Lesson 3: “To Be Pleasing to God”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine
The Teachers Comments in this week’s lesson outline three basic points that are the take-home ideas the reader should glean from this week’s studies. Because these are succinct and expose the underlying Adventist worldview that is as invisible but as powerful as gravity in shaping Adventist theology, I will derive my three problems with this lesson from these three points.
Problems with this lesson:
- It is not God’s pleasure in us that shows our value in His eyes; it is His taking responsibility for our sin, dying our death, and breaking the curse of death with His blood that reveals His valuing of us.
- God’s pleasure is not the reason for human joy; His sovereign power, divine nature, and faithfulness elicit our thankfulness and praise.
- We cannot please God by good works and praise done with Christ’s help; we please God by believing and trusting His sacrifice and resurrection.
This lesson builds a case for God’s pleasure in humanity and assumes that God is waiting for each person to respond to His offer of salvation. It further argues that whenever a person is saved, God’s pleasure is elicited, and the message is that we can make God happy by accepting Him and His salvation. In fact, God’s pleasure with His people is our evidence of how valuable we are in His eyes.
Yet these conclusions are built upon Adventism’s twisted , unbiblical view of the nature of man and the nature of God. As we have previously discussed, Adventism—based on EGWs great controversy worldview—denies that humans are born with “original sin”. EGW teaches that we are born with “sinful natures” but are not inherently guilty on the basis of being imputed with Adam’s sin.
Further, the great controversy model says that God limits His own power in order to be fair to Satan and to sinful man. He gives Satan free reign to do all the badness he can think of as a means of ultimately proving to the watching universe that Satan really is an evil liar, and humans, through their obedience to the Ten Commandments, also demonstrate to the universe that God really IS fait and His law can be kept.
This great controversy model includes the notion that Jesus came to show us that the law CAN be kept, even by mortals with sinful natures, and if we see how much Jesus gave up to come to earth and suffer for us, we will be motivated to obey and please him and the Father.
Lesson Themes Reveal All
As I mentioned in the opening, the Teachers Comments summarize this week’s lesson beautifully. In order to set the stage, I will read the three thematic statements, and then I will show how the Bible corrects the assumptions this lesson perpetrates on its unsuspecting Adventist audience.
Lesson Themes: This week’s lesson highlights three basic points:
1. God’ s pleasure with His creatures shows how valued we are in His eyes. In God’s eyes, every single person is precious and of incalculable value and worth. For this reason, He delights and takes pleasure in His sons and daughters when they repent and seek Him. The parables in Luke 15 highlight God’s joy and celebration over the salvation of a lost person. His pleasure in our salvation shows how valuable we are in God’s sight.
2. God’s pleasure is the reason for human joy and praise. God wants to fill our hearts with overflowing joy, and He takes pleasure in human joy and praise. He invites His people to experience pleasure in Him as they praise Him with joy through prayers and songs. Also, praises to God help us envision, in anticipation, His future pleasure and joy with His people.
3. Because of our indignity, we need Christ in order to please God. We are invited to please God, offering Him spiritual sacrifices by the praise of our lips in thanks giving and by the practice of doing good and sharing. Yet, we can only do these things through the mediation of Christ. Our faith is pleasing to God only by means of Christ’s work on our behalf.
Our Value Revealed by God’s Sending His Son
First, God’s “pleasure” in His people is not a revelation of His valuing of us. Never does the Bible teach that God’s value of us is connected to His pleasure.
Saturday’s lesson, for example, uses the hypothetical illustration of an excited child giving his father a poorly-wrapped gift for Father’s Day, only to have the father reject the gift because he neither needs it nor wants it. The author imagines the father saying, “Anything you could give me, I could get for myself, and anything you give to me was either bought with my money or made from materials that I paid for. So, keep your gift. I do not need it or want it. But I love you, anyway.”
Then the author moves into a discussion of the parable of the Prodigal Son to say that God is always ready and waiting, expectantly hoping for any one of His children to accept His salvation and love and to come to Him.
The point the lesson makes is that God would never reject an act of love from one of His creatures, and He is made joyous when anyone decides to accept Him and be saved.
This view of salvation places all the responsibility on each person. It assumes that each person is capable of deciding to please God. For example, Wednesday’s lesson asks, “How is it that we, as fallen, sinful beings, can be pleasing to a holy God?”
The day’s lesson ends with these words followed by a thought question below:
Those who respond to God by faith are accounted righteous in His sight through the mediation of Christ, whose righteousness alone is acceptable. And those who respond to God’s loving overtures are accounted worthy through Christ’s mediation (Luke 20:35), and He transforms them into His likeness (1 Cor. 15:51–57, 1 John 3:2). God’s redeeming work is not only for us but in us, as well.
Why is the idea of Christ mediating for you in heaven so encouraging?
