E.J. Waggoner on Justification

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Romans 8:4

"Two years before 1888, Waggoner wrote in the Signs, “Justification has reference to the moral law. From the transgression of that, man needs justification; but the law cannot justify any sinner, it can only condemn. And so it drives him to Christ, that he may be justified by faith” (Signs of the Times, Sept. 2, 1886). 

Again, “The law literally drives the sinner to Christ, by shutting up every other way of freedom from guilt.” Ibid. Aug. 26, 1886. 

Here, E.J. Waggoner was being 100% biblical.

 

Here are Waggoner’s key points:

1.   The word “justification” has specific reference to the moral law.

2.   It is “from the transgression of that” law that man needs justification.

3.   When a sinner realizes he is condemned by that law, and that Jesus Christ was condemned for his own sins on that cruel cross, he is moved and driven to Jesus Christ to be “justified by faith.”

4.   “Justified by faith” simply means that, when a sinner has faith in Jesus Christ, he is then released from the law’s condemnation. Both Waggoner and EGW also taught that being “justified by faith” also changes a person’s heart and leads to heart obedience to the same law that he is now no longer considered guilty of breaking (see Rom. 5:1,5; 8:4).

 

Three years after 1888, Waggoner wrote: ”The case, then, stands thus: The law demands perfect and unvarying obedience, but it speaks to all the world and finds none righteous; all have violated it, and all are condemned by it (Romans 3:9-19).  Present or future obedience will not take away past transgression, therefore the law cannot help us” (Signs of the Times, Nov. 30, 1891).

 

Again, firmly based on Romans 3:19-22, Waggoner wrote that “all are condemned” by the law, which is why all need justification which comes by faith in Jesus Christ alone." 

Steve Wohlberg/F7