The Divinely Appointed Remedies:
"White Raiment" and "Eyesalve"
Chapter 8 (continued — part 2)
It can be questioned if this generation
has seen such powerful presentations of "Christ’s righteousness in
relation to the law" as in the 1895 Bulletin and in Jones’ The
Consecrated Way. Never has the Book of Psalms been so revealed as the
most Christ-centered book of the Bible as it is in those studies. Had it
not been for the non-committal attitude and opposition of a great
proportion of our brethren in the 1890’s, "the revelation of Christ’s
righteousness" in these messages would have wrought a miracle in
those days, and the church would have been clothed with "white
raiment" as she went forth to proclaim the Loud Cry to the world.
Christ would have been vindicated in His people as they demonstrated in
their sinful flesh the faithful reflection
of what He demonstrated in "the likeness of sinful flesh" when
He was on earth. Having seen Jesus clearly revealed, they would have
received "the faith of Jesus". Christ and His righteousness have
not yet been clearly seen.
Another view has replaced the 1888
message of Christ’s righteousness: Christ had to take the sinless nature
of Adam before the Fall, and therefore it is not possible for His perfect
character to be manifested in our sinful flesh. This view is virtually
identical to that held by those who observe Sunday and hold to the natural
immortality of the soul. None of the "popular ministry" has any
clear concept of "Christ’s righteousness", although a sincere
effort to grasp it may be detected in such writers as Reinhold Niebuhr,
C.S. Lewis, and some others. But no church or movement holds to the unique
view that God gave to Seventh-day Adventists in 1888. We still have the
field clear!
"What difference does it make?"
is the question many ask. Only a legalistic frame of mind could ask such a
question. The concept of "Christ’s righteousness" is
meaningless to those motivated by an egocentric concern, except as a
legalistic, judicial maneuver to cover up our continued unrighteousness.
The emphasis on legally "imputed righteousness" has become so
heavy that for the average Christian there remains no foreseeable
possibility that he can ever become truly like Christ in character.
Such concepts make an actual preparation
for Christ’s coming and translation seem to be an experience so
visionary and remote as to belong in the next century or beyond.
The following quotation is often pressed
into service to support the heavy emphasis on legally imputed righteousness.
The first sentence is emphasized and the context slighted. Note carefully
that this statement is not an oblique rebuke of the 1888 messengers —
Ellen White firmly supported their message at this time. She is referring
to the "popular ministry’s" counterfeit teaching on
"righteousness by faith", and her true emphasis on imparted
righteousness:
When it is in the heart to obey God,
when efforts are put forth to this end, Jesus accepts this disposition
and effort as man’s best service, and He makes up for the deficiency
with His own divine merit But He will not accept those who claim to have
faith in Him, and yet are disloyal to His father’s commandment. We
hear a great deal about faith, but we need to hear a great deal more
about works. Many are deceiving their own souls by living an easy-going,
accommodating, crossless religion. But Jesus says, "If any man will
come after Me, let him deny himself. and take up his cross and follow
Me". (ST, June 16, 1890; 1 SM 382).
But this is commonly interpreted to mean,
"if you say you love the Lord, ‘it is in the heart to obey God’,
so just try a little to be good. You can’t obey the commandments,
and the Lord knows it, so He’ll be satisfied and ‘make up’ for it
all ‘with His own divine merit’".
Take the problems of sex, for example.
While promiscuity, infidelity, and divorce make frightening inroads into
the church, most of our well-intentioned ministers continue to hold to a
view that Christ took the sinless nature of Adam before the Fall, and by
implication therefore He could not possibly have been tempted to
fornication or adultery. Adam certainly was not so tempted! The official
view taught in Questions on Doctrine is that Christ
"was exempt from the inherited passions and pollutions that corrupt
the natural descendants of Adam" (p. 383). This is a rather confused
statement, for it implies a contradiction of both the Bible and the Spirit of
Prophecy. The authors could have made it only because of ignorance or
disregard of the 1888 concept of Christ’s righteousness.
Christ was not "exempt" from
anything. Heaven forbid! The only reason He did not sin was that he chose
not to sin, not because of any advantaged "exemption"
that made temptation less tempting to Him than to us. He chose not to sin
because He knew how to die to self and demonstrated it by dying on His
cross. Thus he "condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. 8:3) including
sexual sin, which He was as much tempted to "in the flesh" as
anybody else. He was "in all points tempted like as we
are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15). If we deny this, there is no
message of Christ’s righteousness, for Christ’s righteousness would be
meaningless apart from the context of inheriting the "likeness of
sinful flesh" that any son or daughter of Adam receives.
But many don’t understand this.
Ignorance of this truth severs their bond of union and sympathy with
Christ. This is why thousands have nothing to hold them in their hours of
temptation and Christ is openly humiliated by a remnant church that offers
no appreciably higher moral excellence than do the churches that hold to
those "poisonous drafts of Babylon".
One needs only to wrestle with the
problems found in mission fields or of a modern city church to realize
that we are desperately "naked’ in this area of
"righteousness", Our True Witness says, "I counsel thee to
buy of Me. . . white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the
shame of thy nakedness do not appear" (Rev. 3: 18). We are not
counseled to "buy" it of "the popular ministry", but of
Him. How can we "buy" of Him? The following gives a clue:
The Lord in His great mercy sent a most
precious message to His people through Elders Waggoner and Jones. This
message was to bring more prominently before the world the uplifted
Saviour, the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. … It invited the
people to receive the righteousness of Christ, which is made manifest in
obedience to all the commandments of God. Many had lost sight of Jesus.
… This is the message that God commanded to be given to the world. (TM
91, 92).
Note the source of the
message
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