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Two Kinds Of  Righteousness-2

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September 14-Two Kinds Of Righteousness

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Was not Abraham our father justified by works...? James 2:21, RSV.

The relationship between faith and obedience is at the heart of righteousness and justification. Yesterday we found Uriah Smith arguing in early 1888 that obedience was the key to salvation. His primary illustration was the rich young ruler. What Smith failed to notice was that even though the young ruler had kept the commandments he still went away from Christ quite lost.

Smith and his colleagues, of course, believed in justification by faith. They had to, since it's in the Bible. But they based their understanding on the King James Version's misleading translation of Romans 3:25, which claims Christ's "righteousness for the remission of sins that are past. " Thus J. F. Ballenger could write: "To make satisfaction for past sins, faith is everything. Precious indeed is that blood that blots out all our sins and makes a clean record of the past. Faith only can make the promises of God our own. But present duty is ours to perform.... Obey the voice of God and live, or disobey and die."

One result of their belief that justification by faith dealt with past sins was that Smith, Butler, and their friends taught that maintaining justification after conversion was a matter of "justification by works." After all, Ballenger later wrote in quoting James, "was not Abraham our father justified by works ... ?" "When we obey, that act, coupled with our faith secures our justification."

Thus for these Adventists justification was not by faith alone, as Paul repeatedly asserts (even of Abraham; see Rom. 3:20-25; 4:1-5; Eph. 2:5, 8; Gal. 2:16), but faith + works. It was precisely that theology that Waggoner and Jones disagreed with. In a January 1888 editorial in the Signs entitled "Different Kinds of Righteousness," Waggoner, in contending with Smith, noted that a person could not improve on the moral righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees because "they trusted to their own works, and did not submit to the righteousness of God." In fact, he asserted, their righteousness was not "real righteousness at all." They had simply tried "to cover up one filthy, ragged garment by putting on some more filthy rags."

How are we saved? And how do works relate to that salvation? That was the essence of the struggle at Minneapolis. It was also the conflict between Paul and his adversaries in Romans and Galatians.

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Give us understanding of this crucial topic, Father, as we reflect upon it day by day.

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