September 15-Two Kinds Of Righteousness-3

All our righteousnesses [or "righteous deeds," RSV] are as filthy rags. Isa. 64:6.

Are they? That is the position Waggoner took in the face of the emphasis by Smith and his friends on justification by works. "Human righteousness," Waggoner penned, "is of no more value after a man is justified than it was before." The justified Christian "'shall live by faith.'" Therefore, "the one who has the most faith will live the most upright life."  That is true because Christ is "'THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS."' For Waggoner, faith was everything and the equation of faith + works = justification found its roots in "the spirit of the antichrist."

Jones stood firmly with Waggoner. In May 1889, for example, he told his hearers that the law was not the place to seek righteousness. All "our righteousness is as filthy rags." Smith took exception to such comments. A month later he fired off a broad-side at Jones
in the Review entitled "Our righteousness." He noted that some of the correspondents of the Review were playing into the hands of those who would do away with the law by making remarks about our righteousness being "filthy rags." The Review editor went on to say that "perfect obedience to the [law] will develop perfect righteousness, and that is the only way any one can attain righteousness." "We are not," he asserted, "to rest on the stool of do-nothing, as a mass of inertia in the hands of the Redeemer....'Our righteousness'...comes from being in harmony with the law of God....And 'our righteousness' cannot in this case be filthy rages." There is, he concluded, a righteousness that is "to be secured by doing and teaching the commandments."

Daily devotional When that article came out, Ellen White was preaching that faith must come before works at camp meeting in Rome, New York. When the people couldn't harmonize what she was saying with Smith's article, her response was that Brother Smith "doesn't know what he is talking about; he sees trees as men walking." She pointed out that just because Jesus and His righteousness are central in salvation, that does not mean that we discard God's law (MS 5, 1889). To Smith she wrote that he was on a path that would bring him to a precipice and that he was "walking like a blind man" (Lt 55, 1889).

How is our spiritual eyesight? Are we clear on the relation of faith and works, law and grace? Maybe not. But that's what the 1888 emphasis is all about. Answers will come as we follow God's leading through this bit of Adventist history.