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Commentary on "Conformity, Compromise, and Crisis in Worship"
Day 2: Sunday, August 14, 2011 - In Different Eyes
Overview
“Because we serve a God who jealously guards the sanctity of His dictates, why should we place the utmost priority on knowing what those dictates require of us? Acts 17:30 makes it clear that God does not hold us responsible for what we do not know. Nonetheless, knowing the requirements of God is essential, because it serves as a bulwark against compromise with, and conformity to, the world and its ways.” [Teacher’s Quarterly, Page 95]
Problems
Here is the subtlety of legalism and the root cause of the compromise this lesson so much wants to avoid where possible and heal where discovered.
On the surface, this quotation, found in one of the teachers comments sections, simply asks us to pay close attention to God’s requirements. Who could disagree with that? Read it more carefully and you’ll see that the Adventist approach to all of life is 100% behavioral – “I will be saved because I did good things.”
However, if you read the passage in Acts 17 you see that Paul was not talking about bad behavior that God ignored due to ignorance, but the fact that, before Jesus, God’s ultimate revelation of Himself to humanity had not happened. The Athenians had neither the Jewish law (pointing forward to Jesus) nor Jesus Himself. And yet, even in their ignorance, they identified an “unknown god”. Paul clearly referred to Jesus, attested by His resurrection, as the “god” of Whom they were ignorant. This is not a behavioral passage but a belief passage. Paul was asking them to repent of their unbelief, not their bad behavior.
Similarly, the difference between Deuteronomy 12:8 and Deuteronomy 13:18 is not behavioral. Why? Because it is absolutely possible to do “good” things regardless of whether I am doing them according to what is right in my own eyes or God’s eyes. The difference in these two passages is one of faith. Were the Israelites going to walk by sight (their own eyes) or by faith (God’s eyes)? If I am doing “good” things by sight rather than by faith, then I am sinning just as surely as if I were stealing or bowing down to an idol.
Let me put it informally. If you keep the Sabbath because you think doing so prepares you for heaven, then you are sinning.
Here it is in reverse. Many Adventists (I was one of them) would never claim that keeping the Sabbath will get them into heaven. However, these same people cower in fear at the suggestion of not keeping the Sabbath. Why? Because even if keeping it doesn’t save me, “breaking” it surely will cause me to be lost.
This is behaviorism. This is legalism. The result always is compromise.
Summary
- I absolutely agree that the human heart is deceitful.
- I absolutely disagree that the solution to this deceitfulness is careful law keeping, because my heart will deceive me every time that my law keeping is proper and sufficient.
- The only solution to my heart’s deceitfulness is Jesus, the Ever-living One. He is the One who defeated sin at the cross, defeated death in His resurrection, and now defeats both of those in me, in spite of my deceitful human heart, via the indwelling Holy Spirit.
- I am called to walk by faith in His sufficiency, not by sight in my efforts to please Him.
Copyright 2011 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised August 8, 2011. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Glendale, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.
The Sabbath School Bible Study Guide and the corresponding E.G. White Notes are published by Pacific Press Publishing Association, which is owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist church. The current quarter's editions are pictured above.
Official Adventist Resources
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Easy Reading Edition Study Guide Wk 8
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