These posts on Repentance are intended to be read in order beginning with Repentance: Introduction. At the bottom of each post is a link to the next post.
In the Introduction of this series on Repentance I said that repentance is linked to every truth that has been revealed by God through His words. Inherent in all His teachings is His gift of Repentance. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is quite simple. A brief summary may help.
1. Christ came into the world to do the will of His Father.
2. His Father sent Him to be lifted up upon the cross, so that Christ could draw all men unto Him,
3. So that all men will be lifted up to stand before Christ, to be judged of their works, regardless of whether they be good or evil.
4. Christ will draw all men unto Him.
5. Whoever repents and is baptized shall be filled with the Holy Ghost.
6. And if those who repent, validate their repentance by enduring in Faith in Christ until the end, Christ will hold them guiltless before His Father.
7. They who do not repent and who do not endure in repentance unto the end, shall be hewn down and cast into the fire because of the Justice of God.
Now this is the Commandment: "Repent all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me, and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day" (3 Nephi 27:20)).
Because Christ is the Gospel, the good news, and because He loves us, He has given us the gift of repentance to overcome our condition as a result of the fall--becoming a lost and fallen people.
So what did God do after seeing that it was expedient that man should know concerning the things He had appointed unto them? "He sent angels to converse with them" (Alma 12:29). His words were recorded so that we can search them and begin to exercise faith in Christ and believe Him, which will cause us to repent. And it is through His words that we learn what repentance is.
And that means that we turn from our wicked ways (the ways of the world, putting our trust in men and in things), and turn to Him. "O repent ye, repent ye! Why will ye die? Turn ye, turn ye unto the Lord your God" (Helaman 7:16-17 emphasis added).
Repenting is experiential. In order to want to turn to Christ, we must experience our own lost and fallen state, our nothingness. God's Justice was introduced to Adam at the time of his fall. The question I asked in Why We Need to Repent was: Is God's Justice enough to make you want to repent? When we experience our lost and fallen state, we will want to turn to Christ as Alma did and will therefore begin to experience what it means to repent when we turn to Him.
Our default condition, everyone's default condition is because that Adam fell, we are; and by his fall came death; and we partake of misery and woe. Satan is among us and tempts us. We become carnal, sensual and devilish, and we are shut out from the presence of God. Without repentance we are left to be judged by God according to our works. Justice will claim those who do not repent. Mercy claims those who do repent. Those who receive God's mercy are found guiltless and spotless, because of the goodness and merits of Christ. Our goodness and merits have nothing to do with it. For me I choose Mercy over Justice any day!
As we are repenting which includes relying wholly upon Christ's merits, we experience the grace of Christ in our lives. We are changed from our carnal and fallen state, to a state of righteousness, being redeemed of God, and thus become new creatures, and continue to become until perfect in/by Him. "Therefore it is of fatih, that it might be by grace" (Romans 4:16). Christ's grace comes as a result of our faith in Him, the fruits of our repentance. We have access to Christ "by faith into this grace wherein we stand" (Romans 5:2). "For by grace are ye saved through faith, and not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9).
When we have faith unto repentance and begin the process of repenting and turning to Christ, then we, by His Grace, begin the process of being changed by Him. Don't worry about how this happens, but just believe Him when He tells us "My Grace is sufficient for thee." And "all we can do" is repent.
After being born again, we desire others to taste of His mercy, and thus we have the desire to say nothing but repentance unto this generation, so that they too, will receive His mercy, and not His justice.
There Is No Other Way. Only Godly Sorrow Brings About Repentance.
The word of God teaches us that humans are spiritually deficient and that our goodness is flawed goodness. Because God's word is light and spirit, we receive both as we receive His words. We not only come to know that we 'cannot merit anything of ourselves' and that we must 'rely wholly upon the merits' of Christ, but we also experience our own lost, fallen and corrupt state. His words teach us that redemption is not a matter of legislation, moral exhortation, proper examples, rules, regulations and good education. We also learn why this is true--these methods require imperfect people to be in charge of making themselves and others perfect. Certainly there can be human goodness in such efforts, but they cannot bring about our redemption.
We must not only accept but experience that mankind (and each one of us) is spiritually flawed and our plight is beyond human remedy. And we experience this through His words which He has imparted unto us. We also, through His word, experience His goodness and greatness and come to know that our salvation does not come through our good works, but through His righteousness. Rules and regulations cannot empower us. The potential for sin can be clarified by the law, but not eliminated by it. That is why the law can only be a schoolmaster to teach us of our plight and to encourage us to look for the remedy. The remedy is not the law. Redemption comes in and through the Holy Messiah.
This we hear directly from His voice through His words: "There is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God save it be through the merits, and mercy and grace of the Holy Messiah" (2 Nephi 2:8). And you cannot come to him "save it were by the word of Christ with unshaken faith in Him, relying wholly upon the merits of Him who is mighty to save" (2 Nephi 31:19).
Why is it then that we insist on thinking that our performance will somehow earn a greater reward? And that we will be able to flash our outstanding report cards at the judgment and all will be well? There is only one answer to this question and that is we have not received the word of God which He has so lovingly revealed to us! Instead we have bought in to the gospel of performance rather than the gospel of repentance. Because we have substituted the word of God with the teachings of men mingled with scripture--a perverted and watered down gospel--we are conditioned that we must do it with our strivings, our efforts, our doing, our goodness, our successes, our virtues, and our activity. But how do we eliminate this from our thinking? We must hear His voice in His words! There is no other way.
