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Commentary on "In the Shadow of His Wings"
Day 7: Friday, May 13, 2011 - Further Study
Today’s lesson once again ends the week with extended quotes from Ellen White. She enlarges on David’s repentance and God’s forgiveness and our need to forsake our ways and unrighteous thoughts and return to the Lord.
Once again this lesson misses the core of reality: we are asked to believe in the Lord Jesus and accept His blood as payment for our sin. We are not asked to confess endlessly, spending our entire lives trying secure our standing before God. Rather, we are asked to confess our natural depravity, our natural spiritual death that condemns us to hell apart from our receiving the Lord Jesus as our Savior and our Lord.
Receiving Jesus cannot happen apart from accepting His shed blood on our account. The confession we must offer God is confession of our natural identity, our human condition and nature. When we have recognized and confessed our hopeless sin to God and placed our faith in Jesus and His sacrifice, we are made alive, sealed by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14), and we pass from death to life (Jn. 5:24). God transfers us then from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son (Col 1:13).
Once we are alive in Him, He keeps us (Jude 2). We are secure forever because He is has not only counted us sinless but has imputed Christ’s personal righteousness to our account. The sins we commit throughout our lives after being born again do not make us unborn. We continue to live in Him, and we confess our sins in order to stay in truthful relationship with Him--and we also continue to submit our fleshly instincts and desires to Him so we can live by His power and love, enjoying our new inheritance as God’s adopted children (Romans 8).
Instead of reading Ellen White, read Romans 1 through 8 to see in detail how God provides the payment for our sin, how He loves us, saves us, credits us with righteousness, and changes us by His Spirit. The gospel is liberating.
God’s word is our ONLY source of truth, and His Spirit is our only true Teacher of His revealed truth.
Thank you for studying with me this week!
- Colleen Tinker, editor
Proclamation! Magazine
Copyright 2011 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised May 11, 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
Standard Edition Study Guide Week 7
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Easy Reading Edition Study Guide Wk 7
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