If this message was the beginning of the latter rain and the loud cry, reason insists that it was truth more clearly revealed than had been seen by any previous generation of God's people since the former rain bestowed at Pentecost.
Speaking within the 1888 decade and in context referring to the Jones-Waggoner message, Ellen White said:
Great truths that have lain unheeded and unseen since the day of Pentecost, are to shine from God's word in their native purity. To those who truly love God the Holy Spirit will reveal truths that have faded from the mind, and will also reveal truths that are entirely new.
How could the 1888 message be a mere re-emphasis of sixteenth-century concepts, important as the Reformers' doctrines were for their generation? Ellen White said it was "the third angel's message in verity." If it was the same as Luther taught, the apostate L. R. Conradi was right when he said that Luther taught the third angel's message in his day, and there is therefore no justification for the existence of Seventh-day Adventists.
If our message of justification by faith is the same as that proclaimed by theologians and evangelists of Sunday-keeping churches, then the question does become a serious one: what reason do Seventh-day Adventists have for existing? Do they have no distinct contribution to make concerning the gospel? Or is their contribution only of "works"? Has the Lord commissioned the popular churches to proclaim the gospel and Seventh-day Adventists to proclaim the law?
Or at best, are Seventh-day Adventists merely a competitor on the gospel street, a "me-too" voice hawking virtually the same wares as others, like automotive competitors today whose cars are practically identical except in name? In the light of Ellen White's comment about "the third angel's message in verity," it follows that there must be something unique in the 1888 message that sets it apart from popular Evangelical ideas. This is not to criticize the Evangelicals; they just don't see this message.
Jones and Waggoner recognized that there are two phases of a single gift of justification:
(1) forensic, or legal, made for all men, and accomplished entirely outside of us at the cross of Christ; and
(2) an effective transformation of heart in those who believe, and thus experience a justification by faith. Ellen White rejoiced in the uniqueness of their message, recognizing that it went far beyond the concepts of the Reformers or of contemporary Christians:
The Lord in His great mercy sent a most precious message to His people through Elders Waggoner and Jones... It presented justification through faith in the Surety; it invited the people to receive the righteousness of Christ, which is made manifest in obedience to all the commandments of God... This is the message that God commanded to be given to the world. It is the third angel's message, which is to be proclaimed with a loud voice, and attended with the outpouring of His Spirit in a large measure.
The messengers broke through to the amazing discovery that justification by faith is more than a declaration of acquittal for "past sins" (the usual Evangelical and Adventist understanding); it reconciles the alienated heart to God and makes the believer obedient to all the commandments of God:
The correctness of... [Paul's] statement that "the doers of the law shall be justified," is obvious. To justify means to make righteous, or to show one to be righteous...
Deeds done by a sinful person have no effect whatever to make him righteous, but, on the contrary, coming from an evil heart, they are evil, and so add to the sum of his sinfulness. Only evil can come from an evil heart, and multiplied evil cannot make one good deed; therefore it is useless for an evil person to think to become righteous by his own efforts. He must first be made righteous before he can do the good that is required of him, and which he wants to do…
The apostle Paul, having proved that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, so that by the deeds of the law no flesh shall be justified in his sight, proceeds to say that we are "justified [made righteous] freely by his grace...."
"Being made righteous freely." How else could it be?...
It is true that God will by no means clear the guilty; He could not do that and still be a just God. But He does something which is far better: He removes the guilt, so that the one formerly guilty does not need to be cleared—he is justified, and counted as though he never had sinned....
The taking away of the filthy garments [in Zechariah 3:15] is the same as causing the iniquity to pass from the person. And so we find that when Christ covers us with the robe of His own righteousness, He does not furnish a cloak for sin, but takes the sin away. And this shows that the forgiveness of sins is something more than a mere form, something more than a mere entry in the books of record in heaven, to the effect that the sin has been canceled... It actually clears him from guilt; and if he is cleared from guilt, is justified, made righteous, he has certainly undergone a radical change... And so the full and free forgiveness of sins carries with it that wonderful and miraculous change known as the new birth;... the same as having a new, or a clean, heart...
Again, what brings justification, or the forgiveness of sins? It is faith....This same exercise of faith makes the person a child of God.
