A prominent part of the 1888 message was the refreshing idea that in His incarnation the Son of God came close to us. It was new to many because Roman Catholic and most Protestant leaders of the era held that Christ was "exempt” from inheriting our fallen, sinful nature. Inevitably the idea had to be that He is far away from us; He belongs in stained glass windows in the cathedrals. The bottom line gets through in a subtle way: real obedience to God's holy law is virtually impossible for those who have a fallen, sinful nature (all of us).
Jones and Waggoner both believed that the idea that Christ was so "exempt" was a legacy of Roman Catholicism on the same level as Sunday-keeping and natural immortality, both of which Protestantism generally accepted. The two "messengers""the Lord sent" saw that the idea was a virtual denial of the biblical truths of righteousness by faith.
Why was the subject so important in their thinking? They related it to the unique Adventist idea of the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary. The cleansing of the "books of record" in heaven cannot take place until first a cleansing work is accomplished in the hearts of God's people on earth.1 The Good News is that a final and total reconciliation with God must and will take place, which of course means a final and total heart-reconciliation with the holy law of God.
That final atonement is not a works trip, but a faith experience. It is a by-faith-identification with Christ so complete that those who believe will "overcome even as [He] overcame."2 And right here was where the truth of the nature of Christ came into focus.
Christ "overcame” by taking on His sinless nature our fallen, sinful nature and therein "condemning sin in the flesh, “the same fallen sinful flesh that all mankind possess. It was a mighty accomplishment. The two messengers saw that only with that "faith of Jesus" will it be possible for a people to meet the final tests and be ready for His coming. Thus their understanding of Christ in His incarnation was uniquely "adventist."
A careful reading of Ellen White's some 300 plus expressions of endorsement of their message makes clear that she was heartily in support of their convictions.
The Savior Who Came All the Way to Where We Are
When Jones and Waggoner ministered to the teachers and students at South Lancaster just after the Minneapolis Conference in early 1889, Ellen White reported what impressed her about the message of her two young colleagues:
On Sabbath afternoon, many hearts were touched, and many souls were fed on the bread that cometh down from heaven.... The Lord came very near and convicted souls of their great need of his grace and love. We felt the necessity of presenting Christ as a Saviour who was not afar off, but nigh at hand.3
The students were overjoyed. It was as though they had turned a corner and come unexpectedly face to face with Jesus Himself, and He smiled at them. The experience expressed in Isaac Watts' hymn came alive for these youth:
Forbid it Lord, that I should boast
Save in the death of Christ my God;
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.
We have been told that "of all professing Christians Seventh-day Adventists should be foremost in uplifting Christ before the world."4 The context of that oft-quoted remark was Ellen White's endorsement of this 1888 message, including the truth of the nature of Christ. Here are some samples of the 1888 messengers' heart burden to lift up Christ as a Savior “not afar off, but nigh at hand":
It has been Satan's work always to get men to think that God is as far away as possible.... The great trouble with heathenism was to think that God was so far away.... Then the papacy came in,... and again puts God and Christ so far away that nobody can come near to them.... the false idea that He is so holy that it would be entirely unbecoming in Him to come near to us, and be possessed of such a nature as we have,—sinful, depraved, fallen human nature. Therefore Mary must be born immaculate ... and ... Christ must... take His human nature in absolute sinlessness from her....
But if He comes no nearer to us than in a sinless nature, that is a long way off; because I need ... someone to help me who knows something about sinful nature; for that is the nature that I have; and such the Lord did take. He became one of us.5
You and I would give a great deal to be able to act as wisely as Jesus did. Every time he knew the right thing to say, and the right thing to do, and when not to say anything. Was there a person in the world who was as keen of intellect, who knew just how to meet every emergency as did Jesus. You know he was wiser than Solomon. How did he get that wisdom?... How did it come to him?
(A voice) [someone in the congregation:] "It was intuition."
Then he was not like us at all. We read that "it behooved him to be made in all things like unto his brethren": that is, in every particular. We do not want to put the Lord off away from us, but he is one of us.... How did he come by his wisdom?... He studied God's Word.... He was wholly given to the Lord, knowing that there is no other use for man in this world but to serve the Lord.6
What Led These 1888 Messengers To Present Jesus as "Nigh At Hand"?
