Bruce C.
Hafen, “Beauty for Ashes: The Atonement of
Jesus Christ,” Liahona, Apr. 1997, 39
Some Church members feel weighed down with discouragement about the circumstances
of their personal lives, even when they are making sustained and admirable
efforts. Frequently, these feelings of self-disappointment come not from
wrongdoing, but from stresses for which they may not be fully to blame. The atonement of
Jesus Christ applies to these experiences because it applies to all of life.
The Savior can wipe away all of our tears, “after all we can do” (2 Ne. 25:23).
In Luke 4:18, Jesus quotes part of a
passage from Isaiah that describes the heart of his ministry. The Isaiah
passage reads: “The Spirit of the Lord … hath anointed me to preach good
tidings unto the meek; … to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to
the captives, … to appoint unto them that mourn in
The Savior’s atonement is thus portrayed as the healing power not only for sin, but also
for
carelessness, inadequacy, and all mortal bitterness. The Atonement is not just for sinners.
“After
All We Can Do”
We need to understand the Atonement more fully than we do, both because
outsiders may misperceive our doctrine and because we may view the Atonement
too narrowly in our own lives. For example, Newsweek magazine has erroneously stated:
“Unlike orthodox Christians, Mormons believe that men are born free of sin and
earn their way to godhood by the proper exercise of free will, rather than
through the grace of Jesus Christ. Thus Jesus’ suffering and death in the
Mormon view … do not atone for
the sins of others” (Newsweek, 1 September 1980, 68).
It disturbs me that Newsweek would miss the point of our core
doctrine, even though the article purported not to summarize our theology but
to report what Latter-day Saints actually believe. It is unfortunate when we
convey incorrect ideas to others; but it is worse when we, by our limited
doctrinal understanding, deny ourselves the reassurance and guidance we
may desperately need at pivotal moments in our lives.
Our reluctance to stress the doctrine of grace is understandable. Nephi
wrote, “For we
know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (2 Ne. 25:23; emphasis added). A
constant public emphasis on grace might encourage some people to ignore the
crucial “all we can do” in that two-part process. They might then accept the
erroneous notion that we can be saved by divine grace even while choosing to
live in our sins. Some Christians do believe they will be saved by grace in
spite of whatever they may do. At the extreme, this doctrine denies free will
altogether, implying that God will elect those he will save without regard to
their conduct or even their preference.
Similarly, some Church members feel entitled to “a few free ones” as they
sow their wild oats and walk constantly along the edge of transgression. Or
they believe that repentance requires little more than saying they are sorry.
Constant emphasis on the availability of forgiveness can be counterproductive
in such cases, suggesting—wrongly—that they can “live it up” now and repent
easily later without harmful consequences.
Despite these reasons for
caution, the blessing of making the Atonement more central to our lives
outweighs any associated risks. When we habitually understate the Atonement’s
broad meaning, we do more harm than leaving one another without comforting
reassurances—for
some may simply drop out of the race, weighed down beyond the breaking point
with self-doubt and spiritual fatigue.
The Savior himself was not concerned that he would seem too forgiving or
soft on sin. Said he, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest. … For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28, 30). He spoke these
comforting words in the context of asking his followers to develop a love pure
enough to extinguish hatred, lust, and anger. His yoke is easy—but he asks for all our
hearts.
His words do not describe an event, but a process. He does not request the
answer to a yes-or-no question, but an essay, written in the winding trail of
our experience. As we move along that trail, we will find that he is not only
aware of our limitations, but that he will also in due course compensate for them, “after
all we can do.” That, in addition to forgiveness for sin, is a crucial part of the good news
of the gospel, part of the victory, part of the Atonement.
Basic
Doctrines of the Atonement
The basic doctrines of the holy Atonement relate first to the transgression
of Adam and Eve and to our personal sins. The Fall subjected Adam and Eve and
their children to death, sin, and other characteristics of mortality that
separated them from God. To allow humankind to be united with God again, divine
justice required compensation for these consequences of the Fall. God’s mercy
allowed the Savior to make that compensation through the Atonement.
Because of his sinless life, his genetic nature as the Only Begotten of the
Father, and his willingness to drink the bitter cup of justice, the Savior was
able to atone unconditionally for Adam and Eve’s transgression and for physical
death and to atone conditionally for our personal sins. The unconditional
part of the Atonement is a free gift of grace requiring no further action on
our part. The conditional part, however, requires our repentance as the
condition of applying mercy to our personal sins. If we do not repent, we must
suffer even as the Lord did to satisfy the demands of justice (see D&C 19:15-17).