Jones was in complete agreement:
Justification by faith is righteousness by faith; for justification is the being declared righteous... Justification by faith, then, is justification that comes by the word of God.
... The word of God is self-fulfilling... The word of God spoken by Jesus Christ is able to cause that to exist which has no existence before the word is spoken....
In man's life there is no righteousness... But God has set forth Christ to declare righteousness unto and upon man. Christ has spoken the word only, and in the darkened void of man's life there is righteousness to every one who will receive it... The word of God received by faith... produces righteousness in the man and in the life where there never was any before; precisely as, in the original creation....
"Therefore being justified [made righteous] by faith [by expecting, and depending upon, the word of God only], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
Men must not only become just by faith—by dependence upon the word of God—but being just, we must live by faith. The just man lives in precisely the same way, and by precisely the same thing, that he becomes just.
Here is the word of God, the word of righteousness, the word of life, to you "now," "at this time." Will you be made righteous by it now? Will you live by it now? This is justification by faith. This is righteousness by faith. It is the simplest thing in the world.
The question immediately arises, Were these 1888 messengers correct when they said repeatedly and emphatically that justification by faith is "making righteous?" Or is this in reality a revival of the old Roman Catholic concept of justification by faith which is disguised justification by works?
Some assume that it is impossible that the believer ever becomes or is made righteous; he is only declared righteous when in fact he is not. To teach that justification by faith is making righteous has been said to be the insignia of Roman Catholicism.
Yet we have here what Ellen White endorsed as "the third angel's message in verity," the heart of the 1888 message itself. If this is disguised Roman Catholicism, she was a misinformed, naive enthusiast, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church must remain in a state of tragic confusion.
In Testimonies to Ministers she describes in this message a unique element:
It presented justification through faith in the Surety; it invited the people to receive the righteousness of Christ, which is made manifest in obedience to all the commandments of God.... Therefore God gave to His servants a testimony that presented the truth as it is in Jesus, which is the third angel's message, in clear, distinct lines... It presents the law and the gospel, binding up the two in a perfect whole."
Jones's and Waggoner's idea of justification by faith as "making righteous" was not the Roman Catholic idea of an infused righteousness poured into the "saint," creating in him a merit on his own, so that his continued sinful deeds cease to be sinful because of his merit. The Roman Catholic idea (widely held by many others as well) is that sin ceases to be sinful in the "saint"; "concupiscence" is no longer an evil to the judged after the sacramental (or legal) justification takes place.
Jones's and Waggoner's teaching was that true justification by faith makes a believer righteous in the sense that it reconciles him to God, and thus makes him to be an obedient doer of His law. And this takes place before what we normally speak of as sanctification!
As we saw above, they clearly recognized that millions of years of obedience on the part of the repentant sinner could never atone for his sin; he does not and never will have an iota of merit. But faith in Christ delivers him from his captivity to disobedience to the law, and sets him in the path of obedience. The faith that operates in justification by faith is a working faith, and the atonement cannot be a true reconciliation with God unless it effects a corresponding reconciliation with the character of God, which is obedience to His holy law. Any so-called justification by faith which declares a man just who continues to disobey the law of God is a lie, for it has distorted both justification and faith, and understands neither.
The 1888 messengers make their point clear:
"All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God being justified [made righteous, or doers of the law] freely by his grace."... No one has anything in him out of which righteousness can be made. Then the righteousness of God is put literally into and upon all that believe. Then they are both clothed with righteousness, and filled with it, according to the Scripture. In fact, they then become "the righteousness of God" in Christ. And how is this accomplished? God declares his righteousness upon the one who believes. To declare is to speak. So God speaks to the sinner,... and says, "You are righteous," and immediately that believing sinner ceases to be a sinner, and is the righteousness of God. The word of God which speaks righteousness has the righteousness itself in it, and as soon as the sinner believes, and receives that word into his own heart by faith that moment he has the righteousness of God in his heart and since out of the heart are the issues of life it follows that a new life is thus begun in him; and that life is a life of obedience to the commandments of God…
The Lord never makes any mistakes in his reckoning. When Abraham's faith was reckoned to him for righteousness, it was because it was indeed righteousness. How so? Why, as Abraham built on God, he built on everlasting righteousness... He became one with the Lord, and so God's righteousness was his own.
