That's basically it. IOW, the works of true believers, who are obedient, are unacceptable to God without Christ's cleansing. They still need Christ's imputed righteousness in order to stand blameless before God.

Is sin the only thing that can defile the prayers and praise of born again believers? Where does she say their prayers and praise are sinful and unacceptable to God? Why are they unacceptable to God without the cleansing blood of Jesus? In what way do they transgress the law of God?

What do you think it would be, MM, if not sin? It's something which requires Christ to purify by His mediatorial work.

Yes. Do you know of anything else that requires cleansing by Christ's blood?


"they are so defiled that unless purified by blood, they can never be of value with God."


"passing through the corrupt channels of humanity"

In contrast are Christ's merits, "in which there is no taint of earthly corruption."


None of the apostles and prophets ever claimed to be without sin. Men who have lived the nearest to God, men who would sacrifice life itself rather than knowingly commit a wrong act, men whom God has honored with divine light and power, have confessed the sinfulness of their nature. They have put no confidence in the flesh, have claimed no righteousness of their own, but have trusted wholly in the righteousness of Christ. {AA 561.1}

This strikes directly against the idea that confession and forgiveness are only required for willful sin. Only after we accept the fact that even true believers need Christ's cleansing can we overcome the natural tendency to puff ourselves up with the thought that we can earn salvific merit. This side of glorification, "blameless and upright before God" can only happen by being covered by the hilasterion.

There's quite a number of issues to consider here, so it does make it challenging to sort out. I have a question on two things here, which are the first and last sentence.



This could have been put more clearly, but I'm pretty sure I see your meaning. Clearly God cannot require more of us than that we repent of and confess known sin. The "required" in your sentence must be in reference to the prayers being offered up being made pure. That is, more than our repenting of known sin is required in order for our prayers to be pure, since Christ's mediatorial work is required.



But Christ's work of Intercession ceases *before* glorification. How do you account for that?

That is:
a)Because the prayers of the righteous pass through corrupt channels, they need to be purified by Christ, by way of His mediatorial work.
b)Since Christ stops His mediatorial work, before the 144,000 are glorified (they must stand before a holy God without a mediator), it seems like it must be the case that these prayers are no longer passing through corrupt channels.
c)Therefore the 144,000 must be blameless and upright before God.

If by "hilasterion," you have reference to Christ's work of mediation, I don't see how the logic of steps a) through c) can be avoided.

Continuing from my last post, Arthur, while I'm taking issue with one thing you wrote (assuming I understood your intent correctly), I do think your argument works in respect to MM's claims. Christ's intercession is necessary because of something which corrupts the human channels through which these prayers flow, and it's difficult to see how this something can be anything other than sin.

I think you misunderstood me.

There are those who believe that confession and forgiveness are needed only when there is willful sin involved. They say that inadvertent sin, accidental sin, unknown sin, etc. do not require confession and forgiveness.

But the SOP says that even those who would rather die than knowingly commit sin have something to confess.

I'm not understanding your line of thought. Apparently you feel that EGW's quote implies that confession and forgiveness for sins of which we are unaware is necessary. Why?

I assume you must mean that Christ confesses the sins of which we are unaware for us, and God forgives Christ in our stead? Clearly we can't confess sins we are unaware of in any meaningful way. "God, I confess all the sins I don't know I committed" doesn't make much sense. Rather, we would ask, as David did, that God make us aware of anything we may have done which He would find offensive.

I assume you see clearly the need for confession and forgiveness of inadvertent and accidental sins.

Confession and forgiveness of unknown sin did not come from that quote. It came from Leviticus, where the majority of the sins for which sacrifices were prescribed were for unknown sins.

How do you confess such? If you committed a sin 10 years ago, and just found out today that it was a sin, you would now confess and forsake it. At the time you did it, when you thought it was fine, of course you wouldn't have confessed it then. But if it was in your heart to obey God, you were still covered by the morning and evening sacrifices. Christ's death covers all the sins of those who have chosen to submit to him, whether or not they know of their sin.

But there are those who say that unknown sins such as I have described do not need any confession or forgiveness. They say that only those sins which you knowingly and willfully commit need confession and forgiveness. Anything other than that incurs no guilt.

(All this would be difficult to accept for those who reject the forensic aspects of the atonement.)

I don't understand how you are arriving at this conclusion based on the EGW quote. You wrote:



The "this" here is EGW's quote. I don't see how you are reasoning from EGW's quote to the conclusion that confession and forgiveness are only required for willful sin.

I guess you are reasoning like this:

a)Believers have confessed and been forgiven of all their known sins.
b)Christ still has to do something for them in spite of this (as the quote points out).
c)The something which Christ is doing must have to do with non-willful sins, because willful sins have already been taken care of.

Is that it?

So this would strike against MM's idea, because MM says there are non-willful sins that need to be dealt with. In addition, it would strike against the idea that confession and forgiveness are only needed for willful sins, because Christ is interceding on behalf of believers, who have corrupt channels, which must be corrupted by non-willful sin, since the willful sin has been taken care of.

Now when you say that confession and forgiveness is necessary for unknown sins, who is confessing these sins? When are they forgiven?