The Atonement's Power to Change Us

I was asked to speak in sacrament meeting last Sunday on the atonement. Since I didn't get a chance to write anything last week about Easter, I thought I could at least share the information from my talk. It's a week late, but the atonement is applicable every day of our lives.

Easter is a celebration of the most important events in history: Christ's infinite atonement and resurrection for all mankind, which give all of us hope for a future of progression and eternal life, when we would otherwise be hopelessly lost. Although it is impossible to comprehend the scope of the savior's atonement for us, we do know the three main purposes for the atonement:

• First, Christ's atonement redeems all mankind from the fall of Adam, and allows us to overcome mortal death and be resurrected after this life. In the typical Christian sense of the word, all of us, except the few sons of perdition, will be “saved” in heaven, unconditionally.
  
• Second, out of pure love, Christ suffered all the pain and sorrow we will ever experience during mortal life, allowing him to empathize with us perfectly and comfort us in a way no one else could.
  
• Third, Christ suffered to pay the price for our so that we can be forgiven.
  

Acts 13:30 And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.

We are justified (declared innocent) from sins when we repent. We must be clean to dwell in the presence of God. But this is not all that is required to inherit the Celestial Kingdom. We also must change, or become sanctified.

D&C 20:30 And we know that justification through the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is just and true;

31. And we know also, that sanctification through the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is just and true, to all those who love and serve God with all their mights, minds, and strength.

 Justification and sanctification both happen through grace.

Moroni 10:32 Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

 33 And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God.

I thought this was a chronological list, but I have realized that it is actually a definition. When we are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then we have become sanctified through His grace. So sanctification is the process of coming unto Christ and being perfected in Him, or in other words, becoming perfect like He is. 

“By the grace of God” appears three times in these verses – this process of change happens through the atonement.

Elder Bruce C. Hafen wrote:

“I once wondered if those who refuse to repent but who then satisfy the law of justice by paying for their own sins are then worthy to enter the celestial kingdom. The answer is no. The entrance requirements for celestial life are simply higher than merely satisfying the law of justice. For that reason, paying for our sins will not bear the same fruit as repenting of our sins. Justice is a law of balance and order and it must be satisfied, either through our payment or his. But if we decline the Savior's invitation to let him carry our sins, and then satisfy justice by ourselves, we will not yet have experienced the complete rehabilitation that can occur through a combination of divine assistance and genuine repentance. Working together, those forces have the power permanently to change our hearts and our lives, preparing us for celestial life.”(The Broken Heart [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989], 149; emphasis in original).

No matter what we do, it is not possible for us to meet the demands of justice in this life. And that has already been done by Christ. To be justified from our sins, all we need to do (and all we can do) is repent. But, as it says in Helaman 5:7, “faith and repentance bringeth a change of heart.” When the people of Mosiah had this type of change of heart, they had “no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually.” This is where we are trying to get to in this life. We can't avoid sin, but we can increase in our desire for good, and grow in our love for God.

Think for a moment about what it would be like if the justifying power of the atonement applied to everyone without requiring repentance, and we were all automatically forgiven of our sins. We would have no reason to change. We would all someday stand before God being clean, but still with the hearts and desires of the natural man, and unfit to live in the Celestial Kingdom. God loves us so much more than that! Christ paid the incredible price so that we can have the opportunity to get this education called life, and learn and grow and change. Without a change of heart, we could never become like Him and could never have eternal life. But when our hearts are pure and we desire righteousness, we are on the path to Celestial glory, even though we we all still make mistakes frequently.

Brad Wilcox gave a wonderful devotional at BYU last year called “His Grace is Sufficient”:

I have born-again Christian friends who say to me, “You Mormons are trying to earn your way to heaven.”

I say, “No, we are not earning heaven. We are learning heaven. We are preparing for it. We are practicing for it.”

They ask me, “Have you been saved by grace?”

I answer, “Yes. Absolutely, totally, completely, thankfully—yes!”

Then I ask them a question that perhaps they have not fully considered: “Have you been changed by grace?” They are so excited about being saved that maybe they are not thinking enough about what comes next. They are so happy the debt is paid that they may not have considered why the debt existed in the first place. Latter-day Saints know not only what Jesus has saved us from but also what He has saved us for. … While many Christians view Christ’s suffering as only a huge favor He did for us, Latter-day Saints also recognize it as a huge investment He made in us. Grace isn’t just about being saved. It is also about becoming like the Savior.”

So, are we being changed by grace? Are we allowing the Savior's sacrifice to help us become better people?

Elder Hafen wrote, “The great Mediator asks for our repentance not because we must ‘repay’ him in exchange for his paying our debt to justice, but because repentance initiates a developmental process that, with the Savior’s help, leads us along the path to a saintly character.”

