Lesson 12: “Love and Justice: The Two Greatest Commandments”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine
Core problem in this lesson:
This lesson distorts “love and justice” by applying them in the great controversy paradigm instead of as the fruit of the new covenant in Jesus’s blood.
When the biblical teachings of love, justice, and mercy are explained within the worldview of the great controversy, the meanings and applications of these values are turned inside-out and upside-down. This lesson asserts many good ideas that sound moral and normal for the Christian life, yet without dealing with the underlying assumptions of the great controversy’s teaching that God is on trial, that Satan has accused Him of giving a law too difficult to keep, and that Jesus came to uphold the law and show us how to keep it like He did—without dealing with these foundational beliefs, the reader is left blinded and confused, unable to know HOW to practice justice and mercy.
Great Controversy Hints in the Lesson
The author uses central passages defining a Christian’s relationship with the body of Christ, such as this week’s memory text: 1 John 4:20: “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?”
This lesson includes the Adventist readers in the designation “Christian” and challenges them to practice justice since they love God.
Yet what does it mean to “love God”? Adventism assumes that accepting Adventist doctrine and committing to the Sabbath and the Ten Commandments are the core of loving God. These assumptions, though, are unbiblical.
If we get our definitions of “Christian” and “loving God” wrong, then our understanding of God’s instructions about love and justice will also be wrong. We cannot properly practice the communicable attributes of God if we are not worshiping the biblical triune God as He revealed He must be worshiped.
Let’s look at some statements from the lesson that establish the paradigm through which “love and justice” are explained. First, Saturday’s lesson says this:
Though there may be many injustices and evils that God will not now eradicate (because of the parameters of the cosmic conflict), this doesn’t mean that we can’t be used to help alleviate whatever suffering and evil we come across, at least to whatever degree possible…
As we have seen, love and justice go together; they are inseparable. God loves justice. Accordingly, if we love God, we will love justice, as well.
Likewise, if we love God, we will love one another. Part of loving one another is sharing a concern for the well-being of those around us. When others are afflicted by poverty, oppression, or any kind of injustice, we should be concerned.
Right here in the introductory lesson of the week, the reader is reminded that everything that follows is to be understood from the perspective of the great controversy. As previously established in these lessons, the Adventist god limits his power and sovereignty in order to protect the supposed “free will” of Satan and sinful humans. This belief underlies everything said as the week progresses about love and justice.
In other words, Adventist “love” means the eternal, righteous God who is judge of all the earth cannot limit the evil of sin because sinners must be permitted to fully play their hand to the watching universe. In this way, evil itself provides the evidence that God is good and should be followed instead of Satan.
With this understanding of God’s love, the actual purpose of His sending Jesus to take the full weight of human sin and to endure God’s wrath for that sin is never mentioned. Instead, Jesus’ sacrifice is presented as God’s self-giving sacrifice to uphold the law. For example, this statement is from Thursday’s lesson:
In direct contrast to the enemy, who grasped for power and sought to usurp God’s throne, Jesus lowered Himself and identified with those under sin, injustice, and oppression (without being infected by sin), and He defeated the enemy by giving Himself in love in order to establish justice as the One who is just and the Justifier of all who believe. How can we claim to be concerned about the law that Christ died to uphold if we are not concerned about what Christ calls the weightier matters of the law?
There it is, tucked into then middle of the lesson—the emphasis that Jesus “died to uphold” the law. In fact, Jesus did NOT die to uphold the law; He died to FULFILL the law, as He said in Matthew 5:17:
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”—Matthew 5:17 LSB
In the great controversy paradigm, Jesus’ sacrifice was not a complete atonement and was not primarily about atoning for sin. The great controversy demands that Jesus is continuing His atonement in heaven in the investigative judgment, and the issue of sin and righteousness is being decided by US—by the people on earth who decide to obey the law and prove that God was fair in giving it. After all, according to Adventism, Jesus came to show us the law could be kept, and if it can be kept, we can also reach moral perfection with His help.