Important in the records of the dispensations is that when men depart from God's way and substitute their own ways in its place, they usually do not admit that is what they are doing. Often they do not deliberately or even consciously substitute their ways for God's ways. On the contrary, they easily and largely convince themselves that their way is God's way. The apostasy described in the scriptures is not a desertion of the cause, but a perversion of it, a process by which the righteous are removed and none perceives it.
But this is what happens when we neglect the word of God. Our minds, like a land neglected by the cultivator (us) necessarily produces thorns and thistles, so our sense, by long neglect, produces a plentiful crop of noxious opinions, dogmas, tenets and perverted teachings. There is need now for much care in cultivating the field of our minds, that the word of truth, which is the true and diligent husbandman of the heart (word is what nourishes us), may cultivate our minds and hearts with continual light and truth.
We do not like to think of ourselves or our minds as being corrupt, and yet that is the word the Lord uses to describe us, for when we take strength unto ourselves and boast in our own strength, then we are left to our own strength, and we will not prosper. Our 'own strength' is a state of corruption and we cannot overcome this corruption by our goodness, our virtues and our activity. When the Lord asked His servant "Who is that has corrupted my vineyard?" the servant answers that the vineyard becomes corrupted by corrupted people who take strength unto themselves, or rely on their own strength: "...is not this the cause that the trees of thy vineyard have become corrupted?"
As a result of the fall we are all corrupted and do not merit anything of ourselves. So the problem does not lie solely in the fact that people take strength unto themselves, but that corrupt people take strength unto themselves, and we all are, everyone of us, corrupted as a result of the fall. A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit.
The Lord also said that men who set themselves up as a light unto the world have corrupt minds, because their minds are filled with corrupt teachings, ideas and opinions. We have all gone out of the way (are not in the way) and have become corrupted. Because of pride and because of false teachers and false doctrines, even our churches have become corrupted. Why? Again it is corrupt people (the fall) with corrupt minds (the false teachings and false doctrines). Add to this the desire for the things of the world (all corruptible), we are in a very sorry state indeed.
Of course Christ is the remedy, but how do we come to Christ? How exactly do we partake of His goodness, His incorruptible state of righteousness, and His promise to make us incorruptible like He is?
The answer is through His words. When we are born we are neither good nor evil, but are innocent, but are "conceived in sin, even so when (we) begin to grow up, sin conceiveth in (our) hearts, and (we) taste the bitter, that (we) may know to prize the good." (Moses 6:55) And "it is given unto (us) to know good from evil, wherefore (we) are agents unto (ourselves)..." (Moses 6:56) So with these competing influences--good and evil--how do we learn to prize the good? Before leaving the Garden, Eve told Adam that it was better for them to pass through sorrow so that they could learn to prize the good. In D&C 84, the Lord makes it clear that we come unto Him through His words, and that "whoso receiveth not my voice (His words) is not acquainted with my voice, and is not of me."
So we experience the darkness within ourselves and in the world. We should not deny the darkness within or avoid the darkness of the world. We should acknowledge it, accept it, but transcend it by seeking God's light shining in the darkness! And that light is His word!
This plan for us which offers both good and evil requires that we learn to recognize the difference and understand exactly what is good and what is evil. Again we turn to His words which tell us that good is the righteousness of God, and evil is everything else. One way is narrow and the other broad. The Lord tells us that we get in the right way because of His words and we stay in the right way because of His words. We see this by virtue of the word of God being identified as the Rod of Iron, with the word being compared to the Liahona and with the word of God being truth, light, spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Why? Because the word of God leads us to the fountain of living waters, the love of God and to the righteousness of God. While ignoring and not receiving His words keeps us in darkness and leads us to wander in strange paths and eventually being captive by the chains of hell. And when we shine the light of His words upon ourselves, we see the corruption, the flawed goodness, the evil. And yet at the same time we see His goodness and righteousness, and willingly rely wholly upon His merits.
Ask yourself this question: Is my faith so little that I cling to the deeds that I do, calling them good, because I am afraid to see the evil in myself? Yet it is only through seeing the evil in us that we can exercise the faith to see the good in Him.
And exactly how do we know to see the good in Him? By what our Father in Heaven has revealed to us about Him and about ourselves. And how do we get this revelation? Through His words that he has spoken and caused to be recorded.
I would that you should take upon you the name of Christ and retain His name always written in your hearts, and that you hear and know the voice by which you are called, and also, the name by which He shall call you. For "how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart."
This is the first (actually the second) and last commandment. The first in that after partaking of the fruit and being cast out of the garden, the first commandment given to Adam and Eve was to repent. It is the second in that the first commandment was to not partake of the fruit of the tree. This is why we are told that "seeing we know these things, and they are true, let us repent, and harden not our hearts, that we provoke not the Lord our God to pull down his wrath upon us in these his second commandments which he has given unto us; but let us enter in the rest of God, which is prepared according to his word" (Alma 12:37 emphasis added; see also Moses 6:56-57).
And the last? "Now this is the Commandment: Repent, all ye ends of the earth..." (3 Nephi 27:20).
Next: Repentance: They Shall Have Joy in Their Works for a Season