A Brief Review of the 1888 Concept of Christ’s Humanity*Christ is God in the fullest sense, eternally pre-existent, equal with the Father, possessing life in Himself, the Creator of all things. In order to save the human race He entered the corporate stream of our humanity, becoming one of us, the second or “last Adam.” In order to be our sinless Substitute, He had to identify with us completely. He could not fail to assume that which He came to redeem. Thus He took upon His sinless nature our fallen, sinful nature, coming so close to us that no other human being can be wedged in closer. His long arm reaches down to the lowest level to lift up and to save the most hopeless sinner who will look to Him with an intelligent faith. In His incarnation He endured all of our temptations, “yet without sin.” His righteousness is perfect because He condemned sin in the likeness, not the unlikeness, of our sinful flesh. No one of us can claim that he has a more difficult battle to fight than Jesus had. Since He knows the full force of our deepest, most alluring temptations, He can save to the uttermost those who are captives of Satan. Both Jones and Waggoner taught that the idea that Christ took the sinless nature of Adam before the fall is a legacy of Roman Catholicism, for them a fulfillment of the warning the apostle John writes in 1 John 4:1-3 about Antichrist. The only flesh there is in this world that Christ could “take” is the same fallen, sinful flesh that all of us possess by nature. Short of being a fraud, He could not be “exempt” from any aspect of our genetic inheritance from Adam. Christ’s perfect righteousness which He lived in our fallen, sinful flesh was therefore by faith. Thus He is the Author and Finisher of our faith. When the church as a body truly receives the same faith that motivated Jesus, the result will be righteousness manifested in His people that will honor Christ before the world and the universe. It is possible for those who exercise faith to overcome even as Christ overcame. A people can be prepared for the second coming of Christ, because this preparation will simply be righteousness by faith fully understood and believed. The 1888 messengers never used the phrase “absolute sinless perfection.” This phrase has been coined by opponents, and mistakenly applied to them. The 1888 idea is simply character perfection, overcoming even as Christ overcame, by faith. This growing up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ becomes a preparation for translation, again all by faith. It is the practical-godliness aspect of Christ’s cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary, a work begun in 1844 and now long overdue in completion. There must come a time when the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary is accomplished. To see our great High Priest as He truly is, to “behold” Him more clearly, is most essential to this end. * Some suggested sources: Christ and His Righteousness, The Glad Tidings, Waggoner on Romans, sermons in the 1901 General Conference Bulletin, by E. J. Waggoner; The Consecrated Why to Christian Perfection, and sermons in the 1893 and 1895 General Conference Bulletin by A. T. Jones. |