|
||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
||||||||||||
Commentary on "Spiritual Gifts for Evangelism and Witnessing"
Day 2: Sunday, April 15, 2012 - Gifted Believers
Overview
Today’s lesson makes the point that every believer has a spiritual gift., and these gifts are to be used for ministry. The Holy Spirit both gives the gifts and empowers the believers to use them. These gifts are to be used for the work of the Lord, not for some other purpose.
Observations
This lesson assumes the readers are believers, and it assumes the gospel for which the gifts are intended is the Adventist message. Neither of these assumptions is certain.
First, believers are those who have trusted the Lord Jesus and His sacrifice of blood in payment for their sin and have been born again of the Holy Spirit. Believers are NOT defined as those who believe “the (Adventist) truth” and have been baptized.
A great many Adventists are not believers according to the Bible’s definition. They add to the gospel the necessity of Sabbath-keeping, and they do not place their faith in the eternal, almighty God the Son who fully completed every aspect of the atonement at the cross and who rose from the daed to give us spiritual life NOW.
People are not “born again” by being sincere. They are only born again when they believe in the Lord Jesus and His finished work and place all their trust in Him, letting go of their hold on the law. You cannot have Jesus plus the law; Jesus IS the fulfillment of the law. To hold onto both is to commit spiritual adultery (Romans 7:1-6):
Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code (Romans 7:1-6).
Second, the “Adventist truth” is not the gospel. The pure gospel is that Jesus died according to Scripture; He was buried, and He rose from death on the third day according to Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3-4).
There is nothing more: no Sabbath-sacredness; no health laws; no soul sleep; no modern prophet; no scapegoat named Satan.
When we place our faith in the Lord Jesus, He indwells us and seals us with His Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14). He gifts us with whatever gifts He chooses (1 Cor. 12:11). We are then empowered to be His witnesses and to function in His body for the good of the rest of the body.
Spiritual gifts are not natural talents. They are gifts and abilities we would not normally have, and they come directly from the Triune God as His equipping us for our work in His body. Sometimes we are not aware of all the ways we are spiritually gifted, but God equips us according to His will, not according to our talents. Sometimes His gifting is His empowerment of talents He gave us naturally, and sometimes it is completely unrelated to anything we would ever think to do.
God chooses what we do, and our job is to believe in the Lord Jesus and report to Him for duty as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1).
Summary
- Not all Adventists are believers. True believers have place their trust in the blood of the Lord Jesus to wash them from all their sin, and they have been born again of the Spirit.
- Adventism is not “the gospel”. The Holy Spirit does not equip believers to preach or spread false gospels.
- The gospel is that Jesus died for our sin, was buried, and rose on the third day according to Scripture.
- Spiritual gifts are not natural talents.
- Spiritual gifts are God’s equipping of us for His work that He gives us to do in His body.
- We do not choose our work; He chooses, and He equips us.
- Our work for the Lord Jesus only happens when we are born of the Spirit and trusting Jesus alone.
Copyright 2012 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised April 12, 2012. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Camp Verde, 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 3
Teacher's Edition Study Guide Week 3
Easy Reading Edition Study Guide Wk 3
Search the Complete Published Ellen G. White Writings
Please Support This Project
