The Psychology of Salvation, Part 9: Who Needs the Sanctuary?

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“Who needs the sanctuary? Don’t you believe in the New Covenant?” It was my new evangelical friend Clyde talking. “None of that stuff is binding on us today.” I had to agree, but I reasoned that God didn’t make a mistake when He designed a graphic guide to the process of salvation. If God designed it, what was He trying to teach us by its symbols? The fact that we are under the New Covenant doesn’t make me quit contemplating the story of Adam and Eve, or the travails of Job, or the decisions of the Judges, or the warnings of the prophets, or the poetry of David.

“Who needs the sanctuary?” It is a question that some Adventists also ask. Others don’t ask the question, they just don’t think about it at all. It seems dry and outdated. Some, wrestle with the sanctuary for theological reasons. Some try to find in it the answers to eschatological questions. As I child I was used to people referring to the sanctuary as a way to defend our belief in the investigative judgment, or to create a picture of Christ’s high priestly ministrations on our behalf. I always had the feeling of half cringing under the sheer weight of conviction among the speakers who could be quite argumentative. Studying or discussing the sanctuary did indeed seem like a dry, obscure pursuit; right up there with the precise meaning of the seven seals of Revelation or the exact order and proximity of end-time events.

So I have been one of those who wandered off when a sanctuary debate started to heat up, but those debates are very rare today. I would not speak against trying to understand the sanctuary, nor would I see the grappling as a waste of time, but I do think there is another way to appreciate the sanctuary.

I think we can compare our interest in the sanctuary to the Mona Lisa; it’s classical, everyone should be aware that it existed, it’s hung on a wall somewhere safely outside our daily experience, so who cares? People argue about the Mona Lisa, too. Was there some kind of fooling around going on? Was it a portrait of da Vinci’s gay lover? Was it a self-portrait where he styled himself as a woman? Was it his father, one of two men who may have commissioned the painting? Was it, perhaps, even Lisa del Giocondo as it is supposed to be? There are at least 12 plausible theories. But what percent of the world’s population is thinking about the Mona Lisa right now? What small handful are holding any opinion about her?

Let’s say the three people who are arguing for their viewpoints stop to take a breath and I look around their shoulders and spy her. I am not versed in the arguments, but I am taken with the smile people have called enigmatic. I notice that she smiles more when I look at her eyes than when I look at her mouth. I tap one of the aficionados and ask, “Where can I get a copy of that? I have an open space on a wall at home that is the right color and shape. She’d look fabulous there.”

He shrugs and suggests, “Check the gift shop. They can probably even print it on canvas for you.” That’s the end of his patience with my interruption, and he turns back to the debate. But I do buy the canvas print. I pay good money to have it framed, and I carefully place it on my wall. Each day I walk by, and she seems to watch me with mild interest. I study her face. I try to make sense of the background, but mostly I just get happier and happier with my purchase. I know little about da Vinci, but I feel that if he showed up tomorrow, we’d have much to talk about.

It’s that way with the sanctuary. You can objectify it, study its details, argue it, search it for clues as to the future, but if you don’t see the beauty in it, you have missed much. It is one of the clearest presentations of a God Who has done it all for us, Who sets our worldview straight, and Who personally coaches us in our new life. It reveals the great universal engine which turns everything. It’s beautiful and encouraging. You can love the sanctuary in a way that draws you to its Artist.