They saw justification by faith itself in the light of the unique third angel's message of the cleansing of the sanctuary.7 This gave them an insight that their contemporary Evangelicals could not have discovered. The clouds of many centuries that had partially hidden the Savior were rolled away. They rediscovered Paul's Romans 8 vision of Christ having been "sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh."
After the apostle described his despair in Romans 7, he found joyful hope in the Good News of a Savior who came all the way to where we are."There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus... For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death."8 How deep and thorough is Christ's deliverance from our long-entrenched compulsions to sin?
"No condemnation" means release from what the fallen Adam left to us—our inner sense of divine judgment which has hung over us all our lives.
Although these feelings of psychic wrong and maladjustment are deep and penetrating, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" goes even deeper and is more far-reaching. A new principle delivers from the fear, guilt, and moral disorder that have enslaved us, even from infancy.
No psychiatrist can accomplish such a catharsis of the human soul. This "law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" heals. Wrongs and anxieties that even our parents could not relieve find inner cleansing. "When my father and my mother forsake me [where they must leave off], then the Lord will take me up."9 Waggoner offers a breathtaking assurance:"He who takes God for the portion of his inheritance, has a power working in him for righteousness as much stronger than the power of inherited tendencies to evil, as our heavenly Father is greater than our earthly parents."10
Paul explains:"For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."11
The word "likeness" in the Greek means identical, the same as. It cannot mean unlike or different from. Christ who was (and remains) fully God now became (and remains) fully man as well. He built a divine-human bridge that spanned the gulf of alienation that sin has made. Its foundations reach all the way to the deepest root within the nature of the most helplessly lost sinner on earth.
Paul's intent was to present Christ as perfectly equipped to solve the problem of sinful alienation deep within our fallen nature. Here in our human flesh is the bastion where the dragon has made his last stand, and Christ confronts him there.
A fierce battle is being fought between Christ and Satan over this issue of whether that profound alienation can be resolved in “sinful flesh." There is no problem with sin being conquered in sinless nature different from ours. That battle was won long ago in heaven when two-thirds of the angels—in sinless nature—overcame Satan's temptations. That hasn't been an issue since. For Christ to come to earth to fight that same battle over again would be redundant.
The problem now is different. Sin has taken up residence in fallen human nature, in sinful flesh. Satan boasts, ”You can't dislodge me from this lair! No human who has sinful flesh can overcome sin, for it is invincible! The human race belongs to me!"
He arrogantly claims that his invention of sin has developed to where it now proves God is wrong in the great controversy. Sin having taken root so deep in fallen human nature, it can only be tolerated and lightly "pardoned." God must either (a) continue to generously overlook it, or (b) in Roman Catholicism He must tackle the problem after death in a Purgatory when the sinner is shed of his sinful flesh. And most Christians implicitly agree with Satan in one or the other.
Now we are on the slimy trail of the "little horn" power. The bottom-line idea is that as long as you have a sinful nature, it is inevitable that you must continue sinning. Precisely Satan's point he has been contending for since his rebellion in heaven!
But Christ slew the dragon in his last lair, proved that human sin is willful and therefore unnecessary. And in mankind who believe, He created a new abhorrence of sin that leads to its final eradication. Thus He set the captive will of sinful man free to say "No"t o sin, and through the faith of Jesus to become pure and holy.
When Peter foolishly tried to walk on the water and sank in the waves, he cried out, "Lord, save me."12 We are all Peter sinking helplessly and we need that same Lifeguard "nigh at hand." We know only too well how strong is the undertow that sucks us into the maelstrom, and how dark are those depths.
Evil passions, hatreds, and lusts, lurk beneath the surface in all human hearts. Resentments, hatreds, and addictions that we seem powerless to control roll over us like ocean waves. Appetites, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, illicit loves, mock us as unconquerable. Deep emotions that the commandment forbids, like when it says "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife," are the same urges that caused Saul of Tarsus to recognize there was discreet adultery buried in his own naturally sinful heart. That's when he first understood how broad is the law of God, and also when he began to see the gospel as the only solution to his deep-seated problem.13 He saw how to say "No!" to his sinful nature and to say "Yes!"to the Holy Spirit.
