Martin Luther & Justification: Former SDA Pastor Challenges Adventist Claims

Well hey there thankk you for being here and an especially warm welcome if this is your first time with us Adventist or otherwise so tonight we’re going to be talking about the doctrine of justification more specifically justification by faith this is a doctrine that was Central to the Protestant Reformation as Professor Mark Thompson notes in the book The Doctrine on which the church stands or Falls where he writes quote the Deep ground of the doctrine of justification only by faith is the person character and purpose of the Triune God and its focus

Is the death of Jesus Christ for sinners in the body of Christian teaching this Doctrine has a special place guarding and securing the priority of grace and the entire sufficiency of the atonement affected by Christ in shorthand justification is only by faith because salvation is only by Christ and salvation only by Christ is the outworking of God’s Eternal gracious purpose anchored in the immeasurable depth of his Triune life this is why Martin Luther spoke of this Doctrine as the article by which the church stands or Falls if the Christian confession

Fails at this point it compromises our utter dependence on Christ and the sheer gratuiti of Grace and as a result the Christian Life corporately as well as individually begins to unravel close quote which means that from a Protestant perspective this is an area of significance and severity and the Adventist Church claims to affirm justification by faith as we see in the exposition of their 28 fundamental beliefs where they write quote through justification by faith in Christ his righteousness is imputed to us we are right with God because of Christ Our

Substitute God Paul said made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him 1 Corinthians 5:21 as repentant Sinners we experience full and complete pardon we are reconciled to God close quote sounds pretty good right well tonight we’re going to be examining this further and see if this is another case of borrowing terminology while meaning something entirely different and I’ve got the perfect guest to help us out Heraldo kamacho is a sinner justified by the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ Our Lord born a little over 75

Years ago in Colombia his journey has taken him from infancy in an SDA pastor’s home to becoming an Adventist Minister missionary theology professor and Conference secretary until the holy spirit intervened in his life with the gospel of God’s justifying Grace which he confesses to have received by faith alone in the merits of Christ currently Heraldo has a YouTube Ministry reaching several thousands of Spanish-speaking sdas and former sdas he lives in Florida with his wife Mercedes and their 14-year-old son Orlando he praises the Lord Jesus Christ for his NeverEnding

Mercies and he serves as a lay minister in Our Savior Lutheran Church in Plantation Florida so you guys hear me use the phrase scaling the language barrier a lot I constantly highlight that definitions matter so that’s what we’re going to be doing tonight and pinpoint where exactly the rub is between what the SDA church is claiming when they use the phrase justification by faith over and against the Apostle Paul specifically in the book of Galatians let’s get into it all right brother thank you for sharing some of your time with us I’m really looking forward to the discussion

How are you today I am well miles thank you for inviting me once again to your channel which I uh really appreciate it’s very Dynamic and uh all your guests are great and right on well thank you um people loved the last time that you were on it was in a bit of a different format we were kind of telling your story today we’re going to talk about justification and I’m really looking forward to it to kick things off though many in the audience may not know that you have translated Martin Luther’s commentary on the book of Galatians it is available through

1517 publishing it is a beautifully printed book but to kick us off what prompted your desire to translate Luther’s commentary on the book of Galatians because it is a massive commentary well it I didn’t start out saying I’m going to translate Luther’s commentary but um after I left the SE theist church I wanted to answer many lingering questions on my mind you know adventism and its doctrines get so it’s like worms they get all over your brain and leave tracks and uh a text here will lead down this Foxhole to that one thing so I wanted to um answer for myself many of those

Things so I began to study and frankly miles I don’t know at which point I found Luther’s commentary because even though I took the Epistle of Galatians exegetical course in the Seminary it wasn’t on the reading list there were many other books on their reading list but it wasn’t there in fact when my first edition of Luther’s commentary came out in Spanish because it was translated first into Spanish I called which would make an interesting call uh on a live um setting to call a seminary live and ask how many copies they have of Luther’s commentary

On Galatians when I called which is over 10 years ago um they put me on hold um it took a while for them to get back and they said we have one copy and I said great I would like to borrow it and they said you can’t oh I said it must be on reserve and uh the U lady on the other side said no it’s on a special type of Reserve serve where only a selected list that’s already um made uh can um can borrow the the book and they have to read it right here in a special room it’s not allowed to be taken out and so I said how do I get on that special list I am a graduate and she

Said no you have to be recommended by the committee chair to be on the speci

And a lot of things click together for me it’s like okay um they don’t want this commentary to be read and of course if it was studied and read the uh seven the Adventist Church would come apart at the seams that’s how it is so um portions or the the commentary came to me someone sent me a a link to it this was way before Facebook it was around the year 2000 and the first thing I did was to order a copy of Luther’s commentary and there were several English copies available um there was Watson’s copy of 19 54 uh and um very good but it retained the quite a bit of the Victorian English

But he had done an important thing he had retained or found the parts that were excised by the uh English the first English translators who did not want to offend zwingley and his followers so they cut out a um a great deal of his um his more explicit statements on justification and uh what Watson did is that he rescued those parts so I am just amazed at the whole story behind this commentary which is told very well by Watson uh and then I began to read it and when Facebook came out a lot of people former students of mine in um Lima because I had been a advertis

Theology Professor um of systematic theology in uh in Lima in the Advent Seminary there began um saying to me that I was a traitor that why had I left adven his doctrine that I was so disloyal and didn’t I know that the law was still binding and why had I left the Sabbath and uh they began to quote me on things I had said about the legitimacy of Ellen White I had been a big promoter of I was hr’s secretary and they remembered how I had defended um that book and that uh all of the stuff in there was true and of course by I had not read or understood

Arthur White’s um uh double speak to say the least about the the story of I was canri secretary so I began to post in Spanish translating from Watson’s uh version uh to Spanish um clips from uh from Luther and what I found was outstanding it was like I couldn’t believe it um so I just want to read some of those clips that I began to to post on on Facebook when Facebook finally came out I yeah let’s go to it you said that you could post that page up yeah here we are uh it’s it was the doctrine of justification because I had been attracted by the doctrine of

Justification um I had followed from afar um some of um brimm’s preaching and writings when he converted to justification but and he had quoted Luther but now I found Luther for myself and it was amazing uh these are some of the quotes with all confidence we can say that we are Justified not by our own works but through relief provided outside of us that relief is none other than God’s only son he has redeemed us from sin death and the devil and has given to us the gift of eternal life and I couldn’t believe what I was reading and he says I don’t publish my thoughts in this

Epistle hoping to get a favorable review from unbelievers instead these thoughts will rattle them and their God uh if one haris he dies not much later another one Springs up for the devil neither slumbers nor sleeps I attest to have been pestered by over 20 sects some of which have already perished others like parts of a dismembered insect are still twitching and I could not help but think of seven the adventism uh this is our glory to be found firm and fighting on behalf of the seed of the woman against the seed of the serpent let it bite our heal all at

Once once on our part we will not cease to crush its head through Christ the first one to crush it may he be blessed forever and ever amen um this is our anchor our foundation the gospel does not command us to be looking at our service our Perfection but to God who promises and to Christ the mediator um I could just keep on going but you know just go a few more in the gospel we hear God say look I gave my son over to sin and death by his blood he redeemed you from sin and eternal death then I cannot doubt unless I were to deny God altogether this is the

Reason for the certainty of our Doctrine because it takes us out and away from ourselves Paul always has Christ on his lips and cannot forget him for he anticipated that Christ and his gospel would be most ignored in the world even among professed Christians so I am reading Luther and being used to reading Ellen White and all the Adventist uh Defenders of uh of her faith because it’s really it’s really her faith uh or what James White um created her faith to be um I am reading and expecting the other shoe to fall and the other shoe to fall in all

