Adam and Eve could not have risen from the Fall without help. They needed and accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which Father sent to them by angelic messengers. The Gospel is not a do-it-yourself formula; it enjoins a dependency called faith. That dependency is to put our whole trust in Jesus Christ, relying alone upon His merits. Only His merits could rescue Adam and Eve from the Fall. Only those merits can save us, their children, from the effects of the Fall.
The Savior has merits enough to answer every problem. The principal merits by which he helps us who are mortal and the resulting benefits are as follows:
| Merit | Benefit |
| His omniscience | He teaches us to understand our God and that we are children of our God |
| His wisdom | He gives us direction that we might have faith unto repentance |
| His perfection | He suffered for our sins that we might have not need to do so |
| His immortality | He could and did die for us, not needing to for himself, that we might be resurrected |
| His omnipotence | He can create good out of evil that we might partake of heaven |
Our Father sent our Savior into this world that He might use these merits in our behalf, to offer salvation to every human being.
If we are ignorant of the true nature of God and man, we cannot worship God correctly. To receive the teaching of that true understanding is the necessary foundation for all true perception of reality and for all wisdom. No man is saved faster than he gains the understanding that God is truly our kind and loving Father in whom we live, move and breathe, who invites us to hear His Son and through Him to rejoin them in the celestial kingdom. Our Savior, who is the Spirit of Truth, will teach us the truth of all things if we come unto Him in faith, ready to use that truth in the work of righteousness.
Our Savior is all wise because He is first and always a god of righteousness. In Him is no selfishness, no shadow of turning from that strait and narrow path which takes Him to fulfill His Father’s will. Having learned obedience as a Son, He is now in a position to succor us if we too are interested in pursuing that strait and narrow path to righteousness. As the sole source of righteousness to the inhabitants of this earth, He is generous in His offer to impart wisdom to any or all who ask in faith. Thus He will lead each person through the still, small voice of conscience, to do those things which will both lift up the lives of others and to ennoble the character of him who is obedient. That same faith will lead each person who hungers and thirsts after righteousness through the gate of baptism to the holy priesthood and to the fullness of all that the Father has.
These first two aspects of the Savior’s mission, the imparting of knowledge and wisdom (truth and light) to the inhabitants of the earth have been in place and a benefit to mankind since the fall of Adam. Not everyone who has lived on the earth has been a beneficiary of these merits, but everyone on the earth is descended from one who knew of these blessings. The fact that some parents who know of the Savior will not teach that light and truth to their children does not thwart the great plan of salvation, however, for each soul is guaranteed a full and personal understanding of basic gospel light and truth before he or she is judged. For some, that opportunity must come in the spirit world. But it will come.
The next two merits of the Savior, His moral perfection and His immortality, combine to make possible that single event which is the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind: the atonement.
The first part of the atonement was the suffering. Every time a human being breaks a commandment of God, that sinning causes a certain amount of suffering on the part of all those who are around the person. This suffering might be caused knowingly or unknowingly, but the result is the same: the inflicting of hurt or the deprivation of rightful blessings. Our Father has so designed this world that each person would receive a fulness of blessing if every person would obey Him, the Father. When anyone disobeys the Father, that shortens the blessing of every person around him, thus cursing them. Now the Father does not look upon this cursing kindly; He desires rather that His children be blessed. So when anyone takes away the blessings of another, the Father has decreed that that person who curses his neighbor must stand for that deed and suffer exactly the same deprivation or hurt which he has caused his neighbor to suffer. Thus there is a time when each human being must stand before the Father to account for his stewardship; he who has used his stewardship to curse his neighbor must pay fully the amount of suffering which he has caused. In addition, and even worse, having cursed his neighbor, he can never again go back into the presence of the Father, for the Father cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. Anyone who curses his children or others must be cast off forever. Thus, because all men sin, all men would be forever lost from the presence of the Father were it not for the atonement of Jesus Christ.
