Justification by Faith by I. H. Evans

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 14, 1907

Justification by Faith

By I. H. Evans

True Sabbath Keeping

I. H. EVANS

“SHE shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.” Matt. 1:21.

As announced in this prophecy by the heavenly visitant, the mission of Christ to this earth is to “save his people from their sins.” Whatever sin may be, whatever its results it is that from which Christ came to save. He is known as “Saviour,” “Jesus,” “Prince of Peace,” “the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.” His advent to this sin-cursed earth, his life, his ministry, his ignominious death, all were for the accomplishment of this one supreme purpose—to “save his people from their sins.”

Every man needs this salvation, whether he desires it or not. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” “For we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin.” “There is none righteous, no, not one.”

Truly, all men will not be saved. The fault lies not in that there is no Saviour, but that sinners will not accept salvation. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” It is through faith in the name of Jesus that this salvation is obtained.

Sin is the one thing from which Christ came to save. It is that which he came to destroy.

“The wages of sin is death”—not alone the death we die in Adam; it also embraces the second death, from which there is no salvation when once the final sentence is passed upon sinners.

Now, if Christ’s mission was and is to “save his people from their sins,” let us ask the question, What is sin? As God through Christ provided salvation from sin, he alone can give us a true definition of what sin is. Men’s opinions concerning sin differ greatly. What seems wrong to one, appears right to another. Man, the sinner, the transgressor, can not be authority on what constitutes sin. Only he who punishes sin and provides a Saviour from sin, can define sin.

In 1 John 3:4 we read: “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law; for sin is the transgression of the law.” This definition needs no explanation. It is simple and positive. It is God’s own statement uttered through John.

Again: “Sin is not imputed when there is no law.” Rom. 5:13. “Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.” Rom. 4:15. “For by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Rom. 3:20.

Plainly then, sin is the transgression of God’s law. Now, if Christ came to “save his people from their sins,” and sin is the transgression of God’s law, then Christ came to save his people from transgressing, or disobeying, the law of God.

God’s idea of right doing is expressed in his law. It constitutes, in words, righteousness. It is all God asks of his created intelligences. To conform to this rule is righteousness, and to transgress this rule is sin.

The law is the standard of righteousness in the final judgment, for we read: “As many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; for not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.”

But again we read: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Then it is plain that no one can attain righteousness through the law. Not that the law is not perfect, not that it is not God’s standard of righteousness and his rule of right-doing in the final judgment. No, no! for it is all this and more, if more could be. It is all God asks of man, and to measure to its full demands will he require. Every age, and every individual of every age, will have the same law as his rule of righteousness in the final judgment. All must meet the fullest requirement of that law throughout their whole lives. In God’s sight they must appear as having always rendered perfect obedience to his law.

Now, having sinned, having broken the law, how is the sinner to appear righteous before God? The sinner has no power to undo sin. Once having sinned, he is always a sinner as far as his obedience is concerned. Not that he needs to continue ever sinning, but future obedience can not atone for a past disobedience. Man must always be righteous in God’s sight; and having missed the mark once, he has failed in perfect obedience, and is powerless to redeem himself.

Then how can a sinner who has broken the law of God be saved? Answer, “She shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he

shall save his people from their sins.” Let us read from Rom. 3:19-26. In these words God tells us how he will save sinners. Not by their own righteousness: “for all have sinned,” but it is through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. This righteousness is attained by the sinner through faith; so, to him that believes, God imputes the right-doing of his Son Jesus. The sinner, through faith in Jesus, is, then, in reality made righteous by the life, or right-doing, of Jesus, which God gives to him. The wages of sin is met through faith in the death of Christ; but righteousness is attained only through faith in the life of Christ.