Other EG white writings and any Adventist author you mention is the but however allbe it and then is a very Cy camouflaged turn sometimes not so camouflaged turn into the obedience to the law to the Ten Commandments and eventually they all land on the Sabbath and so on so as I am reading Luther I already knew that he was not a Sabbath keeper and that’s another story but um um I am expecting Luther to go down the same um hole but I keep Turning Page after page and it’s nothing but Grace forgiveness of sins justification through Christ Alone through faith alone and this book

All of a sudden gets um wrapped around uh my my conscience and begins spraying it it goes down all these rabbit holes uh left over from adventism those um um tracks um left by what do they call that it’s something like neuroplasticity where uh stuff that you read or do uh finds and and leaves several tracks in your brain and uh Here Comes Luther and gets into all these old tracks creating new tracks of um of um gospel and mercy and justification so much so that uh my previous students who have been criticizing me begin to write to me so Luther is your new

Prophet and I say I’d rather have Luther than Ellen White any day there is more truth in one one page of Luther than in all of Ellen White’s writings and Visions put together so in answer to your question um that’s how my interest in Luther got uh uh stimulated got started uh but I had no intention of translating the book because as you mentioned it is massive it’s over 500 pages and uh I didn’t see myself qualif ified to do that I had not gone to school of course in a Lutheran School uh I knew that um it these had been uh this had been written in Latin to begin with and then

As I delved a little further I realized that these were lectures given by Luther from um July 3r through December 12th um 1531 it was a total of 41 lectures and he lectured mainly Tuesdays um two uh Tuesdays Thursdays and Saturday nights and it was uh yes after Sundown and uh you can only see Luther in that Hall with um oil lamps hanging from the wall and there’s the smoke uh going through the room and uh however uncomfortable that is Luther would lecture for up to two hours every night on the epistle to the Galatians now this is 1531 the room is full of seminarians

Most of them were had been Catholic priests who had now converted to the gospel and there were a few lay people who had requested to be part of the class so I began to picture myself as coming through the back door and finding a bench and sitting down and uh since I was um so enthralled by this I imagined Luther up in front dictating his class and I was participating in the class there were three students of Luther um gor rorer was the main one who invented a Shand of their own a Latin shorthand and they took notes and uh uh together they would meet every now

And then and compare notes and write one draft and then give it to Luther for his um final reading and editing which uh Luther did but left it mainly as it was these lectures are as close a transcript as um we could possibly get to an audio recording of uh Luther in the classroom because neither the U Luther’s students nor Luther himself uh rewrote or edited the lectures as an academic document it was much later that when um other editors um took it um particularly when the English collected uh uh works of Luther was edited and translated by yis pelican in I think it

Was 1961 that that whole series was published um that u i uh saw for the first time what they had done to Luther it reads like an academic uh uh document um so that was so enthralling to be sitting there in that classroom because that was pretty much my experience and uh I want to quote from a um a review written by Dr Robert corobb professor of systematic theology Emeritus Concordia Seminary St Louis and this is recently after the book was published in English now for those who know something about Lutheran and Lutheran um studies Dr coob is the

Preeminent historian of Luther um he is now up in years but he still holds command of Luther’s life with dates and uh documents and it is fascinating to read things written by do coob so 1517 wanted a good editorial review in Amazon and this is uh Amazon I’m reading directly from the page where um my um my translation is found see there it is lecture notes transcribed by students and presented in today’s English and it was my purpose to translate from the Latin as precisely as possible um and the same register that Luther had used I didn’t want to change the register into

An academic uh piece of literature um I wanted to keep the Latin and I I uh taught myself Latin in order to translate this and found out that the Latin was a vernacular Latin Luther is very dynamic dynamic in his use of the Latin very expressive one can catch his humor his sarcasm uh throughout the entire document he was an amazing teacher and I would I you know I could almost see him because that’s how it reads in some places as if he would get into a student’s face and ask and say the questions that he does so it’s amazing now this is what Dr coob says

Who is the preeminent Lutheran historians he says the translators experience as a court translator and transcriber I was only a court translator and his training as a theologian combined to enable him to give readers a sense of the liveliness of Martin Luther’s lecture Style by turning to student notes from the lecture hall this translation therefore enhances all other English translations and that’s amazing for Dr C to say because um because of who he is he has to hold by yis laav Pelicans translations which are published by Concordia but anyhow he goes on to say

Which have delivered these lectures in English up to this point since these other translations have rendered the similar but not identical text of the edited version of the reformers great lectures of 1531 that appeared in print four years later that’s 1535 here we encounter and now he’s referring to my translation here we encounter what Luther said not what he and his editors wished he had said or thought he had meant to say and that’s a little bit of a dig on on all the other translations I’m sad to say kamacho takes us into the lecture hall to catch

The personal inflection that the reformer brought to the exposition of Paul’s letter in the midst of increased papal and Imperial pressure on the Wittenberg theologians and their world view in the wake of the diet of Augsburg in 1530 the urgency of the reformers exposition of the Gospel of the restoration of human righteousness through Christ’s death and Resurrection rings from the pages of this fresh Lively rehearing of the lectures as presented in the notes of the Wittenberg professors students Robert coob and every time I read this I sort of Choke up because um it is so

Incredible that such an amazing scholar and historian uh would um would give that kind of review of this particular translation so between the Spanish and the and the English translation going back to the Latin original because the Latin original of their notes exists and you can find it online um it was a a trip of about 10 years which did not start until my wife Mercedes um said to me honey what you need to do is translate the whole thing don’t be happy just to translate a few Clips here and there and of course my reaction was rather visceral like who do

You think I am uh but uh her um gentle yet Earnest um uh appeal uh slowly worked until one day I just began on page one in Spanish I wanted to do the translation first in Spanish because there was no Spanish translation uh of um of this commentary and there was in French there was in Italian there was of course in German uh in English but there was no Spanish translation available so that’s why I chose to do that one first and the first translation I was self-published no one wanted to translate Luther’s commentary on Galatians uh they wanted uh five steps

To a happy Christian marriage um 10 commandments to bring up your children they wanted practical stuff so uh I had to um to self-publish the first version of of the Spanish commentary later um 1517 just up until recently this year uh 2024 they published the whole thing in Spanish which I revised and um they had an um an editorial group go through the Spanish and I I was very adamant with them saying I don’t want you to change the register I I want this um very Dynamic um Luther speaking from the classroom and they did a great job in retaining the same register and correcting some of

My Spanish grammar and so on so that’s the long answer to um how and why I decided to translate first the Spanish commentary and then miles I didn’t want to do the English I said I’m done I’m burned out it’s over and and uh my wife said um you know you need to start translating the and translate it into English as well and uh I said no you know somebody else is going to do it again she won out and I started and I was over 9 5% done with the English translation not knowing who was going to publish this document uh because I had sent chapters to Concordia no

Less and of course Concordia is very jealous of its own published works and this Concordia had published yis Pelicans translation but it was not a standalone book it was part of a whole series um of of books um that Concordia had published there was not a modern Standalone translation and one day I wanted to check on um on h a date when um when Luther had first dictated lectures on Galatians because this is a second series of lectures on gal his first series had been translated both into Spanish and into English and I didn’t remember whether it was 1519 or

1517 when he had published it so I go to Google and I type 1517 and up comes

Written on the Reformation because that’s her purpose to keep the Reformation alive um send us a sample copy of your of your book and we will respond within the month so I said ah it’s the same thing again you know they oh I I sent in a chapter all dejected and depressed and um you know not even hoping against hope I just said okay I’m going to do it three days later I get a phone call from Stephen Burns the chief editor of 1517 and he s he says to me send us whatever you’ve got done will’ll will’ll help you publish it we’ll help you polish it up and stuff

