Introduction
Jones and Waggoner consistently taught that in order to save us, Christ had to take upon His sinless nature our sinful, fallen nature, including the necessity to deny self. They saw this truth as essential to understand if a people can be "prepared for the day of God, " to borrow Ellen White's oft-repeated phrase. We are all born in a state of natural selfishness; Christ chose to be totally unselfish. As we are, He was born self-centered BUT unlike us He perfectly denied self all His life up to His cross. Thus He was "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin," facing temptation both from without and from within. This is an essential element of the 1888 message, the Laodicean message, for people to understand and believe if they "are to overcome even as [Christ] overcame."
The Bible Evidence
Genesis 3:15. The Saviour must be the "seed" of the fallen, sinful "woman, not of a newly created, unfallen Eve.
Genesis 12:3. "In" Abraham, in an unbroken line through his genes and DNA, the Saviour is to come and be a blessing to "all families of the earth."
Genesis 15:8-18; Hebrews 2:14. God entered into a solemn oath of covenant blood-relationship with Abraham and with us, his "children" by "flesh and blood."
Leviticus 25:47-49; Ruth 2:20; 3:9, 12. The Saviour cannot redeem the human race unless He is "near of kin," even the nearest of "kin" to us.
Exodus 25:8. The establishment of the sanctuary "among them" teaches the nearness of Christ to us, the opposite of the Roman Catholic view of farness from us.
Deuteronomy 21:22, 23. The complete nearness of the Saviour to us, His total identity with the fallen human race, is seen in that He became "cursed of God" For our sake, executed on a tree. It would be impossible for a person with a sinless, unfallen nature to be so executed.
Psalm 22:1. No person with an unfallen, sinless nature could utter such a cry.
Isaiah 9:6. "Unto us," the fallen, sinful human race, "a child is born."
Isaiah 53:3, 11. To be "despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" could not be "travail of ... soul" for Him unless He fully identified with our fallenness.
Daniel 7:13. The union of God with fallen man is expressed in the title, "Son of man."
Zechariah 5:1-4. "The curse that goeth forth unto the face of the whole earth" that "remains with us and shall be "consumed" with us, is the curse that Jesus was "made" to be for us. This "curse" is what killed ("consumed") Christ.
Matthew 1:21-23. His name is "God with us," not merely "God with Him."
Matthew 26:39. In His incarnation, Christ took upon Himself a human will of His own just as we each have a will of our own; He could not follow His Father's will unless He denied His own will. Thus He had an internal struggle, as have we. And a terrible one!
Luke 1:35. "That holy thing" was born of a fallen, sinful woman, "holy" at His birth because even from the womb He never yielded to "self" as have we. His holiness was a sinless character in sinful flesh, not a sinless nature.
Luke 9:23. If we "follow" Him in self-denial, then He also had to practice self-denial.
John 1:14. When "the Word was made flesh," there was only one kind He could have been "made," the same fallen, sinful flesh we have.
John 5:30. Christ had a "self," but a "self" which He says, "I seek not." This "self" is equivalent (in His words) to "Mine own will" which He had to deny in order to follow "the will of the Father which hath sent Me." Thus He bore a constant cross and demonstrated His perfect sinlessness.
John 6:38. The express purpose of His life-mission was to live a life of totally denying "Mine own will" in order to do "the will of Him that sent Me" up to the cross."
Romans 1:3. Christ was "made" of the "seed [DNA] of David according to the flesh."
Romans 5:18. When He died upon the cross, Christ's "holiness" had become "righteousness," the result of "condemning sin in the flesh."
Romans 8:3. God sent Him "in the likeness [homoioma, reality, not mere resemblance] of sinful flesh."
Romans 8:3. He "condemned sin in the flesh [sarx, fallen, sinful]." This He accomplished by the total, painful denial of self, "even [to] the death of the cross."
Romans 8:4. This total victory over sin in fallen, sinful flesh is to be "fulfilled in us" (dikaiomata) who also deny "the flesh" and "walk ... after the Spirit."
Ephesians 2:15, 16. Christ felt "in His flesh the enmity" we feel, but by faith He "abolished" it, "having slain the enmity" by the cross (that struggle with inward alienation is delineated in Psalm 22).
Colossians 1:21, 22. "In the body of His flesh" He "reconciled" our "alienation"and "enmity."
Summary
The consistent Bible teaching seems to be that in His incarnation the Saviour had to take upon Himself the fallen nature of sinful mankind, yet therein totally condemned and defeated sin and guaranteed such deliverance for all who choose not to resist His grace. Jones and Waggoner believed that receiving the truth would prepare a people for the second coming of Christ.
Sinful man is flesh (John 3:6): Christ "was made flesh" (John 1:14).
We are under the law (Romans 3:19): Christ "was made under the law" (Galatians 4:4).
We are under the curse (Galatians 3:10); Christ was "made a curse" (Galatians 3:10).
We are "Laden with iniquity" (Isaiah 1:14); He bore "the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6).
We are "a body of sin" (Romans 6:6): God "hath made Him to be sin for us" (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Christ, who was of the divine nature, was made partaker of our human nature, that we who are altogether human might become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).
Christ, who knew no sin, suffered the full extent of the horror and despair of our second death, that we might know the full extent of His endless life.
Conclusion
Fallen man cannot know how to deny self unless he looks at the antitypical "serpent" lifted up on a pole. This unique aspect of 1888 truth is a sharp demarcation between Babylon and the remnant church. In order for a church, a corporate "body" of God's people, to "overcome even as [Christ] overcame," this truth is essential. It must not be dismissed as mere semantics. Our youth in this age of alluring temptation desperately need to know of a Christ who is "nigh at hand, and not afar off," to borrow Ellen White's appraisal of this message of the nature of Christ as Jones and Waggoner presented it.