If we refuse to repent and thereby must satisfy justice by suffering for our own sins,
we will remain unprepared to enter the celestial kingdom. Unless we accept the
Savior’s invitation to carry our sins, we will not experience the complete
rehabilitation that occurs through a combination of divine assistance and
genuine repentance. By analogy, criminals are not necessarily rehabilitated by
serving a fixed number of years to pay their debt to society. A prison term may
satisfy our sense of retribution, but real rehabilitation requires a positive
process of character change.
Mercy and repentance are rehabilitative, not retributive. The Savior asks us
to repent not just to repay him for paying our debt to justice, but also to induce us to
undergo the personal development that will purify our very nature. The “natural
man” will remain an enemy to God forever—even after paying for his or her own sins—unless he or she
also “becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord” (Mosiah 3:19).
Some of us make repentance too easy, and others make it too hard. Those who
make it too easy don’t see any big sins in their lives, or they believe that
breezy apologies alone are enough. These people should read President Spencer
W. Kimball’s The Miracle of Forgiveness, which reviews many sins of both
commission and omission. And while forgiveness is a miracle, it is not won
without penitent and strenuous effort.
At the other extreme are those who feel that repentance asks more than they
can possibly give. Many of them believe they are fully responsible to
compensate for
their own sins. To be sure, repentance requires that transgressors make full
restitution to the limit of their ability. But there are times when we cannot
fully compensate. It is simply impossible to return stolen virtue the way
one might return a stolen car. Because we lack the power to compensate fully for the effects
of our transgressions, we are utterly dependent on Christ for ultimate restitution, no matter how
earnest our repentance.
Sweetening
the Bitter
Even after the Savior accepts our sincere repentance and blesses us with his
mercy, we are then ready only to enter the “strait and narrow path which
leads to eternal life” (2
Ne. 31:18). Then we must consider the additional dimensions
of becoming a saint through the Atonement—the process of moving from the messy
slate of sin through the clean slate of forgiveness to the beautifully full
slate of a divine nature. There are at least two realms in which the Lord’s
grace blesses us well beyond compensating for our sins: sweetening the bitter and
attaining divine perfection.
First, consider the concept of tasting the bitter in order to prize the
good. Adam and Eve’s transgression was not really a wrongful act of “sin” as we
usually use that term. While their choice violated the command against
partaking of the fruit, that same choice was necessary to enable their
obedience to the command to have children. Their “transgression” was thus a
painful but correct, even eternally glorious, choice: “Were it not for our
transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good
and evil, and the joy of our redemption” (Moses
5:11).
Thus, when the Atonement was first applied to any human act, it compensated for the harmful
consequences of a choice that was more like a close judgment call than it was a
true sin. Like Adam and Eve, we make many judgment-call choices that inflict
pain or trouble upon others and upon ourselves. Some of our judgments may be
wise, but some are not so wise. Think of accidents caused by carelessness, such
as dozing at the wheel. They can have devastating effects, as tragic as
deliberate violence. Think of unkind words and forgotten promises among family
members. Such incidents can lead to ugly consequences, but not all of them are
the result of conscious sin.
In an important sense, our judgment calls lead us to the tree of knowledge,
just as Adam and Eve’s choice led them to that same tree. By confronting the
sad or happy consequences of our choices, we can learn through our own
experience, as they did, to distinguish the bitter from the sweet.
A young piano student once became very discouraged by her mistakes. Each
time she learned a piece, her teacher assigned a new and more difficult piece,
and the student would begin playing wrong notes all over again. She concluded
that she wasn’t learning anything, because she would always make mistakes in
her new pieces. Then her teacher explained that nobody ever learned to play the
piano without making many, many mistakes. The successful students are those who
learn from their mistakes.
We learn many other life skills the same way—through the practice of trial
and error. We can learn to love, for example, by responding to the sour sounds of wrong notes
that jangle in our emotional ears when we thoughtlessly hurt someone close to
us.
Life is a school, a place for us to learn and grow. We, like Adam and Eve, experience
“growing pains” through the sorrow and contamination of a lone and dreary
world. These experiences may include sin, but they also include mistakes,
disappointments, and the undeserved pain of adversity. The blessed news of the
gospel is that the atonement of Jesus Christ can purify all the uncleanness and
sweeten all the bitterness we taste.
We might think of the degree of our personal fault for the bad things that happen in our lives
as a continuum ranging from sin to adversity, with the degree of our fault
dropping from high at one end of the spectrum to zero at the other. At the
“sin” end of the continuum, we bear grave responsibility, for we bring the bitter fruits of sin fully
upon ourselves. But at the other end of the spectrum, marked by “adversity,” we
may bear no responsibility at all. The bitterness of adversity may come to us,
as it did to Job in the Old Testament, regardless of our actual, conscious
fault.
