The most important event in the total history of this world is the event known as the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It is possible to construe what the atonement is narrowly or broadly. To see it in narrow focus is to emphasize the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the last day of his mortal life and ministry, culminating in his death on the cross. To see the atonement in broad focus is to emphasize the total mission of our Savior from the time of the grand council in heaven until the last judgment is over and every person once mortal has entered into his or her eternal future. Let us explore the broad perspective and note how it also includes the narrow focus.
The English word “atonement” is made up of three words conjoined: “at-one-ment.” This word signifies the labor of bringing two sides or parties together, to make two into one. It is our Savior’s task, as assigned in the council in heaven, to assist every human being who ever has or will live on this earth to become one with our Father in Heaven. To be one with Father means to share all that He is and has: His perfection, power, knowledge, priesthood, and opportunities. Our Savior is one with our Father and it is His desire, attempt and mission to bring all of us humans to be one with Father, even as He is. This is the “at-one-ment.” He can do this, of course, only for those who will trust Him and cooperate.
Let us now recount the steps and stages of this attempt to help us become one with Father.
The first step was the cleansing of heaven after the grand council. A third of the hosts of heaven rebelled against Father and His plan to bless all of His spirit children. These rebellious souls were cast out of Father’s presence by our Savior, and cast down to this earth to await a future need for their services.
The second step was the preparation of this earth as a dwelling place for mankind. This planet was not created out of nothing, for it was already in existence when the Savior came down to form it for man’s habitation. The earth was prepared with all things necessary for man to live on it in the flesh, then Adam was placed on the earth, the first flesh on earth. All of the plants and animals created for this world were brought here to be useful to Adam and Eve and their posterity.
The third step was the creation of the world. The world is a spiritual kingdom on the earth, the earth being this planet. The world was created after Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were placed in the garden as a married couple, having covenanted with Father to obey him in all things and having received the instruction to multiply and fill up the earth with their posterity. One of the first things they did was to disobey Father by yielding to the temptations of Satan. The result of that disobedience was the Fall. The earth fell out of its then orbit, Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden and out of Father’s presence, and they were put into the power of Satan because they had obeyed him. Satan gaining power over Adam and Eve was the creation of the world, or Satan’s kingdom on this earth. Satan and his third of the hosts of heaven are here to torment and try each of us every day of our mortal lives.
The fourth step was giving Adam and Eve and their posterity a new covenant, the New and Everlasting Covenant, which would enable them to eventually work their way back out of the power of Satan. They were taught and empowered how to become godly instead of carnal, sensual and devilish as man had become in the Fall. This fourth step was teaching Adam and Eve and their posterity the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that through faith in him and repentance of all their sins they could be saved from the evil within their own selves. Through receiving the ordinances of the holy priesthood and keeping their covenants, they could change their basic eternal natures which had allowed them to fall and become as Christ is in heart, might, mind and strength. Part of this fourth step was the sending of the Holy Ghost, angels, and prophets, seers and revelators to keep the posterity of Adam informed about the wondrous news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to keep the offer of the New and Everlasting Covenant before the people through the Church of Jesus Christ. Adam’s posterity kept rejecting the Holy Spirit, the prophets, the church, the Gospel and the new covenant, so these were taken away and then restored many times.
The fifth step of the atonement was the mortal life and mission of that God who had created and presided over the earth up to this point. Christ was born to Mary, was the son of our Father in Heaven, and lived a perfect life in obeying all of Father’s commands. Having lived a perfect life, he needed no savior or redeemer for his own future. And being perfect, he could offer his own spotless life as a sacrifice for the remainder of mankind. So he sacrificed. He gave up his potentially unending mortal life in exchange for the keys of death. Having seized the keys of death, that assured that all mankind would be resurrected in the flesh and live forever, even as he will. And he suffered. He suffered the pains of all men, both for the sins they had committed and for the sins committed against them, so that there could be a forgiveness of the penalties and consequences of every human sin. And as a god, Christ undertook restitution for the sins of all humankind. As a God he blessed every human being with a restoration of every blessing they would have received had the not been sinned against. With this restitution, every human being exists in eternity as if they had not been sinned against, shortened in their enjoyment of Heavenly Father’s blessings.
The sixth step of the atonement is the judgment. As Christ was lifted up by mortal men and crucified, so Christ will draw all men up to him at the last day and will judge them. He will judge them by what they did when the Holy Spirit testified to each of them that he was and is the Christ, the Savior of mankind and that they should forsake all ungodliness and become sinless, as he, Christ, is. An integral part of the atonement is that every soul receives a full witness and explanation of the salvation through Christ before coming to the bar of judgment, and the person is to be judged by what they do after they have received that full witness and opportunity to be saved from themselves and their own wickedness. So all men will stand before Christ and will be judged, even as each of them judged him and accepted or rejected him. Those who did good will be given great eternal reward. Those who did evil will be sent to receive all that they can stand, which may be but a little.
The seventh step of the atonement is that the Savior takes all who have accepted him and his covenant in their probation, who did have faith in him and repent unto a pure heart, and teaches and nurtures them in the ways, powers and duties of godhood until they have received a fulness of all things and have become as He is and as Father is. This seventh step is the climax of the atonement: each soul who will receive it is now like the Father and the Son. These enter into their rest and become one with all the gods in all of their future exciting adventures in creating worlds, peopling those worlds with souls, and giving each of those souls the same opportunity to become one with Father and Christ that we have been given. Thus, the final step of the at-one-ment is actually bringing each soul who will receive it into a spiritual and functioning oneness with Father and the Son in their eternal round of creating worlds and blessing souls.
Thus the atonement of Jesus Christ is the whole basis and reason for the existence of each human being. We exist to be given the opportunity to inherit all that our Father is and has. How grateful we ought to be to our Savior for carrying out this wonderful plan of our Father to bless each of us. How we ought to strive to fight against the power of the adversary to stop us from receiving our heritage through Jesus Christ!
I would like now to make some specific suggestions as to how each of us might profit from the atonement in our daily lives:
- Carefully inspect all things that come before us and separate them into really good, indeterminate, and really bad.
- Focus our heart and mind on that which we know is really good. Leave aside all the indeterminate and really bad. All that is good comes from Christ.
- Plan and work each day to do all of the really good you can. This will include constant prayer in the name of Christ, daily reading of scripture, careful attention to serving those around us, being cheerful and happy, being thankful for all things the Lord sees fit to inflict upon us.
- Deliberately seek out and foster everything that is virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy. The sum of these four steps is to be as a little child before God and to shun the teachings and ways and fashions of this world as one would flee a raging fire.
May the Savior ever be in our hearts; may his magnificent atonement ever be on our minds to inspire and guide us; and may we ever follow the whisperings of his Holy Spirit and overcome this world through Christ, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.