And that was like God God saying I told so and it was very exciting and of course I worked with them for um about a year in polishing it up um they gave me some resources to check and um but uh it was great to have them publish um the commentary in English and of course it’s in a an ebook format as well as a hard copy and a a soft copy which which is I think the one you have so again that’s the longer answer to your question so it came basically through uh well Providence essentially and um really the need for it I I know you mentioned it a little bit earlier but

It’s interesting because it it doesn’t really read like a commentary it reads kind of more like a novel um it’s a very interesting um I have a lot of commentaries and it’s definitely unique amongst the commentaries I have so I highly highly recommend it to people I’ve recommended it to a number of people some who I know who have picked it up and they have also thoroughly enjoyed it as well so I will put a link to that down in the description box so people can uh quickly gain access to that if that’s something they’re interested in now with that as the

Backdrop I want to look at something from an introductory manuscript in the commentary that’s titled St Paul’s argument Luther writes quote in this epistle Paul takes on the task of diligently teaching comforting and perfecting Us in the knowledge of this most excellent Christian righteousness for if we should lose the article of justification then all true Christian doctrine will be lost and everyone in the world who does not hold on to this Doctrine is either a Jew a Muslim a follower of the Pope or a heretic because between the righteousness of the

Law and Christian righteousness there is no halfway point whoever Strays from this Christian righteousness inevitably Falls into the righteousness of the law in short once he loses Christ he must by default fall into confidence of his own Works close quote so Luther did not hold back when it came to this Doctrine because he believed that St Paul didn’t so my question for you since we’re going to be looking at this in light of seventh day adventism I want to make sure we really have nailed down what is the New Testament doctrine of justification and why is correctly

Understanding it so important important for the Christian I cannot answer this without the scriptures and my goto scripture on explaining this or understanding this is Romans the book of um Romans chapter 4 and chapter 5 particularly verse one so let me try to go through this quickly in Romans um chapter 4 Paul makes an astounding statement with regards to Abraham and he begins to quote Abraham um as the one who believed God and then verse three it was credited to him as righteousness now to the one who works wages are not credited as a gift but as

An obligation of course you work you get paid so eternal life is given to you as a wage but it says however to the one who does not work but trust God who justifies the ungodly their faith is credited as righteousness and what I I find so unusual about this statement is that if you see verse five in the context when Paul is talking about the ungodly the the word there in the Greek means without respect for anything Divine whether it’s Idols whether it’s a pagan worship of Idols uh whether it’s the Jewish worship of yve it is Asus that means without any kind of piety the

Person has that has no respect for anything Divine and sort of flaunts himself uh before the world surrounding him as a great unbeliever you know like you know I don’t care and that ungodly in context refers to Abraham you catch my drift it’s not the general uh ungodly out there but Paul is talking about Abraham being this Godless person as the one that God justifies in other words um Abraham is justified by God merely by believing that this entity in which he did not believe in had been sort of you know just following because he had been asked to leave and had had

Strange uh visions and things so he follows uh um God’s word out of the land of er of the calans and calans were pagans so he follows God and then God says you will be given a seed that will bless all the nations and and and Abraham is marveled how could this God who he really in his heart does not fully believe in he could care less about God he just wants a better life so he thinks he’s going to find a better life wherever this God who has spoken to him is leading him but then this God says to him through you all the nations of the earth will be blessed and he

Can understand this amount of grace and mercy that he being ungodly disrespectful of anything that has anything to do with piety will work through him to give the blessing of a seed that will bring blessings the ultimate blessing to all the nations and Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness and that one act of Mercy one over Abraham’s heart so justification is not geared looking at justification from this text justification is not geared towards the obedient The Godly the pious the ones who have years developing their character who by faith grasp unto the

Merits of Christ and work together and cooperate together with God’s Will and the the will then becomes omnipotent because he has worked with the Divine will and so on and no not at all justification is directed towards the person that does not have one ioda of any human righteousness to offer God on his behalf so it’s entirely given uh to him I get I get passionate about this and so the rest of the chapter talks about uh Abraham being uh Justified and then he uh Paul ends this uh chapter with an incredible statement he says that the words it was credited

To him were written not for him alone but also for us and there Paul is considering himself also as an assis for all practicable purpose and all his time in Judaism and his called by the Lord he still sees himself as a sinner says but also for us he himself in spite of all his work for the Lord for the the Christ that appeared to him and and his sufferings and everything he has gone uh through he says that I am like Abraham and I need this righteousness and it will and God will then credit that righteousness for us who believe in him and then he says who raised Jesus

Our lord from the dead he makes this illusion to the resurrection because he is going to nail it nail the the important fact of the Resurrection he explained the meaning of the Resurrection in the next verse and this is a verse that has not been properly understood uh in in most Christian works on justification because Paul says he meaning Christ was delivered over to death on account of our sins okay and then this last phrase and was rais to life for our justification all the translators you know I am a translator and I have to double check transations uh which is a very good

Thing that happened to me throughout my many years as a as a court interpreter because you have other interpreters listening to your translation and they come and then they um take apart the reason why you should not have translated it this way but rather the other way and you have to defend your translation it’s very good work but Paul says that Christ was raised to life for our justification if we leave it at for our justification we make a translation error because it sounds as if Christ was raised so that then he could um play the role or function as our justifier that

Then he was raised from the dead so that then there could be a judgment by which um let’s call it the investigated judgment in which he could see somebody’s life and uh that person’s obedience to the Commandments and then say you’re Justified and then somebody comes up and has uh gez you know he watched the two of the France on Saturday and uh no the Angels bring to Christ the book on which the day in which you watched the tour of the FRS and were reading for the tour for whoever it was and uh the Lord says no I cannot justify you yeah no no go to the

Other side and so he was Christ was not raised to do this the translation for this text and I hope I can land here on the on the the right Trans on the right Greek text the Bible hob Romans 4:25 you see where it says here he was raised for the justification of us and it translates this Greek preposition Dia it translated translates it as for which is a great error it’s a great mistake and changes the meaning of uh of the verse Dia is a preposition that when found in in the genitive it does mean for okay but here it’s not modifying a a um a sentence in the

Genitive but in the accusative you see that V that looks like a V there is in it’s actually the Greek for n tainos you see the again the ending it’s in the accusative and it tells you noun accusative feminine feminine singular um hum of us okay so there it is accusative feminine singular it’s the article so Dia when it modifies the remaining part the remaining phrase where there’s a nominative phrase or an adverbial uh phrase it means because of it’s instrumental it means um literally he was raised to give testimony of our justification he was raised because we

Had been Justified and so when Christ is raised from the dead he shouts from all over the place throughout the Universe miles Christian has been justified through my death aralo kamacho has been justified through my death he does not raised from the dead to be our justifier he is raised from the dead to give witness that we have been justified through his life death and Resurrection so if you ask me what is the doctrine what is the biblical doctrine of justification I have to say that my justification took place 2,000 years ago and Christ has already given witness

To my justification of course theologians like to talk in terms of objective and subjective justification and they mess it up when they talk about objective and subjective justification and let me tell you let me explain to you why they mess it up because when we go to Romans 51 we find this

Phrase and then there is a comma okay I am sorry there were no commas in the original okay it’s that simple there were no commas in the original and if you look at various translations of the Bible you will find that the translators struggle with where to place the comma some translate uh therefore comma Justified by faith comma or therefore having been Justified comma um I think the the Spanish RV um version um the Raina 1960 places about three commas all over the place because they wanted to make everybody else happy you know as far as where the comma went and where

