Here are part of King Benjamin’s words about Christ which he
shares with his people as they had been given him by an angel:
And he shall rise the third day
from the dead; and behold, he standeth to judge the world; and behold, all
these things are done that a righteous judgment might come upon the children of
men. (Mosiah 3:10)
That bit at the end is intriguing as it suggests that
Christ’s atonement and resurrection (which leads to the resurrection of all
men) had to happen in order to bring about a righteous judgment on mankind, as
if justice would be frustrated otherwise.
In what way would this be the case?
Well, we know that every person becomes spiritually
alienated from God from their very first sin committed contrary to their
knowledge of the commandments. Without the atonement of Christ, not only would
man stay alienated from God, but after death they would never receive their
body back, and they would remain cast out of God’s presence, and there would be
no chance for additional judgment beyond their first fall. No final judgment.
Further, if man happened to do any good works before their
fall, he would have no opportunity to be rewarded for those works because the
fall would have alienated them from God forever already.
So, the atonement was needed to bring man back into the
presence of God for final judgment so that they could receive reward for good
works as well as punishment for evil not repented of. Righteous judgment requires that good be rewarded, not just
for evil to be punished.
And the atonement makes it possible for us to do good even
after having fallen.
The thing is, any good we do we owe to God. We would not
know what was good without the light of Christ, our conscience within us. We
would not know how to improve without revelation to us of the way. We would not
have power to overcome the natural man without the enticing of the Holy
Ghost. Everything good about us we
owe to God in one way or another.
It’s taken me a long time to realize that, but I think I’m
okay with that. When I was young,
I wanted to be good on my own. I
thought I could be good separate from any help from God. But the longer I live and learn, the
more I see that there’s nothing good in me that I wasn’t given from God,
starting with being a child of God with divine potential.
I’m happy with that because it means I can really depend on
God if I let myself. (The question
is if I can keep letting myself.)
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