The Atonement Blog

An Immortal Father and a Mortal Mother

dvan — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:40:29 +0000

Now, two millennia later, though we don’t know all the details pertaining to His birth, we certainly understand the unique parentage of this Babe of Bethlehem. We declare solemnly and with conviction: Jesus was born of an immortal Father and a mortal mother. From His immortal Father, Jesus inherited the power to live forever. From His mortal mother He inherited the fate of physical death.

Those unique attributes were essential for His mission to atone for the sins of all mankind. Thus Jesus the Christ was born to die (see 3 Nephi 27:13–15). He died that we might live. He was born that all humankind could live beyond the grave. His Atonement was wrought in Gethsemane—where He sweat great drops of blood—and on Golgotha, or Calvary, where His body was lifted up upon a cross above the place of the skull, which signified death.

This infinite Atonement would release man from the infinitude of death (see 2 Nephi 9:7). His Atonement made the Resurrection a reality and the gift of eternal life a possibility for all who would obey His teachings. His Atonement became the central act of all human history.

Our recollections of Christmas are enriched by these realities. Each one of us with a testimony of the Lord has the privilege in faith to know of His divine parentage and to testify that Jesus is the Son of the living God.

Elder Russell M. Nelson

“Christ the Savior Is Born,” NewEra, Dec 2006, 2–5

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As beautiful as the angels that surround the throne of God

dvan — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:16:50 +0000

Those who attain to the blessing of the first or celestial resurrection will be pure and holy, and perfect in body. Every man and woman that reaches to this unspeakable attainment will be as beautiful as the angels that surround the throne of God. If you can, by faithfulness in this life, obtain the right to come up on the morning of the resurrection, you need entertain no fears that the wife will be dissatisfied with her husband, or the husband with the wife; for those of the first resurrection will be free from sin and from the consequences and power of sin.

Brigham Young

Journal of Discourses 10:24

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Grace – Part 4 – All Have Sinned

dvan — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 13:15:11 +0000

23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.

28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

Romans 3:23-28

Note that when Paul speaks of the law in verse 28, he is referring to the Law of Moses and the term, “without” in the original Greek is “apart from” or “without intervention of”.

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With Enough Humble Service, We Become Great in All the Ways That Count

dvan — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 13:10:59 +0000

A Christian serves others. He or she does so almost as automatically as they inhale and exhale. They serve others because they remember Christ and they remember what an infinite and eternal service He has done for them through His Atonement.

When we provide Christlike service, regardless of how humble or how unnoticed, we become a better person. With enough humble service, we become great in all the ways that count.

Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. –Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Drum Major Instinct”

Opportunities to serve are everywhere. There will never be a shortage of people to help. All of this service is encompassed in Christ’s commandment to Peter and to us, “Feed my Sheep.” (John 21:15–17)

Our Savior wants us to learn something of what He knows by helping to do His work. Paul urges us to have “the mind of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 2:16) Christ saved the world and everyone in it. He asks us to help save God’s sons and daughters one at a time from loneliness, from suffering, from ignorance, and from the many other afflictions that accompany life in a mortal world. In that process and under His divine influence, our hearts are changed, and we become a little more like our Savior. By our service, we take His name upon us and feel His love for those in need flow through us to them. We cannot be a conduit for His love without being profoundly blessed by that experience. As we communicate His love to others, we understand more clearly how much He loves us.

David P. Vandagriff
portions taken from: I Need Thee Every Hour – Applying the Atonement in Everyday Life

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Why Not Speak of the Atonement of Christ?

dvan — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:02:51 +0000

[W]hy not speak of the atonement of Christ, and attain to a perfect knowledge of him, as to attain to the knowledge of a resurrection and the world to come?

Jacob 4:12

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The Resurrection is Inherent in the Atonement

dvan — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:57:57 +0000

That the atonement was a fact is as essential to the gospel of Jesus Christ as is the Sonship of Jesus. We have the sacrament to remind us every week or his atonement. The only purpose, or at least the main purpose, for which Jesus came into the world was to make the atonement. Others could have been sent to preach the gospel. As a matter of fact, others have been sent in every other dispensation-Abraham, Enoch, Moses, for example, and in this dispensation the Prophet Joseph Smith. These great prophets taught the gospel of Jesus Christ as plainly as did Jesus himself. But in the Meridian of Time Jesus came. He came not only to teach the gospel, but also to be the Redeemer of the world. He was the only one who qualified to be the Redeemer, first, because he and he alone had life within himself-eternal life, which he inherited from his divine Father. He was the only one who ever lived a sinless life upon the earth, and he alone was foreordained to be the Redeemer.

