Third Quarter 2004 Adult Sabbath School Lessons:
"Religion in Relationships"

Insights to Lesson 1:
Created for Community
June 26-July 2

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

When the Lord God created “man” in the Garden of Eden and said it’s “not good for [him] to be alone,” the word He used meant both man and woman. We were created for “relationships” with each other, with other people, and with God. Church fellowship should be a haven of pleasant refuge from the painful relationships that prevail in much of the world’s society. Our Study Guide is principally concerned with achieving church unity for which the presence of the Holy Spirit is acknowledged as needed.

But the question arises, How can we distinguish the true Holy Spirit from the many counterfeits that exist? A senior pastor of one of our largest urban churches is solemnly warning us against the possibility that a false “holy spirit” is infiltrating the church through Pentecostalism. [1] Can this widely touted “spirit” bring us our desired unity?

Our Study Guide rightly points us to “agape love” as “the basis” of harmony and unity in our church fellowship. We are told we “must cultivate” it. Are its “attributes . . . difficult to reveal” in our lives, as is suggested? How do we “cultivate” it?

The young lady mentioned who was “severely damaged by her abusive father . . . must . . . go to the Cross to begin the healing process.” But how does she do this? How can she successfully “prioritize” her relationship with Christ?

Her success is not dependent on her will power in a works program, but on seeing a revelation of that agape. Church leadership should provide the revelation. The popular “holy spirit” of apostate Christianity cannot grasp the truth of agape; therefore it cannot be the focus of her search. Although the love known in the Bible as agape is centered in the sacrifice of Christ on His cross, belief in the pagan-papal doctrine of natural immortality (which comports with Sunday-keeping) successfully hides from view what really happened there. It’s worse than useless to send this young lady to such a source for “healing,” even though much emotion may be displayed. The love the Bible knows as agape is a principle, not an emotion, although of course heart-felt gratitude is aroused when the genuine truth of Christ’s sacrifice can be grasped.

The Bible makes clear that the truth of the cross can be understood only if we see that the love that drove Jesus to die there is what led Him to die our “second death,” not merely a temporary going to sleep. Only in that light of His utter “emptying of Himself” can we “comprehend . . . the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and
 . . . know the agape of Christ” (Eph. 3:17-19). Such agape is wholly different from anything that we humans call “love.” It mercilessly exposes counterfeit human love as basically self-love disguised.

The “death” which Jesus “tasted for every person” was (and is) that person’s actual “hell.” When our abused young lady in our Study Guide sees this, she will make the healing contact with the Savior of the world, like when you plug into a live socket. She will sense the million-volt power of a love (agape) that heals, cleanses, the human soul to its deepest primeval roots. Christ “poured out His soul unto death,” the real thing, not just a temporary nap (Isaiah 53:12), He “emptied Himself” of every drop of His being (Philippians 2:5-7), He drank our bitter hell-cup to its dregs (Matthew 26:39), and thus has paid a ransom for every human being’s soul. What Jesus experienced on the cross was a total disintegration of everything that was a divine-human personality. Only such “agape casts out [the] fear” that is this young lady’s root of despair (cf. 1 John 4:18). She can see it, and her Sabbath School class should be the place where that agape dawns on her soul!

With the deepest respect to all Christians who believe in natural immortality, let it be said that God has entrusted to Seventh-day Adventists, unworthy as we are, the blessed task of fulfilling what Jesus said in John 12:31, 32: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all unto Me.” It’s impossible for an ounce of arrogant pride to flourish in a human heart that perceives the reality of that agape. It’s Christ at last fully disclosed.

To impress its truth upon our hearts was the Lord’s purpose in “sending” that “most precious message “to us in 1888. It was intended to charge every Seventh-day Adventist Church with a power like that of a live battery that shocks when you cross the poles. It was to be a revealing of that agape, a final judgment on “Babylon” while at the same time proclaiming a joyous Good News message to “lighten the earth with glory” (Rev. 18:1-4). Yes, agape is the word that will yet “turn the world upside down” (cf. Acts 17:6).

—Robert J. Wieland

Endnote:

[1] Elder Lloyd Grolimund, Wahroonga Seventh-day Adventist Church, Sydney, Australia. Contact INSIGHTS for e-mail documentation.

Read the study notes for lesson 2