Atonement: The Core of my Religious Beliefs
What follows is the text of a talk I gave in church in January. I've been meaning to post if for quite some time as it summarizes my core beliefs...
I’m very grateful to speak on the atonement, since it is the doctrine with which I have had the most experience and of which I have the strongest testimony. We were asked to share our personal feelings about the atonement, and I will do that. First, though, I need to lay out my personal understanding of the atonement from the scriptures.
Let me begin with the concept that we are dynamic beings. I see us as beings that continually grow and change, with the potential to take on ever greater abilities. In section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants, we read in verse 29 that: “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can it be.” This is to say that the intelligence in each and every one of us was not created by God, but is co-eternal with him. Our Father in Heaven, however, has had a lot of experience and development that makes him a being different from us in very key ways. Still the same potential realized in him lays latent in every one of us. Though we can choose to do many things with our existence, I believe there is no more rewarding task than to fully develop our potential as our Father has developed his.
What is that potential? Quite simply, I would say it is to love perfectly. Though we can do many things to separate ourselves from God, though we can choose in many ways to turn our backs to him, he, at all times, is open to us and loves us completely. Regardless of how much I may want to flatter myself, I am not capable of that kind of love right now. I have countless things that separate me from other people like fear, selfishness, ignorance, weakness and other limitations. I simply do not live with my heart open at all times to all other people.
Yet this is one of the most important things the Savior has commanded us to do. What is the one thing in the New Testament he commands that actually identifies you as his disciple? In the Gospel of John, chapter 13, verses 34 and 35 he says, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” Love sets you apart as a true disciple of Christ.
In the Sermon on the Mount we find a passage that is well known, though not usually in context. In chapter 5 of Matthew, or chapter 12 of 3rd Nephi, Jesus is talking about the Law of Moses and his new law of the gospel. Among other things, he talks about the ancient moral precept upheld by the Israelites of loving your neighbor and hating your enemy. He says: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.” This was the standard morality of the ancient Mediterranean world.
Almost a millennium earlier, Homer has Odysseus say that “there is nothing greater and better than this – when a husband and wife keep a household in oneness of mind, a great woe to their enemies and a joy to their friends.” In this ancient morality, there is a form of unity within the marriage, there is unity with friends, but it is also morally correct to cause pain to those deemed enemies. The Israelites had lived the same moral code and in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is now asking his disciples to transcend the ancient mindset of “us against them.” In verse 44 he commands: “But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good for them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”
Now how does loving, blessing, doing good to and praying for our enemies make us children of our Father in heaven? Jesus goes on to explain what our Father is like: “for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.” Our Father in heaven has his heart open to everyone, and loves everyone equally, and blesses all of us. Jesus goes on: “For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans do the same? and if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the gentiles [which include all the Homer-reading Greeks] do so?” So Jesus is addressing the ancient concept contained in Israelite tradition that it is moral to love some and to hate others. He has explained how our Father has a boundless love, being no respecter of persons. Now he gives the commandment that we all know so well in verse 48: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which in heaven is perfect.”
What does “perfect” mean within the full context? I’ll avoid the temptation to discuss the Greek, as our scriptures have a sufficient explanation in the footnotes. Simply put, what Jesus is saying is to be complete in our love – to love everyone, friend and enemy. It is no longer sufficient to split the world into two camps, one of which we hate, and one of which we love. We have to be like our Father and have unconditional love for all. In that way, we would be perfect like our Father.
Thus Paul, in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 says that charity, which simply means the love God has for all of us and which we should have for all others, never fails, or that it is an eternal virtue. Again speaking of perfection as being a state of complete love just as the Savior did, Paul writes in verse 10: “When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Now keep in mind that these verses are all being written in the context of his discussion of charity, or divine love. He goes on to say: “For now we see through a glass darkly , but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
This last verse, verse 12, is saying volumes. The phrase that the King James committee translated as “seeing through a glass darkly” could also be rendered, staying closer in our current English usage to the metaphor of the original Greek, “looking through a mirror in a riddle” (βλέπομεν δι' ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι).
Now think of the picture Paul is painting. He is talking about how we deal and interact with each other, and he says that for now, it is like looking through a mirror in a riddle. Who do you see when you look "through" a mirror? Yourself, of course. In our immature, imperfect relations with each other, every attempt to see someone else becomes confused as we can’t see past ourselves. But what does Paul promise will be the way we interact with each other when our love is perfected? We will see face to face.