Our Savior came into mortality and kept every commandment of the Father, thus engendering a fullness of blessing with no admixture of cursing for every person whose life He affected (which was everyone). Thus our Savior had no sins to account for and could and did reenter the presence of our Father upon His death, not needing assistance from anyone. In the Father’s presence He pleads our case, asking the Father if we, too, might not reenter that grand and holy presence. That plea must of necessity be very inappropriate unless some very special conditions obtain for the individual whose case is being examined.
The first condition that must obtain for forgiveness is that the person must have stopped cursing anyone, anytime, anywhere, for any reason. This is to say that the person must have stopped sinning, any sinning, and must have replaced sinning with complete and heartful obedience to all that the Father commands. That repentance is only possible for one who has taken upon himself the fullness of the light and truth which the Savior has to give to men by accepting and living by the laws and ordinances of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Having replaced cursing with blessing, the person has a beginning of merit for his case, which merit obtains only because he has thus far trusted in the merits of Christ.
The second condition which must obtain is that the cursings which the person inflicted on others through his disobedience must have been matched by a full inflicting of that same exact pain and anguish upon the person of the inflictor. The justice of the Father must be fully satisfied. Because He was perfect, having kept the commandments of the Father perfectly, our Savior had nothing to suffer under the law of justice. Being perfect, He could then offer to suffer in behalf of someone else who was under penalty under the law of justice. Thus the Savior had offered to do for all mankind, and this the Savior did for all mankind, for each and every person, for each and every sin.
The suffering of our Savior needed to be done in the flesh, even as the sins for which he suffered had been committed in the flesh. In one twenty-four hour period at the close of His earthly ministry, the Savior took upon Himself the suffering for the sins of every human being who had ever lived or who every would live. Beginning in the Garden of Gethsemane and finishing on the cross of His crucifixion, our Savior bore the wrath of His Father in full measure, suffering in a manner and to a degree that we human beings can only begin to imagine.
Thus having paid the debt of sin for every human being, our Savior was then in a position to satisfy the second requirement for each person. Justice had been satisfied; the suffering had been done. The way back into the presence of the Father was nearly complete.
A third and final requisite was necessary, however. This was that anyone who had sinned and thus deprived his neighbor of blessing must restore that blessing to the person wronged, for only then would justice be complete. Then the person wronged would be as he would have been had the sin never been committed, had the commandment of the Father been kept in the first place. How could this be done? Not even God can reverse time and deeds. But there is a way, through the mercy and merits of Jesus Christ.
Being omnipotent, the fifth merit, our Savior has the power to reward every person with blessings so far in excess of that which we mortals can imagine that he cannot even tell us about it. He has promised that should we suffer any deprivation in this world because of the wickedness of those around us, He will restore that loss to us completely, and more, even an hundredfold. That restoration may or may not come in this world, because it depends upon timeliness and upon the worthiness of the person to receive it. But come it will, in the wisdom and goodness of an almighty God.
The three conditions for the forgiveness of sins then are that the sinner must now be completely obedient to the Father, his debt of suffering must be fully matched with a totally comparable suffering, and the person sinned against must be fully recompensed for any loss suffered in the sinning. Only through the merits of Jesus Christ may these conditions be met. Only in Him can we repent, never again to break the commandments of the Father. Only He could suffer for our sins, satisfying the justice of the Father yet enabling us to be acceptable again in the presence of the Father. Only He has the power to recompense the evil done in our sins. Thus the suffering of the Savior in the atonement is one key to all that we hold dear for eternity.
But the atonement was not complete in the suffering alone. Also necessary was the sacrifice.
As foretold in the myriad sacrifices of the old covenant, there must be a great and last sacrifice to bring about the purposes of our God. This could not be a sacrifice of man or of beast, for it must be an infinite and eternal sacrifice. Only a god could perform such a sacrifice; only a god could be such a sacrifice. So it was that our Savior was willing to be the sacrifice of the Father that would wrest from Satan the keys of death and make possible the resurrection of all mankind.