All of these great controversy assumptions underlie this week’s flowery discussion of love and justice and of how the reader can practice this love and justice to all the poor and oppressed in their communities. The definitions of “love” and “justice” are skewed by an unbiblical teaching of Jesus’ sacrificial death.
Missing the Point of the Rich Young Ruler
This lesson uses the story of the Rich Young Ruler the way Adventism always uses it: as “proof” that salvation hangs on keeping the Ten Commandments and on taking care of the poor. Notice this quote from the Teachers Comments as they articulate the second “lesson theme” for the week:
Failings of love—when love and justice are disconnected. If we love God, we will love others and share a concern for justice focused on people’s well-being. Conversely, a disconnect between loving God and doing justice to others demonstrates a lack of commitment in keeping God’s commandments. This is the case in the history of the rich young ruler, who presumed to obey the commandments but failed to show love to the poor. Another example in the Gospels is the priest and the Levite in the parable of the good Samaritan. They also presumed to follow the rules of purity but failed to express compassion and love.
Adventism, on the authority of EGW, has always taught that the story of the rich young ruler confirms that the Ten are necessary for salvation—but that sacrificial giving to the poor is also necessary. In other words, Sabbath-keeping and sacrificial giving to the church are necessary behaviors to demonstrate that a person “loves God” and is committed to going to heaven.
Of course Adventism never calls these things “works” but says they are the things people do because they love God. Yet this argument is pure semantics. Scripture tells us differently. Let’s first look at the story of the rich young ruler:
And behold, someone came to Him and said, “Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” And He said to him, “Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is [only] One who is good; but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” [Then] he said to Him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “YOU SHALL NOT MURDER; YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY; YOU SHALL NOT STEAL; YOU SHALL NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS; HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER; and YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” The young man said to Him, “All these things I have kept; what am I still lacking?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be complete, go [and] sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property.—Matthew 19:16–22 LSB
Adventism uses this story to say, “See? You have to keep the Ten Commandments in order to be saved!” Yet that is not what this story reveals. Rather, Jesus pointed out to this man that the commandments couldn’t save him. No matter how religiously he applied himself to keep them, they were not sufficient. The point about this man needing to sell what he owned and give the money to the poor and follow Jesus was not specifically a command that the man had to give money to the poor as a requirement to be saved.
Rather, we see in this passage that the man was attached to his possessions. In other words, his heart belonged primarily to his own wealth. He could be moral and commandment-keeping yet internally idolize his own wealth.
What Jesus was asking him to do was to give up what he most loved and follow Jesus alone. He had to let go of his attachment to what meant the most to him and have no loyalty except to Jesus. Only submission to and trust in Jesus could yield salvation. The law could not. Even giving to the poor could not yield salvation. Only giving up what he loved most and following Jesus could result in salvation.
Wealth is not always what a person most loves. We can have unlimited sources of identity that we love more than Jesus. In fact, for many of us, our Adventism is what we most loved. We have to be willing to lay aside what we believe to be truth and submit to the Lord and His word. When we see that we have an extra-biblical prophet who gave us a worldview and doctrines that are not in Scripture, we have to be humble enough to admit we were deceived and lay down our Adventism at the foot of the cross and allow the Lord to teach us truth through His word.
For many of us, it is not wealth we have to give up; it is our religious identity. We have to be willing to be defined by the Lord Jesus ALONE. It may mean losing everything we know: our social circle, our lifestyle, our church, and sometimes even our work.
As Jesus said,
And He was saying to [them] all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”—Luke 9:23 LSB
The cross we take up is our relationship with Jesus; it’s not our bad back or a difficult boss. We are asked to deny ourselves the “right” to self-protect and to live for Jesus instead, being willing to give our lives for the salvation of souls if the Lord asks us to do that.
Love and Justice Disconnected?
The Teachers Comments further says this on page 160:
The connection between loving God and others, particularly in the form of justice (promoting their well-being and alleviating their suffering), provides the necessary articulation in life for all the commandments we find in Scripture. To put it another way, the disconnection between loving God and doing justice to others (loving them) means that there is no real harmony in our lives, as we attempt to keep God’s commandments.