Youth (and many adults) with raging hormones despair of problems with illicit sex. The devil rejoices to boast that Christianity hasn't helped much, and the Islamic world in particular consider this as evidence of moral depravity built-in to Christianity. A survey of 1,006 American girls concludes: Religion-conscious girls are 86 percent more likely to say it's important to be a virgin at marriage than non-religion-conscious girls. However, religion-conscious girls are only 14 percent more likely to be virgins than the non-religion-conscious girls."™
Year after year about a million American teenage girls become pregnant. Not too long ago Time said that if present trends continue, 40 percent of today's 14-year-olds will be pregnant at least twice before their age 20.15 According to polls, about 70 percent of American teens are into fornication, in violation (of course) of God's law of love." If you tell that 70 percent to just say no, they laugh. And if they try to say no, they find it very difficult," says common wisdom. Such lack of self-control before marriage often programs these youth to future marital infidelity.
Meanwhile 17 million African young people have only mirrored Western mores and have died of AIDS, due largely to "sexual promiscuity" according to George F.Will in Newsweek.16
This is the world we live in. Multitudes suffer in despair, as Paul once did, for they don't want to slide down into moral darkness. They don't know how to handle temptation, peer pressure, hormonal urgings. Paul touched everyone's raw nerve when he complained of himself, "I do not understand what I do; for I don't do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate.. ..Even though the desire to do good is in me, I am not able to do it. I don't do the good I want to do; instead, I do the evil that I do not want to do.... Evil is the only choice I have.... Sin ... is at work in my body. What an unhappy man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is taking me to death?"17
Whether this is the converted or unconverted Paul seems beside the point. He uses the corporate ego, referring to humanity in general "in Adam." Here is universal mankind crying, "Help! Help!"
And Help Is Much Closer Than We Adventists Have Thought
Paul answers his despairing question himself. He tells of a Savior who has come very near. But the problem is that the scandal of nearly two thousand years of so-called Christianity has removed that Savior. If it were not for this false doctrine that has put Him far away, it would be impossible for Christian youth, Seventh-day Adventists, to say, "I have a lot of work to do if I want to be saved," or "l wish I could be completely good, but it's not always easy," or "I want to serve God, but I find it very hard" (see statements cited in chapter two).
A Gallup poll found that an upsurge in America's religious interest has been canceled with a similar swing toward immoral behavior. "There is no doubt that religion is growing," Gallup reported."But we find that there is very little difference in ethical behavior between church-goers and those who are not active religiously.... Levels of lying, cheating, and stealing are remarkably similar in both groups."18 Not only is sexual morality in jeopardy, but basic honesty is dwindling also. An experiment reported in the March 2001 Reader's Digest uncovers the embarrassing fact that some "Christian" people were as willing to keep a "lost" billfold with $50 in it as non-Christians. How does the Savior feel about such news? Is it not embarrassing to Him?
Can't you hear Satan's hosts cheering at such news? When Jesus made His debut into the world, the angelic fanfare announced, "He will save His people from their sins."19 What has happened? Why doesn't the world get to see more clear evidence that His people are indeed saved from sin, not in it?
The reason is that "the little horn" power has "cast truth down to the ground" and developed a "transgression of desolation."20 It has hidden Christ from clear view while professing to worship Him, and has substituted a far-away "Christ" who cannot save from sin. And billions do not know the switch that has happened.
The 1888 message is unique in that it rediscovered both the closeness of the Savior, and how powerfully He can deliver from the tentacles of deep sin.
The Reason Why Christ Can Save Every Sinner On Earth
The 1888 message turns the spotlight on the book of Hebrews. Christ's closeness qualifies Him to penetrate to these inner recesses of our psychic, sinful alienation:
We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels ... that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting for Him ... to make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
For both He who sanctifies, and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying ... "I will put My trust in Him."...
Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham [He took on Him the seed of Abraham, KJV].
Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.21
A Unique Insight Comes Into Its Own on This Day of Atonement
(1) Although nobody else in history has done so, Christ has tasted our second death, the ultimate collective horror of all deepest despairs.
(2) He was "made perfect" through His sufferings.
(3) He is "one" with us.
(4) He calls us "brethren," that is, He is closer to us than family members to one another.
(5) Although He was always God in human flesh, He laid aside the advantages of His divinity so that as a child and then as a man He had to learn to "trust" in God.
(6) He "took part" of the "flesh and blood" of the descendants of fallen Adam, not that of the sinless Adam. That "flesh and blood" included the appetites and hormones of our "flesh and blood" we have today. These He said "No!"to.
(7) Specifically, He did not take the nature of sinless beings, but that of the "seed," the genetic descendants of Abraham. Thus, in the strongest language possible we are assured that Christ took upon His sinless nature our sinful nature, that He might know how to succor those that are tempted."22
(8) With no exception, He was "made like" unto us, the only exception being actual participation in sin.
