"Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?"... "If you would enter life, Keep the commandments."Matt. 19:16, 17, RSV.
Adventists through the years have heard a great deal about righteousness by faith at the 1888 General Conference session. But what were Jones and Waggoner actually teaching? And what positions of Smith and Butler needed correcting? We will spend several days looking at the answers to those questions.
Perhaps the Best way into the subject is through Uriah Smith's Review editorials in January 1888. In a January 3 piece entitled "The Main Point" he asserted that the aim the Adventist pioneers was to herald the last proclamation of the Second Advent and "to lead souls to Christ through obedience to this closing testing truth. This was the one objective point of all their efforts; and the end sought was not considered gained unless
souls were converted to God, and led to seek through an enlightened obedience to all his commands, a preparation from the Lord from heaven." Smith tied "The Main Point" to the third angel's message by underscoring the word "keep" when he quoted Revelation 14:12: "Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." We need to stop here for a moment. Think about it. How do people come to Christ? Through obedience as Smith asserts? Or by some other method? His emphasis appears again in his last editorial of January 1888--"Conditions of Everlasting Life." He based his comments on the question of the rich young ruler to Christ: "'Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?'" The Bible answer, Smith proclaimed, could be summed up in one proposition as "repent, believe, obey, and live." That, he claimed, was Jesus' response. After all, didn't He say to the young ruler, "'If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments'"?
Smith continued on to note that "the trouble with the righteousness of the Pharisees" was that they had not reached an acceptable degree of "moral characer" in relation to the "moral law."
Following the false lead of Joseph Bates on the meaning of the story of the rich young ruler, Smith and his associates were mired in legalism. They had not yet discovered the New Testament relationship of law and gospel. Some of us, and I include myself, have struggled mightily with the same issue. But hold on. That's what 1888 is all about.