Along this fault-level continuum, between the poles of sin and adversity,
lie such intermediate points as unwise choices and hasty judgments. In these
cases, it may be unclear just how much personal fault we bear for the bitter fruits we may taste or cause
others to taste. Bitterness may taste the same, whatever its source, and it can
destroy our peace, break our hearts, and separate us from God. Could it be that
the atonement of Jesus Christ could put back together the broken parts and give
beauty to the ashes of
experience such as this?
I believe that it does, because tasting the bitter in all its forms is a
deliberate part of the great plan of life. This consequence of the Fall was not
just a terrible mistake; rather, it gives mortality its profound meaning: “They
taste the bitter, that they may know to prize the good” (Moses 6:55; emphasis added).
The Atonement can heal the effects of tasting all of this bitterness. This
healing power cleanses our spirits, upon condition of repentance, when our
souls are soiled with sin. It can also compensate, “after all we can do,” not
only for the
consequences of our sins, but also for the harmful effects of our ignorance
and neglect.
I once had a sad and tender conversation with a stalwart priesthood leader
who felt totally responsible for the rebellion of his wayward son. He had tried fervently
to control the boy but could not. He said the scriptures teach that if a man
can’t manage his own house, how can he take care of the Church? (see 1 Tim. 3:5). He wondered, should he
be released from his calling?
It was impossible for
me to know, and probably impossible for him to know, just how much blame was
really his for
what his son was doing. But we didn’t need to know the answer to that question
in order to know whether the reach of the Lord’s healing power extended to him.
Seeing the tears in his eyes, I thought of the prophet Alma, who had such a
son. I thought of Adam and Eve, who had such a son. I thought of other parents
whose children misuse their agency.
I thought also that, while no other success of ours can compensate for our failures
within or outside our homes, there is a success that can compensate when we
cannot, after we conscientiously do all we can. That success is the atonement
of Jesus Christ, which can mend what for us is beyond repair. Perhaps, I
thought, that holy influence could even do for this man’s son what it did for the younger
Our
Quest for Divine
Perfection
Second, the Savior’s grace can bless us, beyond its compensation for our sins, in
our quest for
divine perfection. While much of the perfection process involves a healing from
sin and bitterness, the process involves an additional, affirmative dimension
through which we may acquire a Christlike nature, becoming even as the Father
and Son are.
In his own development toward perfection, the Savior received the
Father’s grace. “He received not of the fulness at the first, but received
grace for
grace … until he received a fulness” (D&C
93:12-13). His life was sinless; hence, he received grace not
to compensate for
his sins, but to empower his personal growth:
“Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he
suffered;
“And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation” (Heb. 5:8-9; emphasis added).
Our relationship with him can mirror his relationship with the Father: “For if you keep
my commandments you shall receive of his fulness, and be glorified in me as
I am in the Father; [thus] you shall receive grace for grace” (D&C
93:20; emphasis added).
When the Atonement and our repentance satisfy the laws of justice and mercy,
we are, in effect, free from sin. But just as the sinless Christ was “made
perfect” through interaction with his Father’s grace, so his atoning grace can
move us beyond the remission of sins to the perfection of a divine nature.
Those who inherit the celestial kingdom are “just men made perfect through
Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement
through the shedding of his own blood” (D&C
76:69; emphasis added). As
These scriptures make it clear that we do not achieve perfection solely
through our own efforts. Knowing just that much is a source of new perspective.
Because we feel overwhelmed with the scriptural injunction to seek perfection,
the idea that divine grace is the final source of our perfection may seem too
good to be true. That is how Christ’s grace appears to those carrying the
burden of truly serious sins. Honest people called “Saints” may feel the same
way as they stumble daily through the discouraging debris of their obvious
imperfections. But the gospel has good news not only for the serious transgressor, but for all who long
to be better than they are.
Through the Holy Ghost, the Atonement makes possible certain spiritual
endowments that actually purify our nature and enable us to live a more “eternal”
or Godlike life. At that ultimate stage, we will eat the fruit of the tree of
life and partake of God’s divine nature. Then we will exhibit divine character
not just because we think we should, but because that is the way we are.