I think the words, “with the Savior's help” are very important in this quote. We are not required or expected to change ourselves by ourselves, and it would be impossible. The Savior's atonement not only allows Him to forgive us of our sins, but to help us become better people. The Savior paid the price for sin so we could be forgiven of those sins. He suffered our pains and sorrow so he could understand us and help us overcome our pains and sorrow. He also suffered our temptations, so He could help us overcome them, and ultimately become perfect. In this month's Ensign, Elder Bednar gives a message about how the Atonement helps us progress. He says:

“We may mistakenly believe we must make the journey from good to better and become a saint all by ourselves, through sheer grit, willpower, and discipline, and with our obviously limited capacities.

The gospel of the Savior is not simply about avoiding bad in our lives; it also is essentially about doing and becoming good. And the Atonement provides help for us to overcome and avoid bad and to do and become good. Help from the Savior is available for the entire journey of mortality—from bad to good to better and to change our very nature.”

What a merciful gospel this is! When the Savior asks us to become perfect, as He is, He's not asking us to do it alone, since that would not be possible. He's provided the atonement so that, as Mosiah said, “our hearts [can be] changed by faith on His name.” Notice that Mosiah does not say we must change our own hearts, but says in the passive voice “our hearts are changed.” We know that “the natural man is an enemy to God”, and because of that, we don't have the power to overcome our natural, carnal natures by ourselves. But if we “yield to the enticings of the Holy Spirit” and allow a mighty change to be wrought in our hearts, as it was wrought in the heart of Alma, we can “become a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and become as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”

Our responsibility, according to these verses, is to yield to the Spirit (or in other words, follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost), and allow a change to be wrought in us. Christ wants to change us. His atonement has the power to change us. Our sincere effort, faith, and obedience is required in this process. But with Christ, our efforts are magnified to let us progress many times more than we could ever progress by ourselves.

The Bible dictionary entry under grace states,

“It is ... through the grace of the Lord that individuals, through faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ and repentance of their sins, receive strength and assistance to do good works that they otherwise would not be able to maintain if left to their own means. This grace is an enabling power that allows men and women to lay hold on eternal life and exaltation after they have expended their own best efforts. 

Sometimes it feels that Christ's admonition to become perfect is so overwhelming that we can never achieve it.We must remember that the reason Christ paid for our sins is because He expects us to make mistakes. The important thing is to keep trying to become closer to Him so we can accept His help as we try to improve.

Stephen Robinson, in his book “Believing Christ,” tells a story he calls 'The parable of the Bicycle”:

His daughter asked him if she could have a bike and he replied, “"You save all your pennies, and pretty soon you'll have enough for a bike." A few weeks later, he noticed her putting a few coins in a jar and asked what she was doing. She replied,"You promised me that if I saved all my pennies, pretty soon I'd have enough for a bike. And, Daddy, I've saved every single one of them."

He describes, “My heart melted. She was doing everything in her power to follow my instructions. I hadn't actually lied to her. If she saved all of her pennies she would eventually have enough for a bike, but by then she would want a car. Because I love her, I said, "Let's go downtown and look at bikes.”

So after looking for a while, she found the bike she wanted. “But when she saw how much it cost, her face fell and she started to cry. She said, "Oh Dad, I'll never have enough for a bicycle."

So I said, "Sarah, how much do you have?"

She answered, "Sixty-one cents."

He said, "I'll tell you what. You give me everything you've got and a hug and a kiss, and the bike is yours."

This story is not about justification. It's not like we have to try to keep all the commandments perfectly, and if we mess up then Christ will step in and make up the difference. We have already fallen, and Christ has already paid the whole debt. This story is about sanctification. When it comes to changing our natures, the parable about the bicycle makes perfect sense. We put in our 61 cents of effort to change our hearts and Christ will bring us the rest of the way. 

Still, sometimes our mistakes and trials make even the 61 cents-worth of effort seem impossible.

Christ says in Matthew chapter 11 “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

When I read this scripture, I imagine the impossibly heavy load we bring upon ourselves as soon as we sin. We are incapable of removing the burden, and it is so heavy that we cannot move or progress while it is pressing down upon us. Because Christ is perfect, the justification of the atonement removes this burden of sin from us. Without the heavy load, we are then able to move and grow and progress in the gospel and become the kind of people who are capable of someday living in the celestial kingdom. This is the sanctification provided by the atonement.

I have felt the atonement of Christ working in my life, and I have felt Him carry my burdens when I felt like I couldn't go any further. I know He will be there for each of us whenever we are in need, and that He can make it possible for us to become the kind of people we ultimately want to be.