dedication,

What law is Peter quoting?

What is the requirement for salvation? The law requires righteousness,--a righteous life, a perfect character; and this man has not to give. {DA 762.2}

Does legal justification make one righteous?

Is there other meanings for "justification" other than a legal definition?

Galatians 2:15-16 The Scriptures 1998+ (15) We, Yehudim by nature, and not of the gentiles, sinners, (16) knowing that a man is not declared right by works of Torah, but through belief in Yahushua Messiah, even we have believed in Messiah Yahushua, in order to be declared right by belief in Messiah and not by works of Torah, because by works of Torah no flesh shall be declared right.

If as in this version, justification = being declared right, would it be a lie to declare someone right if they are not actually right?

The law of Jehovah was burdened with needless exactions and traditions, and God was represented as severe, exacting, revengeful, and arbitrary. He was pictured as one who could take pleasure in the sufferings of his creatures. The very attributes that belonged to the character of Satan, the evil one represented as belonging to the character of God. Jesus came to teach men of the Father, to correctly represent him before the fallen children of earth. Angels could not fully portray the character of God, but Christ, who was a living impersonation of God, could not fail to accomplish the work. The only way in which he could set [JUSTIFY] and keep [SANCTIFY] men right was to make himself visible and familiar to their eyes. That men might have salvation he came directly to man, and became a partaker of his nature. {ST, January 20, 1890 par. 6}

The Father was revealed in Christ as altogether a different being from that which Satan had represented him to be. {ST, January 20, 1890 par. 7}

----
Donald Short, in "Then Shall the Sanctuary Be Cleansed", written in 1958 but not published until 1990.

As Adventists approach the splendor of the most holy place they move toward a crisis. If we cling to the typical nature of Evangelical orthodoxy and are content with the routine substitutionary gospel of forensic, legal justification, we too will find ourselves rejecting the final work of the High Priest which is to minister salvation from sin. This work is accomplished only in the most holy place. Because of its supreme importance Satan appeared to move in to try to carry on the work of God. His success with our spiritual forefathers in the days of Christ must be a warning to us. His compelling interest to deceive has not changed. As long as he can make God's people content and happy with an immature and corrupted idea of what the cleansing of the sanctuary is to accomplish, just so long he can hold them in his power.

This means that Satan will endeavor to commandeer the whole system of substitution just as he took over the old covenant system to fight against Christ and the preaching of the new covenant. He will proclaim that the gospel of the Reformation, the preaching of Luther, is sufficient to prepare a people for the second advent, and the Lord will come when we have done enough proclaiming. He will insist that substitution is sufficient and there is no need for repentance and cleansing. As long as he can veil apostasy in the garb of orthodoxy, he has the Remnant deceived in the same way he had the Jews deceived. As they were enveloped in the routine of the sanctuary services being the goal of life and guaranteeing their salvation, so we have been content to have the blood of the Lamb provide a legal cancellation of the record in the books of heaven without the law being written in the heart. In each case truth has been compromised, for these were only a shadow of the real heart-cleansing God intended to teach. People who appeared as adults were actually children in their understanding. And so are we.

Growing out of this there have been thousands of sermons about the deplorable condition of Laodicea while the root has been untouched and left intact. The real problem is satisfaction with self; we have all we need, we are content, we know the plan of salvation as verily as the Jews knew Abraham. But they received not the promise and they are all in their graves and they will stay there until we understand that God has provided some better thing for us, "that they without us should not be made perfect" (Heb_11:40). This consummation of redemption rests upon the shoulders of the final generation, a responsibility that can only be met when that generation senses the travail and distress it has caused, but which in its immaturity has mercifully been hidden from it.

We are that generation!

It seems we are right back in the 1888 denial that we need Christ's justification.

It is the doom of Adventism to believe it is their achievement of righteousness that saves and to do so they must totally twist Paul's writings.

Yes, it's true that many twist it the other way -- implying we are saved without surrendering and repentance of sin, and "dying to self" and living for Christ in obedience. That is the other ditch.

But why is there this outright denial of our legal standing before God?
Without it, we are lost. PERIOD, I don't care how many sins you think you've overcome, without the legal standing before God -- the substitutionary sufficiency of Christ -- you are lost!



By the way -- I don't think Donald Short is correct. He tries to drive Adventism into the hopeless ditch of REJECTING the great truths of the Reformation.

That is why so many Adventists are "wandering the desert" in hopelessness. Hoping to get saved, but feeling unaccepted by God.

Satan doesn't care which ditch he pushes us into -- for there is salvation in neither.

Let's not push aside the scripture and bring forth the writings of men who are in opposition to the gospel.

As I said -- there is validity in both aspects when dealing with the text in Ephesians.

Short is not rejecting the reformation. He is saying do not stop there.

God is not worried about our legal standing with Him. Many are worried about it! And "justification" is not a legal adjustment our standing but a "setting right", and putting us right, New Covenant thinking, of writing the law on our minds. Setting right and keeping right.

To declare someone legally righteous without being actually righteous, is a lie.

Let's not push aside scripture, let's understand what it is really saying.

However, let's turn to Galatians again --

What law is Paul referring to when he writes:

Galatians 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

The 1888 controversy was over that question ---

What law is Paul referring to

The message these men were bringing was that the law in Galatians referred to God's law -- the ten commandments, not just the ceremonial law!
The older men stood up and said -- no, no, it refers to the ceremonial law, never to the ten commandments.

So who was right?

Galatians 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

Let's not push aside scripture, let's understand what it is really saying.

But you are pushing aside that scripture --
you seem to be refusing to even discuss it.

No one is saying to "stop there" --
But we need to START there.

It is interesting that you should have said that because the same is true for SDA that "Desmond Ford - guided by the Holy Spirit - brought to millions crucial biblical truths that were long hidden under decades of GROSSLY wrong interpretations of Daniel 8:14; he being the bright light that began with others long before him."

History keeps repeating itself over and over again. There is a unity of the faith and then there is a schism when the old become senile and blind to the greater light in which they live. Didn't the Jews reject Christ? And what was their end?

///

The question in 1888 was what law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, and the answer was: all law. Both the 10C and the Ceremonial Law.

And while the law in Galatians includes all law, the schoolmaster was speaking particularly of the moral law of 10 commandments as claimed by Jones and Waggoner.