December 5–11

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 11: “The Christian and Work”

The lesson uses over 2,500 words to say that Christian education should include instruction on the right way to work. It begins by saying:

“Christians need to learn how to work God’s way.”

While this idea is somewhat true, when it comes out of Adventist theology, we know there is something missing. To be a Christian, to be in Christ, we are to live and operate by the Spirit Who seals and indwells us. Our entire life is to be lived in the Spirit. To separate out work as something we have to learn to do God’s way, is to ignore the fact that all of life is to be “in God’s way”. 

Again, that may seem to be an unnecessary distinction to many, but to those who don’t understand that our now-living spirit is alive precisely because it is joined with God’s life-giving Spirit, and that our entire life is to be guided by that Spirit, there seems to be no understanding of living all of life by the Spirit. As we learn that by practice, we will be learning to work God’s way.

The lack of understanding of this truth is starkly obvious in Wednesday’s lesson. There the author says:

“Two questions: First, ask yourself if you do, indeed, compartmentalize your spiritual life. Second, if you do, how can you learn to let spirituality reign in all that you do.”

If you do—or even could—“compartmentalize” your spiritual life, you are not living in the Spirit but are just “doing” what you consider spiritual when it seems to be appropriate. There is a distinct difference between “doing” the Christian life and being in Christ and letting Him live out His life through us.

This reality is expressed in words that may be familiar but which are often not understood. In Colossians, in one of his well-known, complex sentences, in chapter 1, verses 24-27 Paul lays it out:

Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God, that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Paul did several things in those 3 verses. He establishes his credentials—made a minister, from God. He reveals a mystery—the Gentiles are included in the glory. He also reveals something that we tend to overlook—the fact that Christ is in us. So if God is living His life through us, what will it look like?

Go to Matthew 11:28-30, a passage that promises us rest:

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

These wonderful words of promise and hope are familiar, and they give such comfort. But there are three little words buried in there that are easy to miss.

“Learn from Me.” Just three words that carry profound meaning. What did Jesus mean when He said to learn from Him? 

The gospels carry the answer to that question in other words that He said, words like:

“I don’t do anything of myself.”

“I only do what I see with the Father.”

“I only speak from the Father.”

Consider this:

“When Jesus said, ‘Learn from Me,’ He meant to learn from Him how He lived. And how did He live? He lived out of the Father. He didn’t have any other secret”  (The Rest of the Gospel by Dan Stone and Greg Smith). 

When our spirit is made alive by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we no longer have to “do” Christian, or “be” good enough, or have any other achievement of our own—even whatever we may achieve with God’s help. No, we are to let Him live out His life in us, through us. That is what Jesus modeled for us.

And that is the only way in which He is truly a model for us to follow. It isn’t His sinless law-keeping that we are to learn from and follow but His Father living out through Him.

The second question from the lesson mentioned above comes close to identifying the issue—learning to let spirituality reign in your life.

That sounds like a learned behavior that you can possibly achieve if you work hard enough, but learning an achievement makes you the center of it, not God.

Walking in the Spirit is not always easy, and it is something that we have to learn, but it is centered on the Spirit, not ourselves. Only if He is the center and focus can we begin to respond to His leading. Otherwise, we are focusing on ourselves and on how we can make our walk and our behavior better. And we all know that focus is a hopeless task.

Without the Spirit in us, we would be just acting in whatever way we think is sufficiently spiritual. Such a life is empty and without life, and although it might look good to others, it is full of dead works.

This deadness is made painfully clear in the followup question:

“How do you manifest your own spirituality in the day-to-day tasks of your life? What kind of impression do you think that you make (because, in the end, you do make an impression)?”

The question entirely misses the point that the only true spirituality is from the Spirit. Anything we can produce is just dead works, “filthy rags” according to Isaiah 64:6. It also shows up the classic Adventist idea that what they consider to be spirituality is somehow separate from what is non-spiritual. But for those who have the Spirit, everything is from the Spirit, “spiritual”, not a separate part of behavior.

But then, later in the week, the author did get it almost right:

“To compartmentalize our religious life, to limit God to one day, one hour, or even just one area of living, is to reject the very presence of God in these other areas.”

Again, the presence of God is considered to be something external that we can practice or incorporate. But look at it closely—once again, the center or focus of that is us, not God. He is relegated to being something that we can add in if we try hard enough. 

The focus should be on God, on His Spirit in us. Look to Him and let Him work His will out in us instead of just adding Him in to our lives when we can. Our entire being should be God-focused, not man-focused.

In the High Priestly Prayer in John 17, Jesus says in 3 different ways this profound truth of God in Him and He in us:

20 “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; 21 that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.

25 “O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; 26 and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

Christ in us is the profound and simple truth we are to learn from Jesus as He said in Matthew 11:28-30. 

The Father and Jesus are one: the Father is in Jesus, and Jesus is in the Father.

Now that we have the life of Jesus in us through the Holy Spirit, that is how we are to live our lives every moment—letting God live his life through us. We no longer have to try to find what is sacred to do on a supposed holy day while thinking that other things are not sacred. 

What does the Bible tell us about the sacred?

To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.  Titus 1:5

Every day is the same if you are in Christ and He in you. He makes everything sacred by living His life in you through the Holy Spirit. Every day is total rest in Him. He did all that was needed on the cross and pronounced it “finished”, which means “paid in full”. There is no more for us to do but believe and accept it and let him live it out through us. That way, whatever we do, work or play, it is all done God’s way. †