When the sinner desiring salvation comes to God through Jesus Christ, he renounces all his past life. It has all been sin, and he must get away from it, or what he has done in the past will ruin him, and prevent him from attaining righteousness. As far as the sinner is concerned, in and of himself he can not get away from the fact that he has been just what he has been, and once having been a sinner, he can never, through himself, be righteous. But he comes to God and acknowledges his sins, and God forgives. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

But all the life of unbelief has been sin, so all the doings of a whole lifetime out of Christ must be taken away. But when our life’s acts are all taken away, what have we left?—Nothing.

But God does not leave us thus. Having delivered us from our past life by the death of Christ, he now gives us the “robe of righteousness,” which is the right-doing of Christ. This God gives to every repentant sinner who believes in Christ Jesus; so the sinner not only loses his own life and all responsibility for his sins, through Christ, but he also attains God’s righteousness.

Having been cleansed from sin, the very life and doings of Christ Jesus are imputed to the sinner, so that he is righteous, even as Jesus is righteous. By this substitution the sinner appears before God, not in his sins, but in the righteousness of Christ.

Now Christ’s righteousness is his obedience to his Father’s law. Every requirement of that law Christ fulfilled, so that every sinner in Christ Jesus is perfect, judged by the law of God.

Christ never had other gods before the true God. The sinner clothed with the righteousness of Christ is no longer an idolater, whatever he may have been. So with each of God’s ten commandments. The murderer, the adulterer, the thief—all are cleansed through faith in Christ, and are no longer murderers, and adulterers, and thieves, but are righteous in God’s sight, judged by his law.

After cleansing from sin through Christ Jesus, the sinner henceforth lives the life of Christ by the indwelling of the Spirit of God, so that after being washed from his past sins, and being clothed with Christ’s righteousness, he goes forth to do as Christ did and to keep the Father’s law. Christ dwells within him, and he and God become one in Christ.

In keeping the Father’s law, Christ kept each of the commandments. But there is the fourth precept which says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Ex. 20:8. Christ’s obedience to this precept constitutes his Sabbath righteousness. This righteousness he gives to every repentant sinner. So when Christ gives his life and righteousness to the sinner, he gives his own Sabbath-keeping to the sinner. But the law of God says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.” Christ kept that commandment, hence all Christ’s Sabbath righteousness is seventh-day Sabbath righteousness. So when he gives his life to the repentant sinner, he makes him a seventh-day Sabbath-keeper in harmony with God’s law.

As Christ never kept the first day as the Sabbath, he has no first-day righteousness that he can give to any sinner; and as Christ has no first-day righteousness that he can ever give a sinner, it is evident there will be no first-day righteousness in heaven. All first-day keeping is contrary to God’s law, and needs to be repented of, as murder, adultery, and stealing need repentance; and when forgiven, the law transgressor will be given the seventh-day Sabbath righteousness of Christ, and in God’s sight he will become a true seventh-day commandment-keeper.

After he is received into the family of God by adoption, and is perfected through Christ Jesus by this gift of righteousness, the child of faith must keep the law of God. He no longer can go on keeping a substitute sabbath for the Sabbath commanded by the law of God, by which law the sinner is to be judged. As in Christ Jesus he has been made a perfect commandment-keeper for all the years he lived without Christ, so the life he now lives he lives not alone, but Christ Jesus lives within him. But as Jesus refused to keep any but the seventh-day Sabbath in all his earthly life, think you he approves of those who, professing to be his disciples, and having been given his seventh-day Sabbath righteousness for all their past Sabbath-breaking, continue in sin by keeping a false sabbath which he hates as he hates everything contrary to the law of God?

Then every sinner and saint should and must stop keeping a substitute sabbath for the Sabbath of Jehovah if he expects salvation; for all who go to heaven must go there in harmony with the law of God.

Justification by faith makes seventh-day Sabbath-keepers out of every one justified, while sanctification requires seventh-day Sabbath-keeping by all who are justified, and have received righteousness through faith. The redeemed host must be commandment-keepers through Christ, and every commandment-keeper must keep the seventh-day Sabbath, for the law plainly says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.”