The gift of charity illustrates this process, although charity is
only part of “the greatest of all the gifts of God”—eternal life (D&C 14:7). This love, the very
“love which [the Lord hath] had for the children of men” (Ether
12:34), is not developed entirely by our own power, even
though our faithfulness is a necessary qualification to receive it. Rather,
charity is “bestowed upon” the “true followers” of Christ (Moro. 7:48; emphasis added). Its
source, like all other blessings of the Atonement, is the grace of God. Said
The purpose of the endowment of charity is not merely to cause Christ’s
followers to engage in charitable acts toward others, desirable as that is. The
ultimate purpose is to transform his followers to become like him: “He
hath bestowed [this love] upon all who are true followers of his Son, … that
when he shall appear we shall be like him” (Moro.
7:48). The Atonement thus not only enables us to be with God,
but also to be like God.
Another affirmative endowment of grace is the gift of hope, which
blesses us with the state of mind necessary to deal with the gap between where
we are and where we seek to be. As the remission of our sins makes us lowly of
heart and meek enough to receive the Holy Ghost, the Comforter fills us with
“hope” (see Moro.
8:25-26). The gift of hope offers peace and perspective, like
the encouragement we feel when a close friend gives us insight about a
difficult problem and we sense that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Such hope can be literally life-sustaining when given us by the Savior, for the light at
the end of life’s darkest tunnels is the Light and the Life of the world.
Saved
from Our Inadequacies
The Savior desires to save us from our inadequacies as well as from our
sins. Inadequacy is not the same as sinfulness—we have far more control over
the choice to sin than we may have over our innate capacity. The Lord will not
save us in our sins, but from them. However, he can save us in
our inadequacies as well as from them. A sense of falling short or falling down
is not only natural, but essential to the mortal experience. But, “after all we
can do,” the Atonement can fill that which is empty, straighten our bent parts,
and make strong that which is weak.
In their admirable and sometimes blindly dogged sense of personal
responsibility, some believe that in the quest for eternal life, the Atonement is only for big-time
sinners. As everyday Latter-day Saints who just have to try harder, they feel
that they must make it on their own.
The truth is not that we must make it on our own, but that he will
make us His own.
After Adam and Eve had partaken of the tree of knowledge, the Lord barred
the way to the tree of life. They needed the time and space and shaping purpose
of mortality (see Alma
42:5). They needed to taste the bitter in order to “prize”—to
grasp the meaning of—“the good” represented by the second tree. The Lord
never intended that we should partake of the tree of life and thereby gain full
access to perfecting grace before we had stumbled and groped to learn all we
can from the disappointments and surprises of this vale of tears. We, like Adam
and Eve, must make the best of our circumstances. We need not apologize for the typical
untidiness of those circumstances. It is their very lone and dreary nature that
allows them to shape us as they do. Perhaps we can appreciate and comprehend
the gift of eternal life only after we do all we can do. Until we are
prepared in what may look like very imperfect ways to receive them, we are not
ready for the
gifts that perfect our nature.
In his dream of the tree of life, Lehi found himself in a dark and dreary
wasteland and saw others surrounded by a great mist of darkness. The pathway
home from this darkness was the way to the tree of life—the same tree, I
suppose, as the one from which Adam and Eve were barred until they, too, had
walked the trail Lehi took. The path was marked by the iron rod, the word of
God (see 1
Ne. 8:7-30). Holding fast to this rod in the mists of
darkness, we, as did Lehi, grope and move our way homeward. As we do, we are
likely to find that the cold rod of iron will begin to feel in our hands as the
warm, firm, loving hand of him who literally pulls us along the way. We find
that hand strong enough to rescue us, warm enough to assure us that home is not
far away; and we summon our deepest resources to reciprocate, until we are
again embraced in the arms of the Lord.
It is so important for
us to be on the Lord’s side. But we should never forget that the Lord is also
on our side.
Each of us will taste the bitter ashes of life, from sin and neglect to
sorrow and disappointment. But the atonement of Christ can lift us up in beauty from our ashes on the
wings of a sure promise of immortality and eternal life. He will thus lift us
up, not only at the end of life, but in each day of our lives.
“Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God … giveth power to the faint;
and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. … They that wait upon
the Lord shall … mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be
weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isa.
40:28-31).
Gospel topics: Jesus Christ, Atonement
[illustration] Detail
from Christ in
[photo] Each of us will
taste the bitter ashes
of life, from sin and neglect to sorrow and disappointment. But the atonement
of Christ can lift us up in beauty from our ashes on the wings of a sure promise of
immortality and eternal life. He will thus lift us up, not only at the end of
life, but in each day of our lives. (Photograph by Floyd Holdman.)
[photo] Photograph by
Craig Dimond
[photo] Photograph by
Jed Clark
[photo] Photograph by
Craig Dimond
[illustration] Christ
in
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