths of misery to rescue the ruined race.”—Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 63.
This paragraph further reveals EGW’s—and hence Adventism’s—belief that “the divine law is as sacred as God Himself” and only “one equal with God could make atonement for its transgression.”
The Bible NEVER equates God and the Law, nor does it define our natural spiritual death as something related to the law! Human sin is our legacy IN ADAM. The law came later, Paul tells us in the epistles, to define and increase sin. The law identified the sins which people had been doing—not always knowing they were committing sins. Romans 5:12, 13 says this:
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned– for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.—Romans 5:12, 13 LSB
This lesson cannot properly explain the function of sacrifices nor of the Lord Jesus giving Himself as our ransom from sin. Adventism defines sin as being against the law, while Scripture defines sin as being against God. In fact, David said it this way after his sin with Bathsheba:
Against You, You only, I have sinned [And] done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And pure when You judge.—Psalm 51:4 LSB
Yet Adventism always portrays sin as the breaking of the law. Yes, breaking the law IS sin—but our natural sin is our spiritual death from Adam. Our sins flow from our natural death. Adventism, though, does not believe we have immaterial spirit that are either dead or alive. Sin for them is always judged by “obedience”. Even Jesus is seen through the lens of the great controversy as either obeying the law or disobeying the law. They never even have the thought that Jesus was sinless because His nature was different. His Spirit was alive from the moment He was conceived by the Holy Spirit.
He came not to be our example but to literally become sin for us, take God’s wrath for sin, die our death and be buried, then rise on the third day according to Scripture to break our curse of death!
We have all sinned against God Himself—but Jesus never did. Our need is not to learn to keep the law but to see that the Lord Jesus did what we could not do: He fulfilled the law and died the death it demanded because HE WAS QUALIFIED FROM THE MOMENT HE CAME!
He was never spiritually dead!
Jesus did not come to satisfy the claims of the law; He came to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Him! He came as God our Creator and took responsibility for us. He became one of us so He could legally pay for our sin by shedding human blood. Yet because He was utterly sinless and unable to fail, His blood was sufficient to satisfy God’s demand that sin yields death.
Jesus did not come and interact with the law’s demands; rather, He came and fulfilled its every shadow—not merely the shadows of sacrifices but the shadows of all the regulations, even the moral ones. He fulfilled the law, and He Himself now invites us to believe that He has done everything necessary for our salvation.
When we believe, He gives us His resurrection life; He brings our spirits to life, and we pass out of death. We are now alive and placed in Him by the indwelling Holy Spirit, and we are forever IN HIM, seated in Him at the right hand of God!
Our Lord Jesus is worthy not because He overcame sinful flesh and obeyed the law but because our sinless Savior became sin for us, paid the required price of death, and broke our curse. By His own death and resurrection, the Lord Jesus has purchased us for Himself and has reconciled everything in earth and in heaven to God!
If you haven’t trusted the finished work—the finished atonement of the Lord Jesus, do so now. He is not a perfect example showing that you, too, can succeed—rather He is the Lamb of God who has atoned for sin. Bring your sin and helplessness to Him, and trust Him.
Thank Him for taking your sin to the cross and for fully atoning for it, and thank Him for rising from death—and receive His resurrection life in your own spirit today!
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ—and you WILL be saved! †
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