First Quarter 2004 Adult Sabbath School Lessons:
"The Gospel Of John"

Insights to Lesson 6
Putting the Past Behind You
January 31-February 6, 2004

(Produced by the Editorial Board of the 1888 Message Study Committee)

There is abundant evidence in our Seventh-day Adventist denominational history and in the writings of Ellen G. White that “the Lord in His great mercy” sent us the unique message of 1888. Not only was it “showers from heaven of the latter rain;” she also said it was the beginning of the final revelation of truth that would complete the gospel commission. These INSIGHTS relate the excellent material in the Quarterly to important ideas that made the 1888 message special. The teachers’ edition of our Quarterly asks several questions that are left open for discussion:

1. The “almost totally passive” paralytic of John 5 didn’t ask to be healed; Jesus didn’t even ask him if he believed; Jesus asked him to perform no “works” as a prerequisite. How does righteousness by faith relate to this miracle?

   1. It illustrates the truth that “we are saved by grace through faith, not of works” (Ephesians 2:8, 9). The man could not do any works! Jesus did not tell him, “Do this, or do that; and then I will heal you.” He set no criterion that the sufferer must reach before he could be healed. Self-humbling as the truth is, we must recognize that we are “without strength” (Romans 5:6). “In my flesh dwells no good thing” (7:18). The man’s healing was totally performed by Christ; in no way was he his own co-healer. Christ is our Savior 100%; in no way can we claim the role of co-savior.

   2. Why the man was willing to believe we don’t know, but the fact is that he chose to believe and exercised his will to stand up. This miracle illustrates how “all men” are saved by faith, not by works; but their faith is the kind “which works,” in the same way that the poor sufferer (an invalid for 38 years) believed and immediately received strength to obey Christ’s command. We must NOT say that we are 50% saved by faith and 50% by obedience. This man didn’t have the strength to stand up even if a million angels had told him to do so. HE WAS HEALED BY THE WORD OF JESUS, not by his obedience.

   3. Does that mean he had nothing to do? Jesus wisely did not heal him and then say, “You need bed rest—don’t exert yourself until you can feel your muscles getting strong again.” Jesus broke all the laws of medical science in telling the man not only to get up and walk, but to get up and carry his “bed”! “Oh, he might get a bad back after being ill so many years!” No, Jesus told him what to do and the “bed,” heavy as it was for a healthy man, felt light as a feather to him. Righteousness by faith is the truth that people who are paralyzed by sin, who can’t lift a finger to save themselves, who can only hear and believe, are saved by Jesus, “the Savior of the world.”

2. “In telling the former paralytic to stop sinning, did Jesus tell the man to do something impossible? In what sense could this be true?”

   1. Here is where the 1888 message can enter onstage. The basic idea that made the message “click” was the idea (first) that in becoming the world’s Redeemer, the Son of God took our human nature completely, submitted himself to the full heredity that comes from the fallen Adam (no breaking of the DNA code by an imagined “exemption” such as the dogma of the Immaculate Conception postulates), thus “took upon His sinless nature our sinful nature” that He might be “in all points tempted like [not unlike] as we are, yet [be] without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

   2. Second, this is the time of the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary since 1844. In His work as High Priest working in the second or Most Holy Apartment of the heavenly sanctuary, Christ saves FROM (not IN) sin. Believers still have their fallen, sinful flesh or nature they were born with, but they “overcome even as [He] overcame,” condemning sin in their fallen flesh. The much more abounding grace of Christ can accomplish this wonder (Romans 5:20); it is the denouement of human history. Those who follow Christ by faith in His cleansing of the sanctuary “follow the Lamb wherever He goes,” and stand “without fault before the throne of God” (Revelation 14:1-5).

   3. Just as the Jewish leaders seized Christ’s miracle of healing this man on the Sabbath, so opponents of this truth have distorted and misrepresented it as being the heresy of “perfectionism.” Perfectionism is the doctrine of sinless perfection of the flesh; the truth is the glorious message of “perfection of character.” Christ died to accomplish it for all who believe. And in this grand Day of Atonement, this truth will be more clearly understood and embraced than by any body of people in the past.

   4. No one will ever boast of a sinless character; probably no one will ever even be conscious that he/she has been privileged thus to honor Christ. All eyes will be on Jesus, not on self. But His people will glorify Him in their corporate reflection of His character—and like Moses of old, they will “wist not” that their faces are shining (Exodus 34:29).

Read the study notes for Lesson 7