First Quarter 2005 Adult Sabbath School Lessons:
"His Wondrous Cross"
The Story of Our Redemption

Insights to Lesson 13:
The Cross and the Great Controversy
March 19-25

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

In a recent book by Thomas A. Davis (Orion Publishing), the author alludes to a heart-wrenching question seldom faced head-on in the Seventh-day Adventist Church: has God ever wrestled with so difficult a problem in 6000 years as the lukewarmness of “the angel of the church of the Laodiceans?” (Rev. 3:14-21; Davis, The Latter Rain, pp. 9, 10). Are we in the midst of the historical crisis of the ages? Yes! The return of Christ is being delayed. Our 13th Lesson is very serious!

A father may have a heavy problem trying to support his family, but the little child has no understanding of it that hinders or shadows his play. As our Quarterly emphasizes, the little child can sense only his own individual suffering of hunger. As it says, his “personal metabolism allows” no more. He can never “splice into” his father’s anguish, or “feel a spasm of [his] pain, [or] a prick of [his] woe.” As the Quarterly says, a little child cannot “feel corporately” what a parent feels corporately for him.

But a woman who is “grown up unto the measure of the stature of the fulness” of a man (see Eph. 4:13) can “feel corporately for him” if she loves him as a bride loves a husband. Could it be that the cosmic problem Elder Davis refers to still troubles the heart of God because a certain prophetic “woman” is still in the kindergarten state of heart and has resisted “growing up”? Can she not yet corporately share the heart-burden her Savior feels? Is her concern still fundamentally only self-centered? Do we still consider (as we have in the past) that our own individual, personal salvation is the greatest concern in the universe? Or can we begin to sense a concern for Christ Himself?

His name is still “Emmanuel, . . . God with us.” He is still one of us in humanity as well as one with the Father in His divinity. Ellen White declared in 1904 that as the consequence of the dark history of 1888-message-rejection “in a great degree,” “the disappointment of Christ is beyond description” (Review and Herald, Dec. 12). The Loud Cry has been long delayed.

Our lesson this Sabbath lifts our thoughts above our preoccupation with our own salvation to the possibility of sensing a concern for Jesus in the great controversy for His sake, beyond our little sake.

Our Quarterly assures us that “Christ felt corporately at the Cross” all the combined anguish of humanity. But is it fair that we sense no corporate involvement with Him in His anguish and His sacrifice--not that in any way we assist in our personal salvation, but our minds and hearts can begin to appreciate what it cost Him to save us. We must not be content to remain forever in our kindergarten comprehension. The “most precious message . . . the Lord sent to His people” in 1888 began to emphasize that heart-concern for Jesus as transcending our selfish concerns in this “great controversy.”

Paul was deeply impressed that Christ expects, or at least hopes, that those for whom He died the second death will “come out” of the egocentric milieu of “Babylon” with its Old Covenant radius of self-concern, and begin to “feel a spasm of His pain, a prick of His anguish,” to borrow the Lesson’s expressions. “Know ye not,” Paul says, “that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?” That must mean some kind of personal involvement. “We are buried with Him by baptism into death. . . . We have been planted together in the likeness of His death. . . . Our old man is crucified with Him. . . . If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (Rom. 6:3-8). “I am crucified with Christ,” he tells the Galatians (2:20). It’s over and over “with Him.” That is corporate involvement on the part of believers. It is in the sense of heart appreciation, entering “into” His experience by something the Bible calls “faith,” heart-involvement with the Son of God in His divine career as Savior of both the world and of the universe. “The government” of the universe is “on His shoulders” (Isa. 9:6; we can’t “lift,” but we can appreciate the weight He carries!).

TIME magazine now features an article on Mary the mother of Jesus; understandably it pays lip service to the Roman Catholic dogma of Mary as a mediatrix to whom people should pray, but it also visits a neo-Protestant view of Mary as the one outstanding example of someone who believed, quoting an old Protestant idea that “if she had not believed, she would not have conceived.” When the “sword” Simeon predicted (ramphaia, the LXX word for Goliath’s) “pierced” Mary’s soul when she watched her Son crucified, she was “crucified with Him.” She “participated,” in a sense died “with Him” for she was His “parent.” She felt more than a “spasm of [His] pain, a prick of [His] woe.” Hers was corporate involvement--deepest heart appreciation in so far as her understanding allowed. Now we have come to the end of time, two millennia later.

Is it possible that “144,000” people can “grow up” to “follow the Lamb [the crucified Christ] wherever He goes”? (Rev. 14:1-5; we are not concerned here whether that’s a literal or symbolic number; “the Lamb’s wife” of 19:7, 8 is a corporate body who likewise “follows” Him intimately). If the answer is yes, this group will demonstrate publicly a reflection of Christ’s final victory of the great controversy. He won the victory over Satan in His life and sacrifice; now His people gain the same victory over the “flesh” and temptation. As Mary’s capacity to share corporate fellowship with her Son was the consequence of her initial choice to “believe,” so will this last-days’ corporate group learn what it means to “believe.”

Jesus will have won the battle 100%; His saints will deserve no credit whatever. But the world and the universe will know that at last there has been some compensation for Christ as regards His great sacrifice: at last His character of self-emptying agape has been perfectly reflected in a diversity of people from all over the world. At last He can “see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied” (Isa. 53:11). In 144,000 aspects of sin-captivity, Satan has sought to keep humanity enmeshed by sin. Satan has claimed that they have proved that he is the victor in the great controversy, and untold numbers of humans have felt they must agree with him: sin is too strong for sin-natured and sin-nurtured humans ever to “overcome,” they think. In human flesh He “condemned sin in the flesh” 2000 years ago; but now comes the undisputed evidence that the human race can also “condemn sin” in their human flesh. The great controversy will be declared an unqualified victory for Christ, for His professed people are no longer childishly content to remain “lukewarm.”

Why does He invite “the angel of the church of the Laodiceans” to take a seat around the conference table of the government of the universe? (“To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne,” Rev. 3:21.) That indicates solemn responsibility and corporate fellowship. These people are beyond obsession for their own petty security, but with Christ’s concern“ for them, “the zeal of [His] house has eaten [them] up” (John 2:17). At last they have related His cross to the issues of the great controversy, and they have grown to become as “one with Him” as a loving bride has (through his wooing) become as one with her bridegroom.

God bless your study of our last lesson for this quarter.

—Robert J. Wieland

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