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“I am He that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive forevermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death” (Rev. 1: 18)

By deception Satan became the head of this world. And having taken Adam under his control, he became the head of this dominion, this world, and of all principality and power in it.

But a stronger One than he came into the world. A second Adam came, not as the first Adam was, but as the first Adam had caused his descendants to be in the degeneracy of the race to which it had come from the first Adam. That second Adam came and disputed the dominion of this one who had taken possession.

He who came into this rebellious dominion proved to be stronger than he who had possession, and He defeated him at every step. Then in order to show to the universe how completely more powerful He is than the other, Jesus not only defeated Satan while He was alive but after He gave Himself over dead into the hands of this one who was in possession, who shut Him up in his stronghold, dead. And even then He broke the power of Satan! The battle has been fought and won.

Thus Christ has demonstrated that he is not only stronger than Satan when He is alive, but that [even] when dead He is stronger. Therefore He came forth from the tomb and exclaimed before the universe, “Behold, I am alive forevermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and death.”

Well then, when a dead Christ is stronger than all the power of the devil, what can a living Christ not do who sits at the right hand of God today? Is there any room for our being discouraged? Is there any room for fear, even in the presence of all the principalities, and powers, and might, and dominion that the devil can muster on the earth? Jesus's power is enlisted on our behalf-His living power. His dead power would be enough, wouldn't it? But He does not stop at that.

Jones, General Conference Bulletin, 1895, pp. 436,437

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“The righteousness of faith speaks in this way…’The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:6-9).

May we accept the statement in the last verse as literally true? Shall we be in danger if we do? Is not something more than faith necessary to salvation?

To the first of these questions we say, Yes. To the last two we say, No. So plain a statement cannot be other than literally true, that can be depended on by the trembling sinner.

Take the case of the jailer at Philippi. Paul and Silas, after having been inhumanly beaten, were placed in his care. Notwithstanding their lacerated backs and manacled feet, they prayed and sang praises to God at midnight. Suddenly an earthquake shook the prison and all the doors were opened. It was not alone the dread of Roman justice if the prisoners should escape that caused the jailer to tremble. He felt in that earthquake shock a premonition of the great judgment. Trembling under his load of guilt, he fell down before Paul and Silas saying, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Mark well the answer: “ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:30,31). This agrees exactly with the words we quoted from Paul to the Romans. On one occasion the Jews said to Jesus, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Just the thing we want to know. Mark the reply: “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent” (Jn. 6:28, 29).

Would that these words might be written in letters of gold and kept before the eyes of every struggling Christian. The seeming paradox is cleared up. Works are necessary; yet faith is all-sufficient, because faith does the work.

Waggoner, Bible Echo, August 1, 1890

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“No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My father I have made known to you” (Jn. 15:15).

The Lord says He proposes to keep back nothing from you. That shows that He has a great deal of confidence in us! But it is so natural to think that He only tolerates us when we believe in Jesus. By forcing Himself to do so He can bear our ways a little longer, if by any means we can make ourselves good enough so that He can like us well enough to have confidence in us.

And Satan is so ready to talk to us like that.

But the Lord does not want us to hesitate and doubt as to our standing before Him. He says: “When you have believed in Me, you are accepted in Me. I do not propose to tolerate you merely to try to get along with you. I propose to put confidence in you as in a friend, and take you into the councils of My will, and give you a part in all the affairs of the inheritance.”

I have people say that they are thankful for the confidence they had in the Lord. I have no objection to that, but I do not think it is a very great accomplishment, or worthy of any very great commendation that I should have confidence in the Lord, considering who I am and who He is.

But it is an astonishment that He should have confidence in me! That is where the wonder comes. You know that is the last point that a human being can reach in confidence and friendship that the family secrets should be laid open to him. Yet that is the way the Lord treats the believer in Jesus.

The Lord does not take us upon suspicion, nor does He merely tolerate us. He says, “Come on to me.” You are accepted in the Beloved. Come into the house; sit down at the table, and eat. You are henceforth one of the family.