The resurrection is inherent in the atonement. Jesus said he came to do the will of his Father, and that the will of his Father was that he should be lifted up upon the cross. He further said that the purpose for which he was to be lifted up upon the cross was that he might draw all men to him. That he does through the resurrection.

The purpose for which men are to come before him after the resurrection is that they may be judged of the works which they have done in the flesh.

These are the fundamentals of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as he put them in his own language. Having stated them, he followed with the commandment,

Repent, all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost. (Ibid., 27:20.)

Elder Marion G. Romney
Second Day-Morning Session, Conference Report, April, 1955

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Man cannot resurrect himself

dvan — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:51:27 +0000

Man cannot resurrect himself; man cannot save himself; human power cannot save another; human power cannot atone for the sins of another. The work of redemption must be infinite and eternal; it must be done by an infinite being; God himself must atone for the sins of the world.

Elder Bruce R. McConkie

A New Witness for the Articles of Faith

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No Pain That We Suffer

dvan — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:36:53 +0000

No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God.

Elder Orson F. Whitney, quoted by President Spencer W. Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle

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Even in the Midst of Your Suffering, You are in His Kingdom

dvan — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:30:53 +0000

Don’t vex your mind by trying to explain the suffering you have to endure in this life. Don’t think that God is punishing you or disciplining you or that he has rejected you. Even in the midst of your suffering, you are in his kingdom. You are always his child, and he has his protecting arms around you. Does a child understand everything his father does? No, but he can confidently nestle in his father’s arms and feel perfect happiness, even while tears glisten in his eyes, because he is his father’s child.

Albert Schweitzer
Reverence for Life

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If There Had Been No Atonement – 5

dvan — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 12:19:28 +0000

The Book of Mormon not only attests to the reality of Jesus but also, more than any other book available to us, explains graphically why Jesus and his atonement are important. It is one thing to know that there is a Savior; it is another to realize why a Savior is so important, what the consequences would have been worldwide if there had been no Savior, and what the consequences will be individually-since there is a Savior-if any of us rejects him.

Since knowledge about Christ is the greatest knowledge mankind can possess, the book that most perfectly defines, supplies, and promotes that knowledge is the greatest of books. Our assertion is that the Book of Mormon gives a clearer exposition of the need for a divine Savior, the reality that Jesus of Nazareth is that Savior, and the process by which every individual man or woman can obtain the blessings of the atonement of Christ in his or her individual life than any other book known to and in circulation among the human family today.

The Book of Mormon teaches man’s absolute dependence on the Savior. It leaves no doubt that Jesus Christ, born of Mary, is the one and only Redeemer of mankind, that he always was and always will be the only Savior of the world. We note this statement from Nephi, recorded around 559 B.C.: “Behold I say unto you, that as these things are true, and as the Lord God liveth, there is none other name given under heaven save it be this Jesus Christ, of which I have spoken, whereby man can be saved” (2 Nephi 25:20). And about 500 years later Helaman testified to his sons: “Remember that there is no other way nor means whereby man can be saved, only through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, who shall come; yea, remember that he cometh to redeem the world” (Helaman 5:9; see also 2 Nephi 31:20-21; Mosiah 3:17; 4:8; 5:8; Alma 38:9).

There is no book as effective as the Book of Mormon to teach plainly and directly the nature of the fall of Adam and the necessity of the atonement of Jesus Christ. It explains how the Atonement works, how a person must go about gaining a remission of sins, and then how he can “retain a remission” of his sins “from day to day” (see Mosiah 4:12, 26). That is the major message of the Book of Mormon. It offers comprehensive statements on the purposes of God in the fall of Adam and the atonement of Jesus Christ that are not found anywhere in the Bible. (See such major doctrinal chapters as 2 Nephi 2, 9; Mosiah 3; Alma 34, 42.)

In 2 Nephi we read a statement from Jacob which describes in greater clarity than perhaps any other reference what would be the consequence for all mankind if there had been no atonement of Jesus Christ:

For as death hath passed upon all men, to fulfil the merciful plan of the great Creator, there must needs be a power of resurrection, and the resurrection must needs come unto man by reason of the fall; and the fall came by reason of transgression; and because man became fallen they were cut off from the presence of the Lord.

Wherefore, it must needs be an infinite atonement-save it should be an infinite atonement this corruption could not put on incorruption. Wherefore, the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration. And if so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more.

O the wisdom of God, his mercy and grace! For behold, if the flesh should rise no more our spirits must become subject to that angel who fell from before the presence of the Eternal God, and became the devil, to rise no more.

And our spirits must have become like unto him, and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies, in misery, like unto himself. (2 1 Nephi 9:6-9, italics added.)

Robert J. Matthews
A Bible! a Bible!
Bookcraft, (1990)

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