The comma goes is a big thing if you take into account uh for 425 425 is very explicit that he was raised to give testimony Dia on account of the fact that we had been Justified so he is raised to give witness of our justification and so the Apostle in Romans 5 says having been Justified and now in the Greek the first word of a sentence is where the emphasis goes so that’s why Paul put the the first word having been Justified it’s a verb it’s a reflexive uh verb that has brings the action back to us um having been Justified comma therefore by faith we have peace

With God through our Lord Jesus Christ right so I ask what do we have by faith once we have justif been Justified at the cross and in his resurrection what do we have by faith we have peace with God and that’s why in another place uh Paul calls Christ Our peace so I am not justified twice as the objective and subjective theologians teach that yes all Humanity was justified through his death but individuals are not justified until subjectively they exerise individual faith in Christ’s work no what we do is say amen that’s the meaning of Faith amen comes from the Hebrew which

Means this is true um even more it also means it’s a foundation it’s a solid foundation in the ancient times uh they were building supervisors okay and when they came to inspect the foundation before the building was put up they went all over that founding rock that Cornerstone and and um HD it with hammers and whatever to see if it would crack and if the foundation was solid the buildings supervisor would say Amen they would say yes it is worthy it is a um it will last the building of the house or the temple or whatever so that is all we say uh faith means I believe

That you did it I say Amen Christ says uh from the uh risen um open Tomb he says I have Justified youu and I say amen I say yes I believe it I have faith that what you did was done and what is given to me is not justification what is given to me is um peace with God and that’s why Christ said uh my peace I leave with you not as the world gives give I unto you that is the kind kind of peace I give to you let not your heart be troubled uh because we have been given a historical Moment On which to Anchor our peace and that historical moment is his

Death and his resurrection and he has given witness through his resurrection that we have been Justified and thus I have peace with God and not and it’s a peace that won’t be taken away that’s why it’s a peace that um is not given as the world gives because the peace that the world gives to me even the righteousness of the law the peace that I get through the righteousness of the law lasts as long as my next misstep or bad thought or bad judgment or whatever I do I lose my peace we do not lose this peace because it is grounded and anchored to to the rock well that’s

Probably more than an answer that you wanted to get uh on uh on the difference uh as far as you know biblical justification no that’s good um you know I’m kind of getting some some hints there of uh that old Latin phrase of simal Justice at picor um this sort of Sinner while still Justified um and that is really just music to my ears so I could sit there and just listen to you talk about that um nonstop but something I think that’s just as important to understand in relation to this subject that I think often times gets left behind or is just not properly

Understood by most um Christians is what is the law gospel distinction and why is understanding that necessary to properly understand what you just explained okay um again I could go to Luther on this because that is one of his favorite subject in the commentary but in U in a certain section he simplifies it uh he says law is anything that you give to God with your hands okay anything whether it was Moses law the requirements of the prophets and even Jesus own teachings that require uh great deep spiritual Behavior Uh that is also law so that is how he explained what the

Law is is anything that God asks of you and you give to God but the gospel is when you open your hands and your hand hands are empty and then you receive from Christ the fullness of his righteousness imputed to you but you must bring your hands empty even dirty because you cannot receive the fullness of Christ’s gift of his righteousness if there is anything left over in your hands to give no matter how Pious no matter how dedicated uh your profession of faith is no matter what your Sabbath keeping is no matter what you know second or third tithe or whatever you do with your tithe

Or with your money no matter how great a life you have lived you cannot even offer one molecule of that to God of course Luther didn’t use molecule he just said you cannot put anything in your hands in order to receive the gift of justification so he said and I’m going back to Luther Luther said as you read the scripture learn to distinguish what is Law and what is Gospel don’t stop at the Old Testament stop in the Book of Revelation and then gospel is where you are offered the grace and the mercy of God and the two are as far from the East as another one is from the West you

Cannot co-mingle law and gospel so as to make uh your hands full of Law and at the same time think that you are receiving gospel um Luther said U these two cannot lie on the same bed he um quotes either Isaiah or Jeremiah uh where they ask him to lie on the same bed uh no the beds are too narrow you can only have and he and and Luther refers as to the conscience you can either have the law rule your conscience or the gospel in your conscience saying to you peace you have been forgiven through the fullness of Christ’s imputed righteousness and through his death

Which is your death which conquered your death through his resurrection so that is basically the the uh how to distinguish law and Grace and he says very interestingly for someone who had a doctorate degree uh Luther said whoever can read read scripture making this distinction between law and Grace is a theologian it’s amazing so yeah that’s very simplified the the difference between law and and Grace and and the gospel yeah yeah we’ve looked at that quote a number of times I talk about the subject a lot um I typically show um just because I think it’s a great summation

Statement I typically look at Lewis birkoff’s Systematic Theology where he essentially quotes Luther and he’s he quotes that same thing but um the most succinct way would be that the law says doe and the gospel says done yeah um and that there is a a stark contrast here and I find that a lot of Adventists really struggle with this if they really understood the law gospel distinction it would clear up 95% of the theological problems I’ve identified with adventism it’s because they don’t understand how to distinguish between law and gospel despite the fundamental beliefs book

Claiming that they do um we’re going to look at a little bit of that later I don’t want to get too ahead of myself um but I I just say that because I think it’s so important for them to really study and understand and try to grasp this it’s really like a hermeneutical principle it’s a way that you look at scripture when we say law there we’re not talking about just the Ten Commandments we’re talking about when you’re reading the Bible the big one for them is Matthew 548 they love to go there and say well you we were just looking at Luther on this uh a few weeks

Ago actually um in his commentary on Matthew 5 and uh how they love to say well Jesus said be ye perfect as your father in Heaven is perfect well right but he’s expounding upon the law he’s not telling you there how you can be made right with God that’s not gospel that’s law that’s him expounding upon the law so we will get into more of that in a little bit but a couple more questions before we transition to the SDA examination um and it kind of dovetails perfectly off of what we were just talking about what is the relationship between justification and

Sanctification again the gospel is extravagant there is the saying and I’m sorry I maybe getting ahead of my of of of where you’re going by uh referencing seventh day adventism but uh uh throughout um high school and college and the Seminary I was taught that you have to have a balance between Christ’s work for us and Christ’s work in US Christ’s work for us is justification and Christ uh uh work in US is sanctification and we grow in sanctification and you remember the lines that were drawn that uh Christ’s righteousness comes up to this point and

Thereafter you are growing in sanctification and until you surpass somehow Christ’s righteousness and then you become so perfect you are living without an intercessor and you know that kind of thing and So eventually when Adventists talk about sanctification and justification um sanctification always preempts justification um justification is never complete without your justif ification God can never declare you righteous until you are made righteous um so uh I go to First Corinthians Paul says and because of him you are in Christ Jesus once we are in Christ Jesus and we

Get there through justification um who he has become it it says this particular version says who became to us putting it in the past wisdom from God righteousness and sanctification and Redemption and the way that one resolves this tension that not only adventism but other Evangelical faiths and Pentecostal faiths and many other um even some Lutheran faiths try to resolve this uh is through the growth and sanctification they may not say that we eventually outgrow or go past Christ righteousness and justification but sanctification is the work of a lifetime and you know you go

At it you repent of your sins and then you know you you keep on growing in this thing called sanctification and it’s interesting because sanctification means nothing that you’re set apart for a special purpose but what I see here in First Corinthians 1:10 is that all of these are imputed the righteousness of Christ is imputed it’s called justification sanctification is also imputed to to us at the beginning of our work with Christ we already we’re already seen as totally Sanctified because the imputed righteousness of Christ cannot do anything else if you are declared

