RICHARD FOSTER | Contributor
Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ’God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess. And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ’God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”—Luke 18:9–14 NKJV
There is a poison in the world right now that is particularly visible, it seems. Everywhere you look you can find someone who is putting someone else down for not being as good as they are.
This perceived righteousness may come from something one did, and they may be swelling with pride over the accomplishment. It may be that someone got caught in a crime of some sort, or it may be someone got caught committing adultery or perpetrating some other moral failure. It’s easy for us to see such failures of others and think, “I’m not like that.”
For some people it may be certain beliefs or a belief system that boosts their righteousness complex through the roof: “I belong to these people, and we aren’t like those others.”
Adventist Exceptionalism
As an Adventist I know I had moments (I can remember them vividly) where I was proud to be a Seventh-day Adventist. I even remember thinking to myself, “I am not part of Babylon like all the other churches.”
Oh, how wrong and misguided I was! How wrong and misguided are those within that system still doing this.
To be fair, this is not exclusively an Adventist problem but a pervasive problem of human nature. However, a system like Adventism, with it’s understanding of certain personal accomplishments factoring into one’s salvation, is particularly at risk of bringing this bad tendency out in people.
Yet in the parable cited at the beginning, Jesus gives us a major lesson in how much our righteousness is worth in God’s sight. We learn that the man who was proud of his good religious accomplishments didn’t get justified. On the other hand, a total wretch eating humble pie and recognizing his complete sinfulness, went away justified!
Let’s evaluate our own hearts for a minute. Which man are we? When we hear of somebody else’s sins, do we react with disgust at their behavior, or with sadness that they themselves and others have been harmed? Perhaps we see people down and out in the bad part of town, and we think “low” of them. All of us are guilty of this kind of judgment, or similar things, at one time or another.
These were our golden religious accomplishments at the time, keeping the Sabbath, eating a certain diet, giving a certain percentage to Adventism, and more.
In Adventism a checklist of sorts was provided to us: Keep the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Pay a tithe from every paycheck. Avoid eating certain foods— and so on. We would talk about “Sunday keepers” and “Sunday churches” being “Babylon” in contrast to US who were “the Remnant”. I remember hearing conversations about how inappropriate it was that one of the elders ate chicken or beef when going tout to eat.
These were our golden religious accomplishments at the time, keeping the Sabbath, eating a certain diet, giving a certain percentage to Adventism, and more. And in the face of these accomplishments, it was easy to think favorably of ourselves.
But where are we now? Are we the Pharisee or the tax collector? Are we overwhelmed with Holy Spirit conviction about our sin to the point we can’t even think of the “good” we have done? Or are we thinking of the good we have done?
What Is Repentance?
The main condition of true gospel repentance is an overwhelming conviction of our sinfulness. To borrow from Paul’s analogy, all the good we have done is essentially a mountain of stinking manure.
Only when we realize this fact are we prepared to fully embrace the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Only when we realize this are we prepared to accept and embrace a righteousness completely outside of us! Only when we realize that our goodness is like stinking manure are we prepared for what Luther called justitia alienum,”an alien righteousness”—in other words, a righteousness that belongs completely to someone else.
If we have experienced Christian conversion, we have been overwhelmed by our sinfulness to the point that we have been laid out before God like the tax collector. And if we have been through that kind of conviction, then to act the part of the Pharisee is completely absurd.
But what if you haven’t had this on-your-face conviction and realization of your sinfulness, leading you to heart-wrenching prostration before the Holy God, asking His mercy and nothing else?
First of all, pray for God to convict you. In that very moment, He just might open reality before you. In a previous article I talked about the depth of the law. Understanding that God’s law isn’t merely the simple commands which Adventism teaches but that it includes the exceedingly broad categories that cut to the very thoughts and intentions of the heart—knowing this truth will begin to cut down your thoughts of your own goodness in a hurry. In this moment ask God to have mercy on you, a sinner. It is a prayer that God has answered in the affirmative a hundred percent of the time.
In a nutshell, the gospel of Christ is the cure to the deadly disease of self-righteousness. fI we have the righteousness of Christ which He accomplished in His finished work, our own righteousness is gone! It’s as simple as that. †
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- A Gospel Appeal for Adventists - July 18, 2024
- Adventism and the Sufficiency of Scripture - May 23, 2024