(Post 3 of 3)
Now, let's read from Moses 5: 9-12 to see what really transpired following their expulsion from Eden:
"And in that day the Holy Ghost fell upon Adam, which beareth record of the Father and the Son, saying: I am the Only Begotten of the Father from the beginning, henceforth and forever, that as thou hast fallen thou mayest be redeemed, and all mankind, even as many as will. And in that day Adam blessed God and was filled, and began to prophesy concerning all the families of the earth, saying: Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God. And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: 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, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient. And Adam and Eve blessed the name of God, and they made all things known unto their sons and their daughters."
We know, both through modern revelation and through the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price, that God's Plan was instituted long before Adam and Eve ever set foot in Eden, that it existed, at least in concept, long before Eden was even created. We know that a Savior had been chosen and that we were all told how the Plan was to work. We, in fact, chose to participate in it. Try to imagine how we might have reacted to the news during that Grand Council in Heaven during our pre-earth life. I would think that, when our Father in Heaven first started to explain His Plan to us, we were probably pretty excited. We understood that obtaining a physical body and experiencing mortality were the first of many steps we would have to take in order to eventually become like Him. Things probably sounded pretty good until He got to the part where He told us that He had a zero-tolerance policy with respect to sin. In other words, when it was time for us to return home, entrance to God's Kingdom wouldn't be based on whether our good deeds outweighed our sins. The qualifying factor for salvation would be that we be "100% sin-free." That must have taken the wind out of our sails.
When Jesus Christ stepped forward and offered to pay the price for our sins so that we could be forgiven of them without having to endure the punishment, we must have been kind of overwhelmed. I can easily imagine myself having said, "Wait a minute. Are you saying that if I were to accept this opportunity, this gift of mortality and then were to mess up, you'd suffer and die so that I didn't have to be punished? Why would you do that?"
And then Jesus would probably have explained that He would do it because He loved me, more than I could possibly imagine. And all I would need to do was sincerely repent of my sins, resolve to do better in the future, and believe that He really would come through for me. Hey, I could do that! But still it wouldn't seem "just" that I sin and that He suffer. I suspect that He probably had to patiently explain the process to me, maybe several times, before I could actually get my head around the idea that justice, love and mercy actually could meet in such a way that I could accept His gift and feel not guilty for doing so, but instead, just joyous and grateful.
This process would involve something called a covenant. To illustrate how a covenant would work in this situation, imagine that you are young and single. You meet a guy and he is perfect. He is exactly the man you had always hoped to meet. The two of you fall in love and he asks you to marry him. Of course you say, "yes." And then you start talking about your the life you'll make together. You talk about how you'll share everything, and about how there will be no more "yours" or "mine"; there will only be "ours." This means, among other things, that you will open a joint bank account. Oh, there's one thing I neglected to mention. You are not only young and single, but deeply in debt -- to the tune of $1 million. Your fiancé, on the other hand, is wealthy -- I mean very wealthy. He is worth more money than you can possibly even conceive of. What does this mean to you in terms of your future financial security? From the moment the two of you say, "I do" and sign on the dotted line for that joint account, you are debt free. As long as you are true and faithful to him, your debt becomes his and his ability to pay it off becomes yours.
We entered into a covenant much like that when we were baptized. We agreed to love our Savior, our Benefactor, forever, and to always do our best to live in a way that would please Him. He agreed to lead us back home to our Father in Heaven, clean and pure. Immediately upon our receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, this new partnership was sealed, and it will remain binding unless we choose to break the terms of the covenant. This partnership resulted in each one of us becoming, as King Benjamin put it, a "new creature." Because Christ's "assets," so to speak, are infinite, that is without end, no matter how great our "liabilities," we became "perfect in Christ." We two became one. And as in a marriage, we even agreed to take our partner's name upon ourselves.
Beginning in the spiritual anguish of the Garden of Gethsemane, moving to an agonizing death by crucifixion on Calvary, and concluding on a beautiful Sunday morning inside a borrowed tomb, Jesus Christ demonstrated, through the most pure and perfect love the world has ever known that, as the Prophet Alma said, "justice exerciseth all his demands, and... mercy claimeth all which is her own."
I leave these thoughts with you and pray that you may reflect on them throughout the coming week. And I do so in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