(9) Thus He has become a "merciful and faithful High Priest," our divine-human Physician and Psychiatrist of our souls.
(10) In every way that we are tempted, He is able to save us from the sin itself.
Was He Tempted Only as the Sinless Adam Was Tempted?
Or was He tempted as we, the sinful descendants of Adam? Hebrews reiterates the answer: "We do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin."23
No matter how deep or how strong our temptation may be, Christ was tempted that same way, "yet without sin." And that's not all! A powerful "therefore" follows verse 15: "Let us therefore come boldly... and find grace to help in time of need." His "likeness of sinful flesh" gave Him perfect entrance to condemn that very sin—judge it, pronounce sentence on it, kill it. Be "bold" in Him; you deserve to receive the victory. Don't hang back timidly as though you are doomed to defeat. Step out and believe.
The Strange Opposition to the Nearness of the Savior
There are wonderful, highly respected people who tell us, no, this cannot be. Christ could not have been tempted as we are, for there were no TVs in His day, no 31 Flavors, no vodka, no Masseratis, etc. But that idea fails to appreciate what the Bible says. Every temptation to sin that we can experience is directed at our primal love of self; and Christ knows every avenue of that appeal. Knowing how strong the temptation is, He sympathizes with us, but even that is not all. Mere sympathy and pity would not help. You can sympathize with your injured dog and pity him. But Christ "succors" us. His full-time job is saving us from yielding to temptation. We "come boldly," not timidly, in a prayer of faith to "obtain" that help.
Note the clear insistence that although Christ came close to us, taking our sinful nature, He was "yet without sin." Not even by a thought would He yield to the tempter. "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me,” He said.24 He always remained "that holy One."25 The struggle against sinful temptation was so fierce and so dangerous that He sweat drops of blood in His agony.26
That was a more terrible ordeal than any of us have known.
The struggle to yield our will to be “crucified with Him” may seem painful, but it is easier than our being crucified alone. Don't forget that Savior “nigh at hand." And living the life of resultant resurrection "with Him" is surely easier than wearing oneself out continuing to fight against the Holy Spirit.
A Promise Especially for These Last Days
"To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne."27 Now when sin and temptation seem stronger and more alluring than ever, when we are still weaker and more susceptible to falling, here comes this assurance that He gives the strength to overcome. But not on our own; "even as I also overcame" is the way.
This means that in these last days Christ's taking our fallen, sinful flesh becomes "a most precious" truth, more so than ever before. His overcoming is not only an example (an example is useless if you can't follow it!). But He becomes our Training-Exemplar. He identifies with you, and you identify with Him. Your temptation becomes His temptation; your success His victory, and your failure is His problem to solve. You are joined in a yoke with Him, and He does the pulling of the heavyweight. Your job is to stay with Him and to cooperate with Him, to "let" Him.28
Christ knew that in these last days Satan would lead multitudes into drug addiction, alcoholism, crime, lust, child abuse, homosexuality, pornography, fornication, adultery, bulimia, and countless temptations that seem irresistible because we share this common sinful nature. The lost sheep has strayed further from the fold than ever before, but the Good Shepherd goes further than ever before "until He find it."This means that as a divine Psychiatrist He probes ever more deeply into the why of our last-day weaknesses, and provides full healing. Sin abounding calls for grace much more abounding. And it is "nigh at hand."
Holiness Vis-a-vis Righteousness
Frequently Ellen White referred to the 1888 message as "the message of Christ's righteousness."29 This significant phrase implicitly requires that in His incarnation Christ took the fallen, sinful nature of man. The reason is obvious.
"Righteousness" is a word that is never used of created beings with a sinless nature. We read of "holy angels" or "unfallen angels," but never do we find the phrase righteous angels. We read of Adam and Eve before the fall that they were "innocent and holy,"30 but never do we see that they were righteous. They could have developed a "righteous character" if they had resisted temptation, but righteousness is always a term that means holiness that has confronted temptation in sinful nature and has overcome.
The word itself means justification, and something that is sinless cannot need justification. The innate meaning of the word is declaring something that has been crooked to be straightened.