Jones, General Conference Bulletin, 1895, 397, 398

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“Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life” (Rom. 6:12, 13 NIV)

There is one man, Christ Jesus, who resisted successfully all the powers of sin when He was here upon the earth. He was the Word made flesh. He could stand before the world and challenge any to convict Him of sin. No guile was found in His mouth. By His obedience many shall be made righteous.

Many ask today, How can I have His life or His righteousness? If we all eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood, we will have the life of Christ. If we have His life, we have His righteous life. His obedience works in us, and that makes us righteous. This does not leave any room for the statement that Christ obeyed for us and that therefore we can do as we please, and His righteousness will be accounted unto us just the same. His obedience must be manifested in us day by day. It is not our obedience, but the obedience of Christ working in us. The life we live is the life of the Son of God. He lets us get all the benefit of that obedience because we have shown the intense desire for obedience.

When we go to God in prayer, take these Scriptures on your lips: “We shall be saved by His life." “By the obedience of One shall many be made righteous.” Then when you come to the time of temptation, the time when you have usually fallen, you can tell Satan that he has no power to make you fall beneath that temptation, for it is not you but Christ that dwells in you.

We must have a life different from our natural life in order to resist sin. That must be a life that sin has never touched and can never touch. Repeat the glorious words over and over again, “His life is mine, I cannot be touched by sin. That was a sinless life, and by faith I have it.

That is the only way to resist, and that will be successful every time.

Waggoner, General Conference Bulletin, 1891, No.9

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“What if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written: ‘That you may be justified in Your words, and may overcome when You are judged’” (Rom. 3:3,4).

God is now accused by Satan of injustice and indifference, and even of cruelty. Thousands have echoed the charge. But the judgment will declare the righteousness of God. His character, as well as that of man, is on trial. In the judgment every act, both of God and man, that has been done since creation will be seen by all, in all its bearings. And when everything is seen in that perfect light, God will be acquitted of all wrongdoing, even by His enemies.

God is Himself on trial before the universe, and Satan and evil men have always charged Him with being unjust and arbitrary. But in the judgment all the universe will say, “Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints” (Rev. 15:3 KJV).

Satan himself can never find any fault with the way of salvation as being in any sense unfair. He deceived and overcame man, as man stood in the glory and image of God with all the blessings and the power and the goodness of God on his side. Now, when this second Adam comes into human flesh at the point to which Satan had brought the whole race by sin, and in this weakness [He] enters upon the contest, Satan can never say that “You have an unfair advantage. You have come here with too strong a panoply about You, with too many safeguards, for it is to be a fair contest.” There stood Christ in the very weakness of the flesh to which Satan had brought man. And in that weakness our Brother won! He won it!
Thank the Lord!

When Jesus is crowned before the universe, then every knee from Lucifer unto the last man that has rejected Him, will also bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; and they will do it to the glory of God the Father.

Waggoner, Waggoner on Romans, p.76

Waggoner, General Conference Bulletin, 1891, No. 2

Jones, General Conference Bulletin, 1895, pp. 447, 450

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March 2nd 2023

“God, our Savior…desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth…The Man Christ Jesus…gave Himself a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:3-6).

Wherein was Adam the figure of Christ? In this: that all that were in the world were included in Adam. And all that are in the world are included in Christ. In other words, Adam in his sin reached all the world; Jesus Christ, the second Adam, in His righteousness touches all humanity. That is where Adam is the figure of Him that was to come. The first Adam touched all of us; what he did included all of us. Of he had remained true to God, that would have included all of us. And when he fell away from God, that took us also. Whatever he should have done embraced us; and what he did made us what we are.

Now here is another Adam. Does He touch as many as the first Adam did? That is the question! The answer: what the second Adam did embraces all that were embraced in what the first Adam did.

“The free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.” Are all men going to be justified? All men might if they would. But, says Christ, “You will not come to Me that you might have life.” All are dead in trespasses and sins. The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It comes right within the reach of all men, and those who do not get it are those who do not want it.

The faith of Christ must bring the righteousness of God, because the possession of that faith is the possession of the Lord Himself. This faith is dealt to every man, even as Christ gave Himself to every man. Do you ask what then can prevent every man from being saved? The answer is, Nothing, except the fact that all men will not keep the faith. If all would keep all that God gives them, all would be saved.