Significantly, these flowery sentences never define the terms they use. What, exactly, is “Christ’s mediation” in an Adventist’s understanding? This question is at the heart of the lesson’s third theme quoted above:
We are invited to please God, offering Him spiritual sacrifices by the praise of our lips in thanks giving and by the practice of doing good and sharing. Yet, we can only do these things through the mediation of Christ. Our faith is pleasing to God only by means of Christ’s work on our behalf.
What Is Christ’s Mediation, Anyway?
Within Adventism, Christ’s mediation is always associated with His supposed work in heaven in the investigative judgment. Jesus is supposedly in the Most Holy Place, ever since October 22, 1844, investigating the books of record of all those who have claimed to be followers of Jesus. He’s looking to see if they have confessed every sin and if they are overcoming sin and keeping the law more and more perfectly by asking Him for His power and strength to obey.
This Adventist Jesus is thereby “mediating” for each believer by applying His blood to every confessed sin and is imparting to every Adventist who asks a measure of His grace and power to become increasingly righteous as he or she encounters temptations and trials.
In the Adventist worldview, Jesus’ atonement for human sin was not completed at the cross. His blood shed on Calvary was not once and done for every sin of every person who believes and trusts Him. Rather, in Adventism, the atonement is continuing as we speak, with Jesus up in heaven applying His blood to confessed sins, imparting righteousness to those who ask and work obediently to please Him, but never does the Adventist Jesus IMPUTE His own perfect, eternal righteousness to a believer.
The Adventist has to work hard and plead with Jesus for power and help to overcome. Jesus IMPARTS to him the ability to obey, but he is never declared righteous on the basis of Jesus’ one-time sacrifice alone. It is this commitment to obedience and pleasing God which, according to the lesson, produces the works and attitudes that make God happy.
Ellen White gives us a hint of what this lesson means by the “mediation of Christ”, but even she is vague. Contextually, however, her works-oriented view is clear. For EGW and for Adventism, salvation is not a work of God dependent upon the perfect sacrifice, death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Rather Jesus’ death is just a step in the process that continues in heaven as He examines records of sins and confessions and applies blood based on each person’s obedience to confess and do his best. Here are a few EGW quotes that help us understand the Adventist view of Christ’s mediation:
The glory reflected in the countenance of Moses illustrates the blessings to be received by God’s commandment-keeping people through the mediation of Christ. It testifies that the closer our communion with God, and the clearer our knowledge of His requirements, the more fully shall we be conformed to the divine image, and the more readily do we become partakers of the divine nature.—Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 330.3, 4
God has most graciously granted us a probation in which to prepare for the test which will be brought upon us. Every advantage is given us through the mediation of Christ. If the human agent will study the word, he will see that every facility has been freely provided for those who are seeking to be overcomers. The Holy Spirit is present to give strength for victory, and Christ has promised, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”—Special Testimonies on Education, p. 157.1
Christ took human nature upon Him and bore it, pure and spotless, into the heavenly courts. He will bear this nature through the ages of eternity. In ascending to heaven with a glorified humanity, Christ has declared what man can become if he will do the will of God, but it is only through the mediation of Christ that any human being can overcome.—18 Letters and Manuscripts, Lt 125, 1903, par 16.
We see in the EGW quotes above a whole worldview that is not biblical. The Bible never says our salvation or acceptance with God depends upon our knowledge of His requirements, nor that we are on a probation, nor that we will overcome all sin in this life! For EGW and for Adventists, though, the idea of depending upon Christ’s mediation suggests drawing on His power and support to help them become good and obedient. In fact, their ultimate salvation depends upon this mediation and obedience because they must overcome sin and pass their probation! Only when Jesus ends His investigative judgment will probation end—and by then, the Adventist must have grown more and more obedient, reflecting Christ’s character more and more perfectly, and must have remembered to confess every sin so Jesus’ blood could be applied to each specific misdeed.
Christ is our Mediator
Interestingly, the Bible never speaks of Christ’s mediation for His people. There is one verse in Hebrews 7 that says He ever lives to make INTERCESSION for us—but that verse does not mean He is investigating records and applying His blood. Rather, it means that His position as our High Priest who conquered death and paid for our sins is our eternal guarantee that we are eternally secure. We know sin is forever conquered not because Satan is condemned but because Jesus took our sin, endured God’s wrath for it, and made a complete payment for it! It is forever and legally DONE!
Furthermore, Scripture tells us that the Lord Jesus IS the One Mediator between God and man:
For there is one God, [and] one mediator also between God and men, [the] man Christ Jesus,—1 Timothy 2:5 LSB
In other words, a mediator represents two opposing parties and works out a reconciliation solution that will satisfy the needs of both parties. The Lord Jesus has within Himself both parties: He is fully God, the offended party who was unreconciled to us because of our sin, and He is fully man—the offending party whose sin removed him from communion with God and rendered him spiritually dead.
Yet Jesus was never spiritually dead. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, He was always spiritually alive, and He was able to be the Perfect Sacrifice for sin on the basis of His sinless human nature. He was also always fully God, able to take responsibility for each one of us as His own creatures. In Himself He reconciled us, sinful man, to God by taking our imputed sin into Himself and enduring the wrath of God for us. He died the death our sin yielded, and because His sacrifice was perfect and sufficient, He rose on the third day because the curse of death was broken by His blood!