"Righteous” therefore would be a misnomer for one who has only a sinless nature. Such a being would be holy, but cannot be said to be righteous. Christ was sinless, but He took our sinful, crooked nature and in it lived a perfect life of holiness. He fought and conquered the enemy in that flesh. This is His righteousness. And because the Father and the Son were always One, and the Father entered into the Son's battle on earth, Jesus could address Him both as "Holy Father" and as "Righteous Father."
If Christ had taken only the sinless nature of Adam before the fall, Inspiration would have to refer to the 1888 message of Christ's holiness, not "the message of Christ's righteousness.“ The fact that He perfectly "condemned sin in the flesh" of all fallen mankind gives Him title to that glorious name, “Christ our righteousness."
He will be successful in rescuing those who are sinking in these last-days' billows. Jude says He "is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy." Revelation corroborates this promise by displaying a people who stand “without fault before the throne of God." At this time it must be said of His people, “The marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready."31
The secret of their overcoming is not a special works program of trying harder than ever before; it is the recovery of a purer faith than any former generation have been able to grasp. The 1888 message is prophetically declared to be the "beginning" of the recovery of that faith.
The essence of that faith is a previously unrealized intimacy of sympathy with Christ, a heart-appreciation of Him, a "surveying" of His cross with the melting of frozen hearts. Nothing else but that non-egocentric, contrite concern for the honor of Him can "keep you from falling." As motives, selfish concern, fear of hell, hope of reward in heaven, will fail at last.
The Third Angel's Message and the Cleansing of the Sanctuary
Our addiction to sin stems from a sense of alienation from God and from one another with its profound loneliness. How has Christ abolished this darkness?
Those who were "aliens,... having no hope and without God in the world ... have been made near by the blood of Christ." He has "abolished in His flesh the enmity,... that He might reconcile them ... to God ... through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity."32
Even within the church, it's possible to go on Sabbath after Sabbath "having no hope, and without God in the world." But this alienation was endured by the tempted Jesus as He hung on His cross in His last hours. No one has ever felt so bereft of hope and joy as He when He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
In that final hour of total darkness of soul, Jesus drank our bitter cup to its dregs. That’s when He tasted real "death for every man." Do you feel as though the heavens are brass above you, the earth as iron beneath, that no one cares, that nothing lies before you but darkness, that Heaven seems to have slammed the door against you? That is precisely how Jesus felt, for that is a taste of the essence of "the second death." He endured it so that you might not have to feel that way.
Appreciate His Closeness to You
In His closing ministry on this great Day of Atonement He is working night and day to complete that reconciliation in the hearts of all who by faith sympathize with Him in that special work.
We can find the most intimate portrayals of His humiliation and excruciating personal pain and victory in what seems an unlikely place—the Psalms of David. At the 1895 General Conference Session Jones gave a series of studies on Christ as portrayed there.
Christ was in the place, and he had the nature, of the whole human race. And in him meet all the weaknesses of mankind, so that every man on the earth who can be tempted at all, finds in Jesus Christ power against that temptation. For every soul there is in Jesus Christ victory against all temptation, and relief from the power of it.33
On page 300 he discusses the fortieth psalm, showing how it is a self-written diary of Christ:
"Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more in number than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me."
Who?—Christ. Where did he get iniquity?—Oh, "the Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all."
Were they not more than the hairs of his head? ... Oh, "my heart faileth me," because of the enormity of the guilt and the condemnation of the sin—our sins that were laid upon him. Now return to the first verse of the fortieth psalm:—"I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry." Who?— Christ; and he was ourselves. Shall we, then, say the word:"waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry?"—Assuredly. What, laden with sin as I am?—sinner as I am?— sinful flesh as I have?—How do I know that he hears my cry?— Ah, he has demonstrated it for a whole lifetime in my nearest of kin. He has demonstrated it in my flesh that he inclines,—leans over,—to listen to my cry. O, there are times, you know, when our sins seem to be so mountain-high. We are so discouraged by them. And Satan is right there ready to say, "Yes, you ought to be discouraged by them; there is no use of your praying to the Lord; he will not have anything to do with such as you are; you are too bad."... Away with such thoughts! Not only will he hear, but... the Lord is listening to hear the prayers of people laden with sin.
In that dark hour when He suffered alone, He built a bridge over the chasm of human alienation that sin has caused. His magnificent achievement is called "the atonement," the making at-one of those who were separated—we and God.
That alienation is the fundamental reason why so many youth seek illicit physical intimacies, now more than ever before. Their souls are hungry and empty for the reality which at-one-ment with Christ alone can fill.