The author is attempting to define working to alleviate suffering and to bring comfort and well-being to the afflicted. He further attaches this social justice to keeping “all the commandments” in Scripture. In other words, tying this idea to the rich young ruler, the point is that if a person is committed to obedience to the law, he or she will concurrently devote himself to righting social wrongs and bringing relief to the needy.
The argument here is that commitment to commandment-keeping is the evidence that one loves God, and if one loves God, then he will, of course, work for social justice. If a person does NOT work for social justice among the poor and disenfranchised, then that person really doesn’t love God. His love is disconnected from justice.
This argument is convoluted and, unless a person digs into Scripture, it can be deceiving. In fact, love and justice are not defined by social constructs and by human values. Love and justice were defined by the Lord Jesus on the cross, and true love and justice can never be disconnected. Consider Romans 3:23–26:
[F]or all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith, for a demonstration of His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.—Romans 3:23–26 LSB
Love is not defined by human emotions nor justice by human values. Neither are love and justice defined by the god of the great controversy. The biblical God is utterly sovereign and in control of all history and of all creation.
Satan is not a free moral agent whom God must humor in order to allow hm to fully demonstrate the depths of evil. Satan cannot make a move apart from God’s permission. He is under God’s boundaries.
Love and Justice Defined
The Lord Jesus is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8), and our Lord Jesus becoming incarnate and taking all of our sin and paying its full price as He endured the wrath of God on the cross before dying our death and then breaking our curse by shattering the grave—all of this is the ultimate demonstration of love.
Our Creator is not a self-limited god who allows his creatures to play out their worst impulses as illustrations to the universe. Rather our Creator took full responsibility for us. He took our identity but without the spiritual death, and in His ultimate demonstration of love, He also demonstrated justice.
Sin had to be paid for. Unless it was, there could be no eternal life for any of us. Without an adequate sacrifice for our sin, God would have had to eradicate humanity in justice. His law was that sin would yield death—and we would have no hope.
God Himself, in the person of the Son, rescued us. He alone could have taken our sin by imputation and paid its price: as God, He could pay the ultimate price for us all because He is our Creator. As a human He could shed the human blood that was the only sacrifice that could atone for human sin. In this ultimate act of love, the Father sent the Son and was in Him as He hung on the cross reconciling the world to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).
At the cross ultimate love and justice were displayed to the universe. God was just: He extracted the full price for sin: death. He was also the justifier: the One who took the death sentence in order to free us from death.
This justice shows love in action.
The lesson’s argument that we must show love to the oppressed and give sacrificially of our means to help rectify the ills of selfish society is not the biblical picture of love.
Only the gospel offers the way to know love and justice among humans. Ephesians 2:14–16 says this:
For He Himself is our peace, who made both [groups] one and broke down the dividing wall of the partition by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, the Law of commandments [contained] in ordinances, so that in Himself He might create the two into one new man, making peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having in Himself put to death the enmity.—Ephesians 2:14–16 LSB
Only when we see our need and repent at the foot of the cross, believing that the Lord Jesus has fully paid for our all our sin and has broken our curse of death by His resurrection can we know love and justice. When we believe, we pass from death to life and are born again.
We are made completely new, and in Christ we are connected by the Holy Spirit to every other person who believes and is born again. In Christ we have justice. In Christ we are loved, and we are united with an eternal family who will always serve our Savior by practicing love and justice for one another.
The great controversy is not built on true love and justice, and it keeps people from knowing the truth about the Lord Jesus. The real way to practice love and justice is to trust the Lord Jesus. When we do, He makes us completely new and shows us that social ills can only be addressed by the truth that once we all were blind and dead—but in Jesus, we are made alive and united with each other to Him.
I appeal to you: if you haven’t examined your Adventism and repented at the cross of Jesus, you need to. Hear the call of Jesus to give up all that you love and to trust Him. When you place all your belief and entrust your life to His death for your sin, His burial, and His resurrection on the third day, you will be born again and indwelled by the Lord Himself.
You will know real love and experience His justice—and you will be able to treat others with His love and justice because He lives in you.
Believe Him today and know the peace that comes from living in true love and experiencing true justice by embracing His grace to you.†
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