Righteous you’re also declared holy Sanctified and you have also been declared redeemed or risen with Christ so all of these are imputed uh our sanctification does not add one bit of Holiness to what is already ours in Jesus Christ so there is nothing to talk about when it comes about the relationship between sanctify ification and justification in what one does and what the other one does um it is all imputed to us the the work of um Christ is so complete at the cross and at the resurrection that his righteousness can no longer demand from us a

Righteousness that has already been counted or credited to our account what happens is that the Holy Spirit then says I’ve got this kid called kamacho and I know all his defects and I know all his stuff and uh but I will be a father to him I will be his guide I will be with him in in whatever he gets into to and I will pull him out and he will learn from that because I will be his teacher I will comfort him because he is our comforter and I have work for him to do because uh we are uh given Grace and uh once we are given Grace we are saved by grace um we were we are

Shown we are given works that were um designed for us from beforehand and that’s why sometimes we are amazed how one thing in our lives clicks toward the other like how did this happen how did I happen to call 1517 which was out out of my doubts and frustration I call 1517 to see if they’re going to publish Luther’s commentary so all these things seem to be fitting together and I don’t understand why why do not understand why did it come about because these are Works made designed for us to walk in them beforehand but there’s nothing about Sabbath keeping there’s nothing about

Life paying there’s nothing about all this uh because those things get in the way of whatever God has planned out for us we cannot complete God’s will for us in the works he has designed for us if we insist on God no your works for me are 10 or whatever um so um yeah that is how I uh I see this whole issue of justification and and sanctification yeah that’s good it’s interesting because um you know I’m I’m often times poking around in Adventist archives looking and reading documentation looking for claims that the scholars are making and those types

Of things and uh this could be a whole discussion in and of itself but um there’s a pocket of SDA scholarship um early 2000s up to the the modern day maybe sooner than that but were there’re on this big kick that really the Adventist understanding of justification it’s no different than early Martin Luther they actually believe the same thing Martin Luther did and I don’t know how familiar you are with um The Finnish school um but they appeal to some of these um Lutheran Finnish Scholars um who who kind of try and support that but there’s just an interesting history

There around the why they would appeal to The Finnish school which is I would argue um somewhat of like a historically revised understanding of Luther but I just think it’s interesting that they they try to appeal to him of all people to try and really bolster their idea of justification namely with what they believe about justification and sanctification being tied together which we’re going to look at in a moment but I got one final question before we transition to that I want I want to read a quote from Ken Sund Jones’s book a Lutheran toolkit which is a great little

Book that is also published by 1517 he writes quote Luther used two pairs of words that can help us understand what’s going on here active and passive righteousness active righteousness is the goodness that comes about because of what we do this is the righteousness that Luther struggled with in the medieval interpretation of the phrase the righteousness of God passive righteousness though is a right that is foreign to you it is a righteousness that comes apart from anything you do it’s given to you placed in you without your having done a lick

Of work to make it happen such righteousness comes as a gift close quote so we get a little bit here of what um to me sounds like what Lutheran often refer to as like an extra NOS um it’s salvation coming completely from outside of ourselves so so can you elaborate further on the differences between passive and active righteousness let me read to you um what uh what Paul wrote In what Paul what Luther wrote in this uh respect now this is again from uh my translation of um of Luther’s um epistle um Luther’s commentary to the Galatians when he writes about the M main argument

Of the epistle what did Paul intend to do with this epistle now as you read through this I think you will see the answer to your question St Paul proposes to establish the doctrine of Faith Grace the Forgiveness of sins or Christian righteousness so that we may perfectly understand the difference between Christian righteous and all other types of righteousness there is a political or civil righteousness that’s the first one Emperors the princes of this world philosophers and attorneys must deal with this one there is also a righteousness of social behavior

According to human Traditions parents as well as tutors May teach this type of righteousness without fear hence they do not attribute to these types of actions any satisfaction for sin to please God or to Merit Grace so if you teach your kid right manners to greet people correctly uh Etc uh this is not done in any way satisfaction for sin they teach that these types of behaviors are only necessary to correct bad habits and certain observances regarding social life now notice parallel to these there is another righteousness called the righteousness of the law or the Ten

Commandments taught by Moses according to the doctrine of faith we also teach this one it’s amazing how Luther places The Ten Commandments on the same level as the righteousness of uh good manners and good social graces it’s incredible however there is another above all others namely the righteousness of Faith or Christian righteousness we must diligently tell this one apart from the others this last one opposes the others a great deal the first types of righteousness flow from the laws of the Emperors the traditions of the Pope and the Commandments of

God they also consist in our good works and can be done by us through our sheer natural effort as the papists say or even as a gift from God yes the keeping of the Ten Commandments in our best possible way is a gift from from God all these types of righteousness are gifts of God as well as other good things that we enjoy but this more excellent righteousness can you imagine Luther saying this in class the passion with which he’s speaking to his students this more excellent righteousness that I say is of faith is this God through Christ apart from any work of our own put said freely

To our account and there you can find a whole bunch of verses in texts in Ephesians in Romans in Galatians that you could use to support that particular particular Romans 4 as we as we saw it this righteousness is not political or behavioral it is not the righteousness of the law of God did you catch that and I’m asking this to the hearer this is is not the righteousness of the law of God it does not concern our works but exists on a different level it is simple it is a simple passive righteousness see since all the previous ones are active see the difference

There if you want to be active there’s a whole bunch of stuff that you can be active with but as far as getting right with God it is the passive righteousness we are passive we don’t work for it it is a simple passive righteousness since all previous ones are active to obtain this one we don’t do any work at all nor do we offer anything to God rather we only receive and allow another to work in our have none other than God himself this is the righteousness that Luther called the alien righteousness the extranos righteousness it’s the alien righteousness of Christ that is

Christ that is credited to our account therefore it has seemed right to me to call this passive righteousness the righteousness of Faith or Christian righteousness he goes on this righteousness is a hidden Mystery the world is not aware of it what’s more Christians themselves don’t understand it fully and they can hardly take hold of it in their Temptations therefore it is necessary to teach it and practice it continually without any letup and whoever can’t understand it or is unable to hold on to this righteousness will be hounded by the con Conant fears of his conscience

And will certainly be defeated there is no other comfort as firm and sure for the conscience as is offered by this passive righteousness and I’m jumping down to this bottom paragraph there is no medication for the mortified and perturbed conscience when it is under condemnation of Eternal death it must take hold of the promise of Grace offered in Christ Jesus that is unless it takes hold of this passive righteousness or Christian righteousness if it’s able to grasp it then the conscience will find rest it will trustingly say I don’t seek this act of

Righteousness or the righteousness of works even though I know I must also have it and fulfill it but even if I had it and fulfilled it without a doubt even so I could not trust it neither could I bring it as a defense against J God’s judgment therefore I will strip myself of all act of righteousness mine as well as that of God’s law and embrace only this passive righteousness the righteousness of Grace based on God’s mercy and his forgiveness of sins in summary I find rest only on this righteous that is the righteousness of Christ and the Holy Spirit we don’t produce it but

We submit to Bear it it is not found within us but we receive it as a gift from God the Father through Jesus Christ notice this last phrase is in italics which was left out from the first English translation s amazing so and it’s also amaz amazing that he says we submit to barit because generally we use the term submit to God surrender yourselves to God uh so that you will be justified or That You Will Be Loved or that you will be guided by God but here Luther changes that around and says that this passive righteous righteousness is one that we submit to

Bear it it’s amazing because we usually submit so that we can do active uh righteousness but here he says submit to Bear the passive righteousness of Christ because your first instinct will be to cast it off and produce active righteousness to be right with God so so again um that is the the long context for um this Ken sundel Jones from the Lutheran toolkit where where Luther got this from it’s from nowhere else but from the righteousness of Christ that was fulfilled on our our behalf um yeah amazing stuff this commentary just um never there no page in which you cannot