Justification has to do with the law. The term means making just. Now in Rom. 2:13 we are told who the just ones are: "Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified." The just man, therefore is the one who does the law. To be just means to be righteous. Therefore since the just man is the one who does the law, it follows that to justify a man, that is, to make him just, is to make him a doer of the law.
Being justified by faith, then, is simply being made a doer of the law by faith…
God justifies the ungodly. Is that not right? —Certainly it is. It does not mean that he glosses over a man's faults, so that he is counted righteous, although he is really wicked; but it means that he makes that man a doer of the law. The moment God declares an ungodly man righteous, that instant that man is a doer of the law. Surely that is a good work, and a just work, as well as a merciful one...
It will be seen, therefore, that there can be no higher state than that of justification. It does everything that God can do for a man short of making him immortal, which is done only at the resurrection... Faith and submission to God must be exercised continually, in order to retain the righteousness—in order to remain a doer of the law.
This enables one to see clearly the force of these words: "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law." Rom. 3:31. That is, instead of breaking the law, and making it of no effect in our lives, we establish it in our hearts by faith. This is so because faith brings Christ into the heart, and the law of God is in the heart of Christ. And thus "as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." This one who obeys is the Lord Jesus Christ, and his obedience is done in the heart of everyone who believes. And as it is by his obedience alone that men are made doers of the law, so to him shall be the glory forever and ever.
Perhaps we can begin to see why Ellen White was overjoyed with this message.
She recognized that here is the "how" of the "what" of Revelation 14, which describes God's people in the last days as those "who keep God's commandments." When she spoke of Christ's righteousness imputed by faith, she was specifically not teaching a mere fictional-book transaction. She was speaking of something real, a "faith which worketh by love. "And when she wrote her manuscript entitled "Danger of False Ideas of Justification by Faith," she was not trying to refute the message of Jones and Waggoner; she was upholding their message, and refuting the fictional view that they opposed:
The danger has been presented to me again and again of entertaining, as a people, false ideas of justification by faith. I have been shown for years that Satan would work in a special manner to confuse the mind on this point....The point which has been urged upon my mind for years is the imputed righteousness of Christ... I have made it the subject of nearly every discourse and talk that I have given to the people.
In examining my writings fifteen and twenty years old (I find that they) present the matter in this same light... living principles of practical godliness…
[Ministers] should keep this matter—the simplicity of true godliness—distinctly before the people in every discourse.... Men are in the habit of glorifying men and exalting men. It makes me shudder to see or hear of it, for there have been revealed to me not a few cases where the home life and inner work of the hearts of those very men are full of selfishness. They are corrupt, polluted, vile; and nothing that comes from all their doings can elevate them with God, for all that they do is an abomination in His sight. There can be no true conversion without the giving up of sin, and the aggravating character of sin is not discerned...
There is danger of regarding justification by faith as placing merit on faith. ... What is faith?... It is an assent of the understanding of God's words which binds the heart in willing consecration and service to God, who gave the understanding, who moved the heart, who first drew the mind to view Christ on the cross of Calvary...
The law of the human and the divine action makes the receiver a laborer together with God. It brings man where he can, united with divinity, work the works of God... Divine power and the human agency combined will be a complete success, for Christ's righteousness accomplishes everything.
Here we have something in fall harmony with the 1888 messengers. She recognized the "new light" sent by the Lord to prepare a people for the coming of Christ. In the same manuscript she saw that the popular "justification by faith" of the Sunday-keeping churches falls short of the truth:
While one class pervert the doctrine of justification by faith and neglect to comply with the conditions laid down in the Word of God— "If ye love me, keep my commandments" —there is fully as great an error on the part of those who claim to believe and obey the commandments of God but who place themselves in opposition to the precious rays of light—new to them— reflected from the cross of Calvary....