Jesus IS our Mediator because He Himself represented both parties: God the offended and man the offender, and in Himself He fully paid for sin and endured God’s own wrath for our sin. And in Himself He broke the curse, the death sentence into which we are born.
We, then, can enter this new state of reconciliation with God NOT by obeying the law more and more perfectly but by BELIEVING in the One who paid for our sin!
Paul emphasizes Christ’s mediatorial role in Galatians 3:19–20:
Why the Law then? It was added because of trespasses, having been ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. Now a mediator is not for one [person only], whereas God is one.—Galatians 3:19, 20 LSB
Here Paul explains that the law—contrary to Adventist teaching—was not given to set a standard we all must reach in order to be righteous. Rather, it was given because of human trespasses. It was given to identify sin, not to eliminate it! Further, it was only temporary; it was “added” long after God promised Abraham that He would send the Seed who would fulfill the promises of blessing for the world, and the law would be in place ONLY until that Seed came. That Seed was the Lord Jesus.
Further, Paul stresses that a mediator works to satisfy two opposing parties—“but God is one”. In other words, Jesus, God the Son, is the One Mediator who IN HIMSELF represented both parties! He wasn’t just representing God or only representing man. Unlike Moses who represented Israel when he mediated for the nation with God on Sinai, Jesus represented God and man!
Moreover, the New Testament always speaks of Jesus as our Mediator in the context of a New Covenant—never in the context of the old. He is not the mediator of the law nor of our keeping the law. Rather, He kept the law and fulfilled it, and now He mediates for Us on the basis of His having fulfilled the law with its death sentence. Notice these three passages from Hebrews:
But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.—Hebrews 8:6 LSB
And for this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the trespasses that were [committed] under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.—Hebrews 9:15 LSB
[A]nd to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than [the blood] of Abel.—Hebrews 12:24 LSB
Jesus is not “mediating” His blood and imparting power to us. He is not examine books and waiting for us to remember each sin so He can blot it out. Rather, Jesus IS the eternal Mediator who has already done everything necessary for our eternal salvation and security.
Now what He asks of us to BELIEVE in His provision for our eternal life. He has already completed the full atonement for our sin, and He asks us to acknowledge that we are helpless to please Him or to “accept” Him. Rather, we have to TRUST Him, to believe that He is the promised Savior who has done what we need and who calls us by His perfect love and foreknowledge.
The Source of Our Praise
Finally, God’s pleasure is NOT the source of our praise, as the lesson says it is. To be sure, the Bible says that God loves His people and will keep all His promises to His people whether or not they are obedient. God’s promises are unilateral and independent from human response.
Yet Romans 1:18–21 reveals the source of our thanksgiving. Paul tells us this:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened.—Romans 1:18–21 LSB
We Don’t Have Power OVER God
God has revealed Himself to all men everywhere. His eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen in what has been made, but the wicked suppress the knowledge of God by their own wickedness. They refuse to glorify Him or to give Him thanks—and those two refusals reveal that they do not want to submit and honor the God who made them! They clearly see the evidence that He is there, but when they refuse to glorify Him and give thanks, their foolish hearts are darkened.
In other words, people are not “inspired” to be good by imaging God’s pleasure toward them. The lesson sets up a completely upside-down view. God is not a helpless but hopeful being who longs for us to see that He’s really nice and good and wants us to include Him and like Him.
God does not “need” us. God is sovereign and complete, holy and righteous. He reveals Himself to all He creatures, and those who properly. See themselves as His subjects and creations will glorify and honor Him. They will give Him thanks because He is their Creator—not because they have the power to make Him happy!
This lesson is subtle in its deception, but it paints a emotional picture of the Adventist’s supposed ability to please God by doing good and working to please Him.
Further, Jesus is not mediating in heaven to help people become increasingly righteous and obedient. He has completed our salvation by literally BEING our Mediator, taking our sin and punishment in Himself and reconciling us to Himself!
Our proper response to Him is to believe and trust Him. We must acknowledge that we are sinners who cannot please God nor find ways to make Him happy. We are by nature outside of any relationships with Him, and we must come to Him on His terms, not on our humanistic terms.
We can only recognize and respond to the God who is our Creator, Savior, and Sustainer. If we persist in thinking of Him as our “helper” to be good and make Him happy, we will miss what He has already provided.
We are called to believe. Have you believed? Have you recognized that you are by nature dead in sin and that your true need is to be made alive and reconciled to God? If not, look to Jesus now. See that He shed His blood as He took your sin into Himself. See Him experience the wrath of God on the cross and the see that He died, and on the third day, He broke death because His blood reversed our curse!
Believe Him today. Trust Him with yourself, and know what it means to be eternally secure, spiritually alive, and hidden with Christ in God. †
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