Agency, Accountability, Resurrection, and Becoming One with God

I am a child of God the Eternal Father.

Jesus Christ is also a child of God. He is my Eternal Brother, my Savior and Redeemer. Understanding His Atonement means understanding more than His death on the cross. It means understanding why He came, what He willingly experienced, why He rose again, and what His sacrifice makes possible for every one of us.

The Atonement of Jesus Christ does not eliminate our agency.

It makes our agency eternally meaningful.

We Were Given Agency

God did not create His children to be puppets.

We were given the ability to choose, to act, to learn, to experience consequences, to recognize when we are wrong, and to change.

Second Nephi records:

“Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh.”

That freedom matters.

If our choices did not have consequences, agency would have little meaning. If another person were simply responsible for everything we chose to do, accountability would have little meaning either.

We make choices.

Those choices affect ourselves and other people.

We learn.

We repent.

We repair what we can.

And we choose what we will do next.

That is part of becoming.

Why We Needed the Atonement

None of us goes through mortality without making mistakes. We also experience things we did not choose: pain, sickness, grief, betrayal, disappointment, weakness, and death.

Jesus Christ entered into that mortal suffering in an extraordinary way.

Alma 7 records that He would go forth:

“suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind.”

The account goes even further. He would take upon Himself sicknesses and infirmities so that He could know how to succor His people.

The Atonement, therefore, is not merely about punishment for wrongdoing.

It is also about healing.

It is about understanding.

It is about mercy.

It is about reconciliation.

And it is about overcoming death itself.

Gethsemane

Before the Crucifixion, Jesus entered Gethsemane.

There He suffered in agony.

Latter-day Saint scripture gives us Christ’s own description:

“Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain.”

He willingly continued.

That matters to me.

Christ’s suffering was not evidence that suffering is good. It demonstrated the depth of His willingness to accomplish the work the Father had given Him.

He knew pain.

He knew sorrow.

He knew what it was to be rejected.

He knew what it was to have people misunderstand Him.

And He continued.

Calvary Was Not the End

Jesus Christ was crucified and died.

But if our discussion of the Atonement ends at the cross, we have stopped before the victory.

There was a tomb.

And then there was an empty tomb.

Jesus Christ was resurrected.

Paul declared:

“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

Resurrection is therefore different from repentance.

I choose whether I repent.

I choose whether I make and honor covenants.

I choose what I do with the life God has given me.

But resurrection is Christ’s gift to humanity.

Death does not get the final word.

And Then There Is 3 Nephi

As a Latter-day Saint, my testimony of Jesus Christ does not end in Jerusalem.

The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ, and 3 Nephi records the resurrected Christ ministering among people in the Americas.

He tells them:

“Behold, I am Jesus Christ.”

Then something remarkable happens.

He does not merely demand that the people believe someone else’s description of Him.

He invites them to come forward.

One by one.

They see.

They feel the wounds.

They know for themselves that the One who had been slain is standing alive before them.

That is testimony of resurrection.

The wounds remained evidence of what had happened.

But the wounds did not mean death had won.

Christ was standing there.

Alive.

Atonement and Accountability

Sometimes forgiveness is misunderstood as though it means accountability disappears.

It doesn’t.

Mercy does not make our choices meaningless.

Alma 42 describes justice and mercy together. The Atonement provides a way for mercy to operate without destroying justice.

Imagine continually spilling a glass of milk.

Someone can forgive you.

Someone can help you clean it up.

Someone can love you through the mistake.

But eventually accountability asks:

What have I learned about carrying the glass?

Repentance isn’t simply becoming comfortable with somebody continually cleaning up after us.

Repentance means turning.

Learning.

Changing.

Making restitution where possible.

Trying again.

And becoming someone who handles the glass differently next time.

The Atonement gives us the opportunity to change without requiring that our mistakes become our eternal identity.

What I have done is not necessarily who I must forever become.

Christ Can Help Us Carry What Was Done to Us, Too

There is another side of the Atonement that deserves equal attention.

Sometimes we aren’t the person who spilled the milk.

Sometimes someone else spilled it all over our life.

There are wounds caused by other people’s agency.

There are losses we cannot undo.

There are apologies we may never receive.

There are questions that may remain unanswered in mortality.

Christ’s Atonement reaches there too.

Alma doesn’t say Christ experienced only the suffering caused by our own sins.

It says pains, afflictions, temptations, sicknesses, and infirmities.

That means I can seek Christ not only when I need forgiveness.

I can seek Him when I need strength to survive something I did not cause.

At-One-Ment

I love thinking about the word atonement as at-one-ment.

Things become separated in mortality.

Body and spirit are separated by death.

Sin can separate us from God.

Pain can separate people from one another.

Fear can separate us from who we are capable of becoming.

Through Jesus Christ, separation does not have to be the final condition.

Resurrection reunites body and spirit.

Repentance allows reconciliation with God.

Mercy allows healing.

Covenants establish relationships that reach beyond mortality.

And through God’s plan, His children are invited home.

An Eternal Family

That is why I cannot separate my understanding of the Atonement from my understanding of eternal family.

I came from an eternal family.

I am living within an eternal family.

And I hope to return to an eternal family.

Jesus Christ does not replace God the Eternal Father. Christ points us toward the Father.

I pray to God the Eternal Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

The Atonement makes returning to our Heavenly Father possible.

Christ does not take away my responsibility to live my life.

He gives me a way forward when I fall.

He does not eliminate consequences.

He makes repentance and reconciliation possible.

He does not remove death from mortality.

He overcame it.

And He does not ask me to surrender my agency.

He asks me to use it.

To come.

To repent.

To forgive.

To learn.

To make covenants.

To endure.

To love.

And to become.

Because He Lives

Jesus Christ suffered.

Jesus Christ died.

Jesus Christ was resurrected.

And 3 Nephi records the resurrected Christ standing among people on this continent and inviting them to know for themselves who He was.

That changes the ending.

The Atonement is not ultimately a story about death.

It is a story about life.

It is not merely about what we have done.

It is about what we can become.

It is not the destruction of accountability.

It is what gives repentance a purpose.

It is not the destruction of agency.

It is what gives our agency eternal consequence.

And it is not the end of the family.

Through the plan of God the Eternal Father and the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, death does not have to be goodbye forever.

I am a child of God.

Jesus Christ lives.

And because He lives, there is always more to our story.