Waggoner, General Conference Bulletin, 1891, No. 14, No. 9

Waggoner, Waggoner on Romans, p. 69

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“We conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law” (Paul, in Rom. 3:28). “You see, then, that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only” (James, in Jam. 2:24).

Does not the apostle James say that faith alone cannot save a man and that faith without works is dead? Let us look at his words a moment.

Too many have with honest intent perverted them to a dead legalism. He does say that faith without works is dead, and this agrees most fully with what we have just quoted and written (from Paul). For if faith without works is dead, the absence of works shows the absence of faith, for that which is dead has no existence.

If a man has faith, works will necessarily appear, and by faith boasting is excluded. Boasting is done only by those who trust wholly in dead works, or whose profession of faith is a hollow mockery.

“If someone says he has faith but does not have works…can faith save him? (Jam. 2:14). The answer is of course, that it cannot. Why not?- Because He hasn’t it. Must we decry the power of faith simply because it does nothing for the man who makes a false profession of it? The fact that he has no good works-no fruit of the Spirit-shows that he has no faith, despite his loud profession. Faith has no power to save a man who does not possess it.

Justification, first, last, and all the time, is by faith alone. The Christian cannot be justified by works anymore than the sinner can be.

But this is not to say that works have nothing to do with faith. Faith which justifies is a faith which makes the man a doer of the law. One is not justified by faith and works, but by faith which works.

Waggoner, Bible Echo, August 1, 1890

Waggoner, Waggoner on Romans, p. 76

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“Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace” (Rom.6:14).

Although the throne of God is the habitation of His law, that law which is death to sinners, yet it is a throne of grace. We “come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16). Note-we are to come to obtain mercy. Note also that the top of the ark of the testimony in which were the tables of the law was called the mercy-seat. The ark if the earthly tabernacle not only represented the throne where God’s law is enshrined, but it represented that throne as the throne of grace.

“Even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 5:21). Christ’s life was given for us and to us on the cross. By being crucified with Him we live with Him. In His heart was the law, so that the heart of Christ was really the throne of God. Sinai and Calvary are not in opposition, but are united. Both present the same gospel and the same law. The life which flows for us from Calvary bears to us the righteousness of the law that was produced from Sinai.

Thus we see how grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life. Eternal life is in Christ, because His life is the life of the self-existent God who is from “everlasting to everlasting.” But the life of God is the law. The grace of God flows to us through the life of Christ, and thus in Christ we receive the law as it was ordained to life.

To accept the unspeakable gift of God grace therefore is simply to yield ourselves to Him, that Christ may dwell in us and live in us the righteousness of the law as spoken from Sinai, and treasured in the throne of God. From Christ that living stream still flows, so that receiving Him, we shall have in us that well of water spring up unto everlasting life.

Waggoner, Waggoner on Romans, pp. 105-108

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“Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law” (Rom. 3:31).

The trouble is that many people in general have a faulty conception of faith. They imagine that it is mere assent, and that it is only a passive thing, to which active works must be added.

But faith is active, and it is not only the most substantial thing, but the only real foundation. The law is the righteousness of God for which we are commanded to seek, but it cannot be kept except by faith. The only righteousness which will stand in the judgment is “through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith” (Phil. 3:9).

Making void the law of God by man is not abolishing it, for that is an impossibility. No matter how much men may trample upon it and despise it, it remains the same. The only way that people can make void the law of God is by their disobedience. So when the apostle says that we do not make void the law through faith, he means that faith and disobedience are incompatible. No matter how much the law-breaker professes faith, the fact that he is a law-breaker shows that he has no faith. But the possession of faith is shown by the establishment of the law in the heart, so that the man does not sin against God.

Let no one decry faith as of little moment.

Christ does not ask you to put all your sins away before you can come to Him and be wholly His. He asks you to come, sins and all; and He will take away from you all your sins. He gave Himself for you, sins and all. He bought you, sins and all; let Him have what He bought. Let Him have His own. Let Him have you, sins and all.

Waggoner, Bible Echo, August 1, 1890 Jones, Lessons on Faith, p.119