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Commentary on "Every Member Ministry"
Day 5: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - Working Together, With God
Overview
Today's lesson deals with the nature of evangelistic work: the goal of it is divine and God is behind it, empowering the church to realize successful evangelism. Because God loves the crowning act of His creation—human beings, the cross just expresses more clearly how much God wants those who are top in his creation to enter and be a part in His kingdom. This revelation of God's love drives the evangelistic effort. The importance of working together with the Holy Spirit receives the author's attention, and he insists on submission to Him and death to self.
Observations
It is true that the cross of Christ reveals God's love, but this love is less tied to creation than the author think. He thinks that because man is the height of God's creation, and God loves His creation, it follows that Christ's death is nothing else than an extension and more clear manifestation of God's love for his creature. What is missing from the picture is the reality that the love manifested in Jesus Christ's death is the manifestation of a different kind of love, a love that is more mysterious which cannot be explained by his love for creation.
Why would God absorb His own wrath, suffer unimaginable pain, and die when He's not to be blamed for the havoc made by sin? Why would the most holy Being ever to exist, who is not part of the creation, enter the realm of creation to suffer as the most unrighteous being? Why clean up the mess made by your enemy and save the one who's determined to kill you, as the crucifixion demonstrates? God's love for creatures found in rebellion is totally unexpected
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation (Romans 5:6-11).
This passage means that the gospel message is a new message: a holy God loves His enemies and pours His grace on undeserving, rebellious, unholy, utterly sinful people. It is not an old story, like God's love for creation, but it is a message that produces the deepest repentance, a radical change of perspective. Instead of running from God, looking for satisfaction, meaning and purpose in life away from God while uttering platitudes about God's love for creation, the message of the gospel turns the runaway sinner toward God Himself in whom he finds His identity, satisfaction, meaning and purpose in life. It takes the miracle of regeneration produced by the Holy Spirit to believe in the message of the gospel.
Believing that God loves His creation is easy, if the creation’s rebellion is minimized. Believing in God's astounding love for enemies, for rebels, is not easy: it's impossible. It takes the miracle produced by the Holy Spirit to truly believe that kind of grace. In Adventist theology sin is minimized; the true dimensions of man's fallenness are not rightly perceived. Where sin is big, God's grace is big; where sin is small, God's grace is small. Where sin is big, the gospel is extraordinary, one of a kind; when sin is small, the gospel is ordinary, boring, uninteresting.
Copyright 2012 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised April 9, 2012. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Camp Verde, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.
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