We will see each other directly without any selfish reflections of ourselves causing confusion. He says that we now only know in part. And indeed, how much do we know about each other, even about those closest to us? I agree with Paul that we only know each other in part. How will we know each other when our love is made perfect or complete? We will know even as we are known. And though Paul doesn’t say it, it seems clear to me that when he says we will know as we are known, he means that we will we know each other the way that we are known by our Father in heaven: completely and full of love.
Section 76 of the D&C, where Joseph recorded a vision of the three degrees of glory, describes those who live in the celestial kingdom in a very similar way. Starting in verse 92 we read: “And thus we saw the glory of the celestial, which excels in all things—where God, even the Father, reigns upon his throne forever and ever…. They who dwell in his presence are the church of the Firstborn, and they see as they are seen, and know as they are known, having received of his fullness and of his grace; and he makes them equal in power, and in might, and in dominion.”
So, one issue we have to work on is having our small, imperfect capacity for love expanded into the divine ability to openly and completely love all without condition; to see them face to face and to know them the way we are known by our Father in heaven. The other big issue, I see, is that we have to continue to open and expand our relationship with our Father until we no longer shut him out in selfishness, shame, pride, or out of whatever other cause.
In this life, we may never enjoy the actual presence of the Father himself, but the atonement can overcome the gulf that separates us from him as we live more and more continually under the influence of the Holy Ghost. We are aiming, in this life at least, to reach a state where we no longer shut the Spirit out, but live with constant inspiration and connection to God. This, of course, leads to an eternal state of living in our Father’s presence.
Once we have our hearts completely open to our Father in heaven, so that his will can be our will, and once we have our hearts completely open to all of our brothers and sisters, then we will have completed everything I can find in the scriptures that we are to do. If this seems like too simple a reduction of the entire wealth of commandments we have from Adam down to the last letter from the brethren read here at the pulpit, keep in mind that Christ does say in Matthew 22, verses 37 through 40 that: “Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all they heart, and with all they soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Once we reach the point of perfect love for God and for all others, I’m quite sure we’ll receive further instructions. For now, these two tasks are enough to focus on. Now here is a key idea for me: we can never, ever fulfill these commandments on our own. How far are you right now from loving every soul ever born on this earth as much as our Father does? How far are you from having a perfect relationship with our Father, where you allow him to constantly inspire you and allow divine power to flow through you without compulsory means? If you are like me, you are pretty far away.
The atonement is what will get us from here to there; from childish imperfection to divine, fully inclusive love of God and of all of our brothers and sisters. At the last supper, this is precisely what Jesus prayed for. In John chapter 17, verse 19, he is speaking of the disciples at supper with him and says: “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us…. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.”
Some saints throughout world history have actually had the faith to receive the blessings of the atonement so thoroughly that they actually created Zion in this world. We see it with Enoch in the book of Moses, chapter 7, where “the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.” Or we see it in Acts chapter 4 where the saints were also “of one heart and of one soul; neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things in common.” Or we see it again in 4th Nephi where, after the Savior’s visit, “there was no contention in the land, because the love of God did dwell in the hearts of the people… and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.” And there were no Nephites or Lamanites, “nor any manner of –ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.”
We may not see this goal, of all human hearts open and united with each other and God, achieved in this world in our lifetime, but if we have faith and pray continually for the atonement in our lives, we will see it one day in the kingdom of our Father.
So what power does the atonement have in my eyes? The atonement is the power of God that changes every single thing that blocks us right now from having this divine oneness, this godly love for all other humans. And it is the power of God that changes every single thing that blocks us from having a fully open relationship with our Father. The atonement is about every aspect of our lives. The atonement has the power to change every single one of us in ways we would never be able to accomplish on our own. This process of change can be hard and seem dark and lonely at times. The atonement helps us to be humble and allow our Father to be closer to us to help us through what can often be heart-wrenching processes of change.
The atonement is what changes us, brings us to be more at-one with God and with each other. The atonement gives us beautiful strength and comfort throughout this difficult process. Next to our lives, the atonement is the greatest gift we’ve ever been given, and it is always there, and always infinitely powerful. Every time we decide to work something out on our own, we forsake a lot of power and never come nearly as far as we do when we pray for the atonement in our lives.
