FAFP SABBATH SCHOOL COMMENTARY LESSON 7: “MISSION TO MY NEIGHBOR” (November 11–17, 2023)

Problems with this lesson: 

• This lesson focuses on proselytizing non-Adventists without dealing with the gospel.
• The lesson describes caring for the poor as revealing “spiritual truths” that people wouldn’t otherwise understand.
• This is one more moral lesson designed to guilt readers into doing good to gain converts.

This quarter’s lessons all seem to have in common the fact that they are attempting to induce the readers to get busy and witness Adventism to their acquaintances. This emphasis on “evangelizing” is superficial, however, because it is founded on an Adventist worldview that does not include the true gospel.

While attempting to sound compassionate, this lesson, echoing Ellen White’s paradigm for Adventist behavior, emphasizes good deeds as the means of making the recipients feel connected and thus inclined to become proselytes. For example, this quote from the teacher's Comments on page 95 illustrates this approach:

The lessons and instructions of the Bible help us to understand the intention of God regarding the needy neighbor. God wants us to be in connection with His Word so that we can be His instruments of mercy and love to those who are suffering and in need of hope. Moreover, “it is God’s purpose that the rich and the poor shall be closely bound together by the ties of sympathy and helpfulness.”—Ellen G. White, The Ministry of Healing, p. 193. This togetherness will prove to be a blessing to both groups. It will help the poor, as well as the rich, in understanding God’s plan of salvation and will establish the fact that a life of benevolence will reveal spiritual truths that can be understood only amid distress and suffering.

Only by our love and service for our neighbor who needs help can we prove the genuineness of our love for Christ. True mission service comes from our true love for our Savior, a sentiment that reinforces the notion that being is oftentimes more important than giving or just doing good deeds for the needy or the poor. “The message of the Old Testament is a call to an ethical lifestyle modeled in what God has done for us in Christ. It has to do with following God’s principles through living a life of witnessing to, helping, and loving the neighbor and those in need as yourself.” —Jiˇrí Moskala, “The Mission of God’s People in the Old Testament,” Journal of the Adventist Theological Society 19, nos. 1–2 (2008): p. 58.

Notice the highlighted passage. Ellen White’s encouragement for the rich to be bound closely to the poor was primarily a means to the end that they would gain converts. The lesson’s author actually says that “togetherness” between the rich and the poor will help the poor, “as well as the rich”, understand salvation. The plan of salvation, of course, must be understood contextually to mean Adventist doctrines.

I can’t help noticing the barely-hidden arrogance, the superiority of the Adventist assumption that they have what the world needs—that if the “poor” become connected to the more well-to-do Adventists, they, too, will move away from distress as they embrace Adventism!

Furthermore, the quote at the end of the passage above by Ji’ri Moskala is even more puzzling. Perhaps because it is taken out of context, the quote leaves one mystified about how the “message of the Old Testament” models what God has done for us in Christ. The Old Testament foreshadowed Christ and led Israel to be a living metaphor, so to speak, as guided by the law, they applied God’s morality to life in a pagan world.

While the law certainly provided for the poor, the Old Testament was not a model of New Testament life. In short, the quote above is confusing and guilting. The moral lessons it attempts to teach are impossible to actually work because they are not grounded in truth. They are built upon an Adventist worldview that sees the Law, not the Lord God Himself, as the ultimate standard of behavior,

The continual attempts of this quarter’s lessons to induce readers to do more to serve the public and make people feel indebted to their Adventist acquaintances and drawn to Adventism is wearying and ultimately discouraging. Do-gooding may obligate some people to an eager Adventist, but that connection will not yield salvation.

The only way to resolve people’s true needs is to introduce them to the true Jesus and the real gospel. Unless a person understands his true need and repents, trusting the Lord Jesus’ finished work of atonement in dying, being buried, and rising from death, he will not be able to overcome his despair. Only becoming spiritually alive by believing in Jesus will give people salvation.

The Adventist “plan of salvation” is a great controversy fiction. The real way to be saved, however, is based in Scripture alone and does not include community good deeds.

Good deeds are the fruit of belief, not the means of belief. Trusting in Jesus alone is the only way to be saved, and it is the only message of hope that we can give to those who are living in despair.