They naturally imagine they will satisfy their soul-hunger by physical sexual intimacies. Frightening them with warnings of pregnancy, VD, AIDS, abortion, or hell, does nothing to help them resist temptation, for its roots run too deep. With AIDS becoming rampant, the world is at last realizing that sin is suicide. But fear of hell pathetically remains powerless to save from it.
Hope of reward is equally ineffective, hence the large percentage of "religion-conscious” girls and boys who are captive to temptation. This is the main reason why the Gallup poll is forced to record so little difference in moral and ethical behavior between Christians and non-Christians.
Abounding sin needs much more abounding grace—a revelation of the closeness of the Savior, an awareness that passes through the mind and penetrates to the heart. Only those who have received the atonement can be successful in ministering that grace to youth. The message of Christ's righteousness must at last come into its own to meet the need.
The Practical Value of Truth
Many are asking, How can I get close to Him? The answer may be clearer than we have thought. It must be to believe how close He has come to you!
Then the next step follows naturally: the honest heart identifies with Him. Paul said (according to the original language) that self is "crucified with Christ."34 That is, his selfish pride, his perverse will that was contrary to the truth of God, his prideful ambition, his glorying in his own achievements or abilities or personality—this is his ego:
When I survey the wondrous cross,
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
This does not mean that the one who believes in Christ grovels ever after in the dust of self-depreciation. One's sense of self-respect is never shattered, but enhanced. To be “crucified with Christ" means also to be resurrected with Him; "it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." Now one finds his truest self-respect: "He pulled me out of a dangerous pit, out of the deadly quicksand. He set me safely on a rock and made me secure" (Psalm 4:2 TEV).
Believe that and you're forever riding high.
And side by side with an enhanced sense of self-respect comes a healthy repudiation of all "holier-than-thou" feelings. The closer one comes to Christ, the more sinful and unworthy one feels himself to be, but it's side by side with a deeper appreciation of what the Savior has done. We are never to judge ourselves, or give ourselves grade-points, nor can we claim to be sinless, for "if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
It is only when we continually “confess our sins, [that] he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."35 The proud and arrogant heresy of perfectionism can never rear its ugly head where the truth of Christ's righteousness is appreciated, for the song of every heart will be to give glory alone to Him.
Notes:
- This is the basic thesis of A.T. Jones's The Consecrated Way to Christian Perfection.
- Revelation 3:21.
- Review and Herald, March 5,1889.
- Gospel Workers, p. 156.
- Jones, General Conference Bulletin, 1895, p. 311.
- E. J.Waggoner, General Conference Bulletin, 1897, p.266.
- "The third angel ... pointed to the heavenly sanctuary,... to the most holy place, where Jesus stands before the ark, making His final intercession" [Early Writings, p. 254).
- Romans 8:1,2.
- Psalm 27:10.
- Waggoner, The Everlasting Covenant, p. 66,67
- Romans 8:3,4.
- Matthew 14:30.
- Romans 7:7-11. It's vain to argue about who this passage refers to, the converted or the pre-converted Paul. We always have self to deny. Fallen nature will not be eradicated until glorification.
- Leslie Jane Nonkin, I Wish My Parents Understood, NY, Penguin; emphasis supplied.
- December 9,1985.
- January 10,2000.
- Romans 7:15-24,TEV.
- Quoted in Passing on the Torch, by Roger Dudley (Review and Herald, 1986), p. 39
- Matthew 1:21.
- Daniel 8:12,13.
- Hebrews 2:9-11,14-18.
- Medical Ministry, p. 181, emphasis added.
- Hebrews 4:14,15.
- John 14:30, KJV.
- Luke 1:35.
- Hebrews 5:7; 12:3,4.
- Revelation 3:21.
- Matthew 11:28-30.
- MS 15,1888; Through Crisis to Victory, p. 294; MS 24,1888; Selected Messages, Book Three, pp. 168-172; Review and Herald, My 23,1889, May 27, Extra, December 23,1890.
- Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 48; Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Vol. 1, p. 1083.
- Jude 24; Revelation 12:17; 14:5,12; 19:7,8.
- Ephesians 2:12-16.
- 1895 General Conference Bulletin, p. 254. Cf. Psalm 22:1-24; 69:7-21; Isaiah 53:4-6.
- Galatians 2:20.
- 1 John 1:8,9.