Find a gem yeah it’s good stuff it’s like a spiritual jacuzzi you know it’s just like ah it’s just so you know again basking in the goodness of the Gospel um but I want to summarize here just for the audience um and make it very very plain and very clear um the teaching of Paul the Apostle when it comes to justification is that a sinner can be made right with a holy God strictly on the basis of the person and work of Jesus Christ that’s what the gospel is the person and work of Christ salvation comes entirely outside of ourselves and is received by faith that’s essentially

What we’re getting at here so in light of that now I want to examine some Adventist statements and some Adventist teaching on this and see if it truly does align with what we just put forth first let’s look at a quote from a paper titled justification by faith in Adventist understanding this is a paper that was written by a former SDA Professor by the name of Peter Van Beman he writes quote Adventists have always perceived themselves as Heirs of the great truths recovered and proclaimed by the Protestant reformers as stated in the concluding report of another bilateral dialogue

Adventists have a high appreciation for the Reformation they see themselves as HS of Luther and other reformers especially in their adherence to the great principles of solos script solar gratia Sola and solo chisto this plac is Adventist in harmony with the traditional Evangelical understanding of justification by faith and also with the patristic tradition for according to Thomas Odin the major reformers appeals to solos scriptura solar gratia and solop are found abundantly in the patristic interpreters of scripture close quote so according to

Mr van bemin the Church considers itself to be an heir of the reformation and they are in line with the Reformation understanding of justification by faith before looking at his practical explanation of their understanding brother you are now a Lutheran lay Minister former SDA Pastor was this your experience in the Seventh Adventist Church yes not not only the experience but it was the teaching uh because uh sometimes Adventist professors uh particularly Marvin mvin Maxwell uh you know he was one of the kids of um Arthur Maxwell who wrote the Bible

Stories he he taught the moral influence Theory together with Jack provancha mvin Maxwell who taught several courses at the Seminary when I was there would wax eloquently on uh on Luther and U at times would want to get carried away on justification by faith but he he he would catch himself at the last minute and would add Works would add the Adventist message of the understanding of justification by faith as if there as if we needed the Adventist understanding but anyhow it was very interesting because he and others blinko in particular and I have mentioned blinko and Tom bleno in

My past uh interview with you they would say that we stood on the shoulders of the reformers but we would ask them and I remember the hands raised and the questions various questions on this um how come Luther didn’t teach the Sabbath and didn’t teach 1844 and there you could hear a pin drop after that question so I don’t remember which whether was Blanco or Maxwell or both who would come up with an answer like this with this smile on their face saying those truths were reserved for the remnant Church of today to Proclaim it was the will of God to

Reserve those truths for us Brethren and for you students to take those teachings to the world the Reformation was not given those truths so that the remnant church today would be the one to fill out the great truths of the Reformation including the great truth of the spirit of Prophecy and the special Revelation given to us through and then white and this time the room would remain just a still you could hear a pin drop and I don’t know if it was because the rest of the students as well as myself were wondering wow that was a pretty good out but through the passing of time I

Came to realize that yes the Adventist Church not only climbed on the shoulders of the reformers but actually crushed the shoulders of the reformers and um stood all over them uh stomped them out moved them to the side and then substituted everything that belonged to the reformers with their conflict of the AG of series their Remnant Church idea this whole madeup story thus they Crush their actual work is crush the reformation and this whole thing about soles scriptura my goodness that is such a slight of hand and I call it a slight of hand because

What advinus do is that they sneak this term the spirit of Prophecy they sneak it in scripture and inside the terms uh spirit of Prophecy in in fact the term is found in scripture but they sneak inside the term the name Ellen White so they stick it in there and then they say with with this innocent face St a scriptura when they already know what they have done they have perverted scripture by taking this term of scripture the spirit of Prophecy and inserted their own gloss gloss their own understanding of the spirit of Prophecy to mean Ellen white

And whole conflict of the ages series the whole thing and then they have the go the face to say we are only Sola scriptura we are the true reform and you know to that I say kabat iabat which means the glory has departed in fact there was no glory to begin with but whatever Glory there was as far as Adventist theology it it it is blasphemy to to say that that that uh you pervert scripture and then you are truly understanding scripture and you know they um I also remembered one of those teachers again I don’t remember it was blinko or Maxwell maybe uh per

Chance there there is some um student my age I just turned 75 miles I just turned 75 maybe there’s some other student my age from back then who was sitting in those classrooms and could correct me but uh I remember these discussions and these statements by these teachers saying oh I am sure Luther if he had known what we know today he would have followed the Sabbath truth yes he was he came very close to understanding the Sabbath truth and they would say it with such conviction that we innocent p seminarians would say wow God has spoken so you ask me about my understanding and

An experience in the seven the Adventist Church yeah until Walter Ray came along and opened up the can of worms no there was a diet of worms and then there is raised can of worms and out of the can of worms come out all these great authors who sister white copied sister white copied oh the um in in Spanish they call it the pluma de inspir The Inspired pen there you go there’s the English term there the inspired pen so uh yeah that was my understanding of what this was going on but initially as a seminarian uh we were very vulnerable to these statements and we

Believed them and uh we said yeah okay I am the Fulfillment of the Reformation yeah so they’ve been saying this for for quite some time now notice what Dr Van ban goes on to then write in the paper he says quote if our justification is through grace alone by faith alone does The Obedience of Faith have anything to do with our Salvation or to phrase the question differently do our thoughts words and actions play a role in determining our Eternal destiny these are crucial questions which are closely related to the issue of the final judgment scripture has much to say about

That judgment not least in the teachings of Our Lord as recorded in the gospels said Jesus I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they’ve spoken for by your words you will be acquitted the RSV and the new King James say Justified and by your words you will be condemned here our Lord talks about justification and condemnation the judicial Declarations of innocence and guilt in the context of the day of judgment obviously there is an eschatological aspect to justification Adventists believe on the

Basis of scripture that the day of judgment is a very comprehensive concept and much Adventist literature has been published on the subject close quote so here he explains a two- tiered system of justification that you’re initially justified by grace through faith but to be determined in the future will be your eschatological justification a second justification which is ultimately determined by your thoughts words deeds and motives and this is where sanctification comes in Ellen White has that famous quote where she says justification is your title for heaven

But sanctification is your Fitness for heaven but the support that he appeals to for this from scripture is Matthew 1236 through 37 is what he described consistent with the Reformation teaching on justification well I think Luther would ask him where did you get your degree you don’t deserve a degree since you cannot separate law and gospel what Christ was doing was an amazing use of the law and again Luther does not Cast Away the law the law say he says that the law has this very specific function and that is to enter our hearts and make us shake so that we

Will trust only in his righteousness and not in ours Matthew 12:36 and 37 is law as taught by Christ himself in order to make the uh the self-righteous and whoever thinks that he is pious to stand in the Judgment shake and flee to Christ again but they don’t understand this seven day Adventists must stand on their own righteousness in the Judgment oh they say it’s not our own righteousness it is the righteousness that has been imparted to us and Ellen White has this i’ you know I’ve been it’s been a while since I’ve read a whole lot of Ellen White but

She says that that it is like a fiber or a text that is woven in and through us it is nothing but Roman Catholic Doctrine and if you like we can get into this but Adventist must always come to um the word judgment they like to drag The Sinner the guilty sinner into judgment and they say you are guilty therefore you must keep the Commandments which is an oximoron because the Commandments will do nothing else but say you’re even more guilty so anytime you talk about justification and Grace Adventist will drag you back to SI and say you must you know like