Unconverted men have stood in pulpits sermonizing. Their own hearts have never experienced, through a living, clinging, trusting faith, the sweet evidence of the forgiveness of their sins. How then can they preach the love, the sympathy, the forgiveness of God for all sins. How can they say, "Look and live?" Looking at the cross of Calvary, you will have a desire to bear the cross. ... Can any look, and behold the sacrifice of God's dear Son, and their hearts not be melted and broken, ready to surrender to God heart and soul?
Let this point be fully settled in every mind: If we accept Christ as a Redeemer, we must accept Him as a Ruler. We cannot have the assurance and perfect confiding trust in Christ as our Saviour until we acknowledge Him as our King and are obedient to His commandments.... We have then the genuine ring in our faith, for it is a working faith. It works by love.
By 1895-6, Jones's and Waggoner's views matured:
1. There is a legal or forensic justification that applies to "all men":
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son— God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved— Light is come into the world (John 3:16-19).
In him [Christ] was life; and the life was the light of men... That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world (John 1:4-9).
God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19).
Our Saviour Jesus Christ... hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel (2 Timothy 1:10).
If one died for all, then were all dead: and... he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves (2 Corinthians 5:14,15).
In due time Christ died for the ungodly... While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.... When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son...
If through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto [the] many.... The judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offenses unto justification... As by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life (Romans 5:6-18).
All alike have sinned, and are deprived of the divine splendour, and all are justified by God's free grace alone, through his act of liberation in the person of Christ Jesus (Romans 3:23,24, NEB).
Jones and Waggoner grew to understand these texts as follows:
(a) Christ did something for every human being when He gave Himself for the world. He brought two gifts to light by His infinite sacrifice: life and immortality.
(b) Life has been given to mankind, for all who come into the world, whether or not they believe in Christ or know of Him. One died for all, and had He not done so, all would be dead. Never has a human breath been drawn since Adam's fall except as the gift of Christ's sacrifice. All people owe even their physical existence to Christ, and are infinitely and eternally in debt to Him for everything they have, with the sole exception of their grave. This alone is ours by right; this alone we have earned. "The cross of Calvary is stamped on every loaf. It is reflected in every water spring" (The Desire of Ages, p. 660).
(c) This gift of life being impossible apart from Christ. He is "the true Light, which lighteth every man" (John 1:9). "Never one, saint or sinner," has known a moment's joy or happy laughter but as the purchase of Christ's blood, whether or not he knows its Source. "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" and thus "the chastisement of our peace [for all] was upon him; and with his stripes we are [all] healed" (Isaiah 53:6,5). The "we" and the "us all" is the entire human race. "He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 5:45).
(d) But since all men deserve nothing but condemnation and death, it is solely by "the grace of God, and the gift by grace," that human life "hath abounded unto [the] many." The sacrifice of Christ has become effective for all men in that "while we were yet sinners [enemies], Christ died for us." Therefore, whatever Adam transmitted to his posterity, Christ has canceled out. He died for the ungodly. This is the only reason human life can continue.
(e) Exactly as the offense abounded, so did "the free gift... [come] upon all men unto justification of life." The New English Bible correctly translates Paul: "All are justified" (Romans 3:24).
(f) Therefore the gospel does not tell men that they will be justified if they do something first, even if that something is to believe. The gospel tells all men that they are already justified, legally and forensically. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them" (2 Corinthians 5:19), and our work is simply to exercise the ministry of reconciliation and tell men so. He has committed unto us the word of reconciliation, the proclamation of news that is already accomplished.
(g) It follows that the only difference between a saint and a heathen is that the former has heard and believed the news, and the latter has either not heard or disbelieved it. The Lord is actively working for the salvation of all men, and He "will have all men to be saved" (1 Timothy 2:4). All who do not resist will be drawn to Him. (It is, of course, possible to resist, and a great majority do so and will be lost.)
2. Jones and Waggoner based their view of justification by faith on the idea that a heart-appreciation of the gift and sacrifice of Christ immediately works a transformation in the life. This is not a salvation by works. Nor is it inherent or infused righteousness, as taught by the Council of Trent. Faith itself involves a change of heart. He who was an enemy of God actually becomes a friend, through faith. This is receiving the atonement (Romans 5:11). The 1888 understanding of faith itself is tooted in Jesus' own definition:
God so loved the world, that he gave [not lent] his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish (John 3:16).