In submitting to Satan and partaking of the forbidden fruit, Adam had occasioned the delivery to Satan of the key of death, among other things. With that power Satan, as the destroyer, could kill (as he had permission from the Father) and then keep dead (separate from the tabernacle of flesh) both Adam and Eve and every one of their posterity. Thus it was that death came upon all men.
Our Savior, being the literal son of our Father in the flesh, inherited immortality. He never would have needed to die, not being subject to the fall of Adam in that respect. But our Savior was also the son of Mary, and from her He inherited blood, which gave Him the power to die if He so chose. Following the Father’s instruction, our Savior voluntarily gave up that potentially unending mortal life which He possessed together with all of the good things he could have done had he remained alive into eternity. Thus was His sacrifice infinite and eternal. Thus, not having to die, he seized the keys of death and made possible the unlocking of the door of death that all men might live again in the flesh. He, the first fruits of the resurrection, brings all mankind through that door with Himself, sharing all that He can with each of them.
Having lived a perfect life, having suffered the wrath of the Father, and having voluntarily died though an immortal being, our Savior completed the atonement, making it possible for each of us to be reconciled to the Father and again to enjoy His presence.
It remains now to mention the fifth merit of the Savior as it relates to the remainder of His mission. His omnipotence was needed to fulfill the conditions for the Atonement. That same omnipotence is needed by Him to create the heaven which is the reward of the faithful. It is obvious even to the casual observer on earth that the natural processes which nature and humans partake of will never afford the possibility of creating a true heaven on this earth. The inevitable deterioration of natural conditions and the increasing bestiality of so many human beings foretell a steady worsening of the human condition so long as the world shall stand. How can a heaven come out of all this?
The answer to this puzzle is again that it can happen only through the merits of Jesus Christ. Only He has the knowledge, the wisdom, the power and the authority to give every person a fair chance to repent, to separate the righteous from the wicked unerringly, and to renew the earth to a paradisaical glory that the earth might enjoy her sabbath of rest. Though the schemes and programs of men come to naught and the world ripens in iniquity, His purposes and powers fail not, because His merits are sufficient. Only one whose imagination allows him to believe that this world was the blind creation of chance could also be so unrealistic as to believe that the continuing course of natural events will produce any kind of a utopia for mankind. Only he who depends solely upon the merits of Jesus Christ will survive the cataclysm in which the “natural” order will eventuate to see that new heaven and new earth which the kind hand of an omnipotent Father will bring to reward His faithful children for their long-suffering and obedience.
And how did the Savior gain all of these merits, that He might so richly bless mankind? How did He come to be exalted, to become the only Begotten of the Father, the Savior of mankind? He did all of this by humbling Himself before the will of the Father, doing all things whatsoever He was instructed to do, in love for the Father and in long-suffering under the consequences of that obedience. The way up for Him was down.
How then do we partake of the merits of our Christ? In the same manner in which He partook of the merits of His Father, our Father. We partake of His omniscience by receiving His Holy Spirit, not being faithless, but rather, believing. We partake of His wisdom by obeying His instructions as we receive them in our own bosom, acting out in our own flesh the word of His law. We partake of His perfection by making covenant with Him in the waters of baptism, the water a symbol of His blood which was shed for us, of the suffering which pays our debt of sin. We partake of His immortality as His free gift; we need do nothing to be resurrected. Yet if we would obtain His kind of flesh in His kind of kingdom, we must learn to subdue this earthly flesh to the will of God as He did, learning all holiness and righteousness through the covenants of the holy priesthood, showing forth the fulfillment of those covenants in that same flesh. We partake of His omnipotence by showing mercy to others. Even as we would be recompensed for the evil we have suffered at the hands of wicked men, so must others be recompensed for our evil. We partake of the Savior’s omnipotent recompensation only as we demand nothing of others, in forgiveness, and cease completely from any wrongdoing. Thus, without faith it is impossible to please God, our Father. All who would come to Him must declare and show their faith in His Son, bringing forth fruits meet for celestial repentance, taking upon themselves the divine nature and character of Christ Himself.