Nehemiah grab you by the beard and grab you by the hair and say you must obey the law of the Lord and this is what this gentleman is doing he um he is taking us back to Sinai by quoting The Words of Christ himself and Luther himself says this in this commentary that many take even the admonitions of Christ as orders to go back to SI and keep the law of Moses and therefore bring back um bring back to the conscience uh all kinds of um lack of peace all kinds of doubts and anguish back to the conscience and that is not the purpose of justification if justification has

Not brought you the complete sense that your sins all your sins past present and future have been forgiven through the death of Christ then uh justification has done nothing for you I I’m reminding of that wonderful text you know when I was um a a a pastor I’d like to say a young Pastor um but I must have been what 35ish back then when um and I know the last time I was on your uh on your channel uh on your interview people wrote says oh I get it why kamacho is a heretic or a dissident or something like that if he was a pupil of brims then then I understand why uh he has

Betrayed God’s true church or something like that there was a comment like that that I read um but I am going to um go to my experience with brims me and I have no idea why eventually Brin me went the direction he went with you know that’s his thing that is you know uh I I can’t get into his head but I remember a text that he used to use over and over over again in his lectures and I listened to them in some and to other lectures I went in um disguised with an overcoat and dark glasses and whatnot so that I would not be discovered that I had been at brims

Me lectures okay so I remember brims me uh quoting Psalm 1432 and wish I could uh mimic his Australian accent enter not into judgment with thy servant for before thee no flesh shall be justified and he would say that the sinner play is constantly not to be taken into judgment because no one could ever be declared righteous when and brought to judgment before God but adventism opposes scripture and says Sinners you must be brought to judgment and like a parent upset with a kid will pull him by the ear and take him to the cookie jar and say it has

Your fingerprints all over it so you’re guilty and Adventist must constantly go back to the Judgment as this gentleman has gone but scripture has the sinner pleading there is no way I can win out in the Judgment with any of my Works they are faulty and Luther even says of love we canot even bring love because Adventist say oh we uh we believe in justification by faith but then because of our love of having been Justified then we keep the law it’s a faulty defective love that doesn’t stand up to the kind of love you must have and Luther used to say that

Not even love can be brought into the definition of justification because we could ever love more and when we think we love more the law says You must love more you must forgive more you must be more and more patient so the law is always asking for more and more and our plea is enter not into judgment with thy servant for before thee no flesh shall be justified so anyhow that’s um that’s how I see this gentleman’s um turn into judgment my goodness uh yeah but I understand where he’s coming from you know that’s that’s what he was taught and that’s what he

Gets paid to say I don’t know if he is a retired Professor or what he is but yeah he he is retired um it’s just again there’s just so many things with this quote here it’s like it goes back to what we were saying earlier about if you don’t understand the law gospel distinction you will end up wielding the law unlawfully and engaging in spiritual murder you know totally just putting a crushing weight on people when the whole purpose of the law like you described is to point a person to the gospel that’s the proper use you know and if you’re not getting accused of being an

Antinomian like Luther did um are you really preaching the gospel um because the gospel is so um it’s just so contrary to what to to your flesh to say it’s that simple really it’s it’s it’s that it’s that good it’s that easy yes it is and the whole purpose of the law is to to point us to that and Ellen White has a famous quote where she says that the purpose of the law is to point us to Christ which is like okay amen but then she says where you’re shown the scars in his hands to show you that the law is immutable and then after you come to him in faith after seeing what he did for

You he’ll give you a new new found ability and he points you back to the law to now be able to do what the law demands and it’s just H it’s just it’s that’s what that’s what Luther says the Heretics do yeah the the schar Mary or the enthusiasts who he called the sectarians he used to say that he and the gospel preachers would lead Sinners to Calvary but once the Sinners were in Calvary thear Mary the the um Enthusiast of the law would come to Calvary and then they would tell the Sinners you know we’ve got a better place for you and lead them back to SI yeah that’s

Adventism and condemnations of sin yeah and that’s that’s exactly adventism it’s just like oh my goodness it’s like so close yet completely just so far off but what Peter Van bemin basically described in this paper is the medieval soteriology of the Middle Ages the the exact thing this two-tiered system of justification um where the reformers were essentially arguing against that that’s essentially what solop is in the context of is this distinction between a two-tiered system of justification intermingled with sanctification where there’s this initial you know Grace

That’s given and you’re Justified but then depending on what happens down the road that will determine this later justification now notice what Ellen White says on this subject which is really what Dr Van bmlin is getting at in that paper in her book faith and works she writes quote while God can be just and yet justify The Sinner through the merits of Christ no man can cover his soul with the garments of Christ’s righteousness while practicing known sins or neglecting known duties God requires the entire surrender of the heart before justification can take

Place and in order for man to retain justification there must be continual obedience through active Living Faith that works by love and purifies the soul close quote so through your obedience in her context that’s obedience to the law you retain your justification and that’s what will determine if you receive the eschatological justification that we just read about we will see why it has to be this way in their system in a moment but my question for you why is what she said so problematic well it goes against scripture it goes against the scripture

Um teaching on the Assurance of Salvation that um we are uh complete and we are accepted in the Beloved and that acceptance is not conditional on our continual surrender of What Not and this and that and it’s also problematic because as Luther used to say because this has been taught for by Heretics throughout history and Luther had he not like you said at the beginning he not only had to deal with the uh false teachings of U of Rome on justification and I wish we had time to get to those quickly uh but also with the sectarians and um you know the

Sectarians have always um brought um back the law and push the law in the believer’s uh face and if this is true Luther used to say in his lectures and you will find it there in the commentary know since I was sitting in the back row uh he would ask show me the person that has this kind of continued obedience to the law and he would say and these Hypocrites will not raise their hand they talk about obedience to the law and and continual surrender to God’s Will and perfect obedience and all this stuff that that uh jeez I can’t believe that you know this stuff um allegedly

Forms part of a Christian denomination this is so unchristian is unbelievable but yet I must be understanding because I was there once upon a time I believed this stuff and I tried to live it in my heart and it was that which brought me to faith in Christ the law um did meet its purpose uh in me because God knows how tried I had I how hard I tried to be perfect in thought in action in love and every I was going neurotic I was going crazy when in col I had to go see a psychiatrist because of this stuff I was going neurotic I was going crazy oh I to all appearances I I was

The great uh um um the theology major on campus but inside I was a wreck I was having uh all kinds of nervous symptoms I couldn’t sleep and uh it was horrible because precisely of this kind of stuff now many people don’t take it seriously but those Adventists that do take this stuff seriously if we could only read their therapists um um notes not only Adventists but also church leaders believe me there are a lot of church leaders today in the Adventist Church that warm the therapist couch weekly so that they can deal with this stuff so yeah um I cannot you know I just this stuff

Makes me really stick to my uh in my head and in my stomach I can’t handle this stuff it it is so um destructive to a person’s peace with God and of course having been Justified we have peace according to this no one can be justified if you read it carefully no one can be justified yeah it’s crazy it’s like like we just saw in in the beginning of his paper it’s like Adventists believe in the great truths of the reformers you know including solid and then you read through the rest of the paper and it’s like well here’s why we’ve been accused of not being able

To affirm solid and they go to give these long defenses part of which we’re going to look at now but then you see what Ellen White says there in very plain English and literally what she describes is completely contrary to the doc the Reformation doctrine of Sola it is the same medieval soteriology that the reformers were coming out of and believed deviated from what script teaches it is a two-tiered system of justification you’re initially Justified and they’ll say oh it’s all by Grace it is all by Grace yeah that initial justification you’re talking about which