Quite independently of law, God's justice has been brought to light... It is God's way of righting wrong effective through faith in Christ for all who have such faith—all, without distinction. For all alike have sinned, and are deprived of the divine splendour, and all are justified by God's free grace alone, through his act of liberation in the person of Christ Jesus. For God designed him to be the means of expiating sin by his sacrificial death, effective through faith. God meant by this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had overlooked the sins of the past—to demonstrate his justice now in the present, showing that he is himself just and also justifies any man who puts his faith in Jesus (Romans 3:21-26, NEB).
Abraham believed God, and it [his faith] was counted unto him for righteousness... To him that worketh not but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.
And therefore it [his faith] was imputed to him for righteousness (4:3-5, 22).
Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (5:1).
The righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven?... or, Who shall descend into the deep? ... The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness... So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (10:6-17).
A man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ... I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.... I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain…
They which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham...
Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith....
We through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith... faith which worketh by love (Galatians 2:16-5:6).
Jones and Waggoner understood these passages as follows:
(a) Faith is the only proper response of the human heart to God's love. Faith cannot be mere intellectual assent to right doctrine, nor an egocentric grasping for security. Faith comes by the proclamation of the word of the cross. It is the heart acceptance of this appeal, "Be ye reconciled to God," in response to the atonement in the sacrifice of Christ. God does the loving and the giving; we do the believing.
(b) Therefore it follows that a heart-appreciation of the forensic, or legal, justification achieved by the sacrifice of Christ is justification by faith. For all men Christ has brought "life... to light," but only for those who believe has He brought "immortality to light"(2 Timothy 1:10).
(c) Such faith is a crucifixion of self with Christ. With no thought of works of any kind, or a desire for personal reward, the believer joins Christ on the cross:
When I survey the wondrous crossThis is no painful struggle to yield self—this is a joyous, voluntary act of identification. Only let the love of God shine through, only let the gospel be proclaimed in its purity free from adulteration, and the soul who believes will find no sacrifice difficult:
On which the prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Were the whole realm of nature mine(d) Thus, for God to justify the ungodly does not mean that the believing heart is at enmity and alienation against God. Faith includes, it produces, a change of heart. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness." There is a change of heart the moment a person believes. Believing is the change of heart! When the ungodly is justified by faith, his heart is melted: "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." This passage in 2 Corinthians 5:17 is describing justification by faith. Here is a grand dimension of the meaning of faith:
That were a tribute far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my life, my soul, my all.
The faith essential for salvation is not mere nominal faith, but an abiding principle, deriving vital power from Christ. It will lead the soul to feel the love of Christ to such a degree that the character will be refined, purified, ennobled. This faith in Christ is not merely an impulse, but a power that works by love and purifies the soul.
The 1888 message went beyond the so-called Reformation view that justification by faith is merely a legal transaction taking place millions of light-years away, without respect to the heart of the believer himself. It also went far beyond the usual current "historic" Adventist understanding that regards justification by faith as pardon or forgiveness for past sins, while a life of present obedience is labelled as "sanctification." However much justification by faith depends upon the legal substitutionary work of Christ outside of the believer, its very essence is a change within the believer. The merit on which justification by faith rests is never within the believer, but justification by faith itself is evident in the believer: Self is "crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:20). This is why justification by faith is dependent upon the justification achieved for all men at the cross. And genuine sanctification is the experience of extended, on-going justification by faith, separated unto God.
(e) The believer's faith is counted for righteousness. Faith embraces the whole of Christ's righteousness. All the Lord asks from the sinner is true faith; He credits him with all the perfect righteousness of Christ.
The 1888 view is not that faith equals righteousness, but that God counts it for righteousness. It's all that Abraham gave the Lord, and it's all that He wants from any of us. It is far more than a mere legal transaction, paper work, as it were. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for,the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1, emphasis supplied). This so-called definition of faith can best be understood in the light of the imputation of Christ's righteousness: if a sinner has faith, God accepts it as an earnest, or down payment, the assurance of things God hopes for. Only if New Testament faith is understood can this magnificent imputation be effective (Romans 3:25, NEB).