In adventism is basically just given a clean slate but then moving forward it’s to be determined which is why that whole title for heaven and fitness for heaven thing well the title to Heaven means nothing if you don’t have the Fitness in their model so really it’s it’s irrelevant because they’ll love to say no we believe believe in the imputed righteousness of Christ we believe in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness but at the end of the day that means nothing because what really matters in the model is the gradual impartation in little spurts of Christ righteousness

That you essentially receive in accordance with your Obedience of trying to keep the law that’s not in accordance with the Reformation doctrine of Sol Aid you know the reformation and in fact Luther talks about this in the commentary and you may remember that in in my last interview I did not want to get into Luther’s commentary because I didn’t want anybody to say oh he’s a Lutheran he’s this and he’s that and you know now he has Luther as his last word uh but Luther in his commentary talks about this two-tiered system and it it was called um medus de

Conru and Meritus Theo uh a merito the conru is an initial approval of God because even though you are a sinner uh you see a beggar at the corner of the church um all in shattered clothes and dirty and somewhere deep within you you um begin saying okay I have a quarter I have a dollar bill I have a penny or a penny I will give the beggar a penny so you take out a penny and you put it in the uh Beggar’s cup now Medi evil salvation Theory or theology said that when you have done such a deed it is congruent to God’s mercy you have done something corresponding to God’s

Nature who is merciful um therefore God is obliged to give you an initial Merit because you have done something according to God’s nature and with that Merit to the congru that with that congruent Merit next week then you will um you will leave a quarter instead of a penny and so you will keep on getting these initial merits of congruence until you walk through the church and you come in and you take Mass uh and now what God gives you is a Meritus Theo a merit to the condo is a merit which God gives to you because you are worthy before God because now you are

Walking in the sacraments of the church so we would equal this to the initial merits as justification but then you must make yourself worthy before God by earning these U merits of worthiness or Merit of condo and you keep on growing through the various sacraments of the church and receiving more and more because what God does the way God gives you these merits are through what uh Roman Catholic theology calls to this day they call infused Grace by which the virtues and the powers of Christ are infused into your soul and and begin to fill your love

Your soul with love so that you will become more and more worthy before God um and then eventually there will come a time when you will be worthy enough for you to be justified yeah and obviously Adventists are going to disagree on saying well no no no no see we disagree with Merit that’s exactly what Peter Van bemin for example says in his paper I’ve heard that from countless other Adventists but that’s not the only problem at the end of the day you still have the same fundamental model you have a two-tiered system and it really is coming down to

And I would argue adventism is really synergism on steroids um it’s not monistic in any sense of the the the word I actually had an Adventist recently tried to tell me no no no you don’t even understand Adventist theology I’m an Adventist seminarian right now and we believe in synergistic monergism okay yeah so they’re coming up with all sorts of fancy you know ways to try and say but at the end of the day it’s not the the point being is it’s not like he said in the paper that they affirmed the the Reformation doctrine of solid they they just don’t so Dr Van bin

One final question here for you because he’s actually going to explain why Ellen would have said what she just did there about justification must be retained through your active obedience he writes quote suffice it to say here that they talking about Adventist hold that the judgment is to be distinguished in an investigative and an executive judgment it is our belief in investigative judgment that has led to the accusation that we as Adventists he says they do not really believe in the Reformation principle of solid solar gratia close quote so the avenus understanding of

This teaching solid or justification by faith is impacted by their unique and do and novel doctrine of the investigative judgment which means that one must understand that teaching to understand what the da a church means when they emphatically you know State no no we believe justification by faith 1888 we we got it right in 1888 justification by faith final question why is the investigative judgment not compatible with the Biblical teaching on justification because it makes your justification contingent or your sanctification that’s what the investigative judgment is all about and

Uh sanctification is your growth in Grace is the same thing as the medit Deo by which um Adventists don’t use infused Grace they use imparted righteousness it is the same thing uh and that’s how you come before the the Judgment you’ve got to have uh a pretty you know 100% um impartation of all of Christ’s righteousness as shown through you uh as you have demonstrated it and when you come into the investigative judgment uh what in in then they misuse um fully clothed in the garments of Christ’s righteousness but what they mean by that is not that you are wearing

Christ’s righteousness as a robe given to you without any Merit without any sense of condition or worthiness but it’s a robe that you have woven with your own hands and that is nothing but heresy that is taking away the glory of God and they break the Commandment that says Thou shalt not steal because the whole teaching of the investigative judgment is is that you must come in with your own gloriously built Adam and Eve like uh style like the way they put together their Garment of righteousness to appear before God that’s their teaching except that you must do a

Better job than Adam and Eve in in doing their garment you must have followed Christ’s perfect example in thought and so on you know and it brings me to Psalm 24 where the psalmist ask you know in the final um when in the final accounting of things who shall stand before the Throne of God and then it says he who has Clean Hands and a pure heart he whose heart has not risen to um the Hebrew says to Bubbles to follow after bubbles um to vanity and it’s very interesting that uh the question is asked in the singular uh he who has Clean Hands prophetically and speaking uh

Messianically of our Lord Jesus Christ for he is the only one who has ever stood before God with Clean Hands and a pure heart and we stand before God given that righteousness without any righteousness of Our Own because if we had one Fiber One molecular fiber of our own righteousness um it it would mess up God would not recognize it we have tainted the perfect righteousness of Christ so that’s why this this whole thing here um about um yeah the the Reformation it leads where it says in it is there belief in an investigative judement that has led to the accusation

That they do not really believe in the Reformation principle ofia and I would say like many teenagers say today da does that surprise you I mean you asked for it through your investigative judgment uh you have asked for that accusation to be thrown at you because um the accusation is is thrown at you from people who cannot stand that unbiblical uh understanding of the righteousness of Christ and it is a whole uh Doctrine invented to save Fai from a great disappointment that that you know the investigative judgment no matter how many dates they want to put on it Year

Day principle 457 BC and whatnot it was all an invention to save face and yet these U people who consider themselves theologians Luther had Luther had some chosen term for the Scholastics that I shall not repeat you have to get the commentary uh to uh get the juiciness of uh Luther’s flavor to call people who taught all these false things because again these are not new inventions the these things to uh steal and Rob the glory of Christ have been around uh even before the the Reformation I mean heresy and these types of human righteousness elevated uh

To the Supreme uh have been around for a long time and will be around uh for a long time and um um God will continue to use Earth and Broken Vessels like these guys um to imperfectly um say that uh uh we are saved through faith alone by Christ Alone through grace alone and to his glory and we live to his glory alone so anyhow that’s I I can’t believe this stuff really my friend thank you for spending some time with us this evening it has been an awesome discussion I always love talking with you like I said it’s it’s I would just describe it as like a

Spiritual jacuzzi it’s just ah um always know we’re going to have good good discussion around the gospel my final question or request from you is if you would close us out by sharing the gospel with our listeners the gospel has a proper name the gospel is not a Doctrine the gospel is the holy person of Jesus Christ who voluntarily gave himself over for our sins I would love to say my sins but when I say our sins I’m including myself but it’s a communal thing sin is always a communal thing so Christ gave himself for our sins he is my death he is my life he is my

Resurrection thus he is my gospel he is my good news in him I have entered into my soul’s Eternal rest and I have no fear for any judgment because I have been justified through him alone and forever he will stand in my place as my righteousness and he has given me the privilege to already be seated at his right hand and to uh sing with the great uh multitude of the saved worthy worthy Worthy is the Lamb so the gospel has uh no asterisks no footnote no let me clarify this because anything that we add to the gospel will take away his Brilliance his

Brightness as my gospel my good news the gospel cannot include Moses it cannot include Elijah it cannot include Moses as the law and it cannot include Elijah as any of the prophets or prophetesses when Christ appears everything is gone and only he remains and he says my beloved your sins have been eternally forgiven be of good cheer ho to apostate did he say that come on man