God cannot let the sinner enter heaven if even the slightest tidbit of sin mars his character, because the admission of an amount the size of a tiny seed would grow until it again contaminated the universe. But if He waits until the sinner is sanctified before He justifies him, even eternity would not suffice for the process. And if He merely pardons sin in the sense of winking His eye at it, if He justifies the sinner by admitting him to heaven in an unbelieving state, He has merely perpetuated sin and cast contempt upon the sacrifice of His own Son.
But completely aside from works of any kind, God can be just and the justifier of the sinner who has such faith, because it is a true heart-appreciation of God's righteousness in setting Christ forth to be "a propitiation through faith in His blood." Were there no blood, no cross, I here could be no legal basis for justification; neither could there be any faith on the part of a sinner. The blood accomplishes both an objective arid a subjective atonement.
This is not the "moral influence theory of the atonement," because that blood does "speak" to the repentant human heart. This is how true justification by faith "lays the glory of man [and woman] in the dust."
But in that faith, even as a grain of mustard seed, lies "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
God delights to see it. "This is enough," He cries, and reckons it for righteousness, pronouncing the believing sinner righteous through the merits of the Saviour, who is the living object of the sinner's faith.
(f) The Reformation view was necessarily limited by the prevailing egocentric radius of concern of that age. Embracing as the Reformers did the papal doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul, they could not escape the limitations of that restricted radius. For the first time in Adventist history, and possibly for the first time in Christian history (at least since the apostles), Jones and Waggoner broke free from the tether of that egocentric concern. They began to sense the greater concern of a true Christ-centered view. This glimpse of a larger view was made possible for them, not by the perusal of commentaries or the works of Protestant theologians, but by their knowledge of the distinctly unique Seventh-day Adventist understanding of the cleansing of the sanctuary.
All they had to do was to correlate the otherwise sterile doctrine of the cleansing of the sanctuary with the New Testament concept of justification by faith, and they discovered the message that prompted Ellen White to her enthusiastic avowal: "Every fiber of my heart said Amen."
(g) While "works" (obedience) have nothing to do with this justification by faith, they are inherent in the faith itself. The works were not a noun, but a verb. If one has the all-important verb in the sentence of Christian experience, there is no end to the nouns that will be its objects, leading the believer (and the corporate body of the believing church) all the way into a preparation for translation at the coming of the Lord.
(h) This is why sanctification is the ongoing and ever-deepening reality of justification by faith. One never gets over being justified by faith (that is, made obedient to God's law) until the moment of glorification. There is no need to split hairs over subtle distinctions between the two and anathematize fellow church members who don't agree on where the hairline distinction is, or is not. No one can ever claim to be fully sanctified by faith—any tendency to do so immediately negates the reality of justification by faith. At any given moment from the beginning of conversion to the glorious experience of meeting the Lord when He comes, the believer trusts only in the imputed righteousness of Christ.
Since I, who was undone and lost,(i) The message of Jones and Waggoner as such swallowed up egocentric insecurity in a greater concern for the honor and vindication of Christ in closing the great controversy. The focus shifted from concern over one's own personal security in depending on imputed righteousness to the larger one of a desire that Christ be pleased to see in His people a demonstration of imparted righteousness.
Have pardon through His name and word;
Forbid it, then, that I should boast,
Save in the cross of Christ my Lord.
This new motivation was infinitely removed from the heresy of "perfectionism." In commenting on the 1888 message, Ellen White said that the former is our "title to heaven," but the latter is our "fitness for heaven." The great clock of God had solemnly struck a note that had never sounded in the days of the sixteenth-century Reformers—the hour was late, and it was time that a Voice proclaim: "It is finished."
As we bow humbly at the foot of the cross where Jesus died, we are all like little children with an infantile grasp of its glorious significance. The widespread personal and denominational pride that permeates our life as a church, the constant tendency to honor and glorify fallible men and women, our infatuation with the pleasures and things of this world—all are indications of how little we understand or appreciate true justification by faith.
The remedy is not to find something more to do in the form of new works, but something to believe. And no one can believe except with the broken, contrite heart. Our history, past and current, tells us that we haven't yet learned the one needful lesson:
God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world (Galatians 6:14).
And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:1,2).