Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if he chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen. Very well, then, we must go through with it. But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it. Now if we had not fallen, that would be all plane sailing. But unfortunately we now need God’s help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all–to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God’s nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God’s leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.
But supposing God became a man — suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person — then that person could help us. He could surrender His will and suffer and die, because He was a man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God’s dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God’s dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.”
C.S. Lewis
“[Joseph] Smith’s teachings about the eschatological potential of men and women challenges Christian theology to think more deliberately about what the redeemed are redeemed for. Too often, in my view, Christian theologians are content to reflect on how we are redeemed (the mechanics) and on what we are redeemed from.”
Carl Mosser
The New Mormon Challenge; in David Paulsen, “Joseph Smith Challenges the Theological Word,” BYU Studies 44:4 (2005): 197.
Joseph Smith took the gospel of Christ back even before Abraham to Adam and beyond, revealing the Atonement as “the plan of redemption … prepared from the foundation of the world” (Alma 12:30)—that is, when it was approved at the Council in Heaven. This event is often mentioned in the earliest Christian and Jewish literature, 13 one of the most notable texts being the “Discourse on Abbaton” by Timothy, Archbishop of Alexandria (circa a.d. 380). 14 When the plan was voted on, according to this account and others, it was turned down. The earth herself complained, as in the Book of Moses and other Enoch literature, of the defilement it would bring upon her, knowing the kind of inhabitants to come (see Moses 7:48–49); and the heavenly host objected to a plan that would cause such a vast amount of sin and suffering.
The Only Begotten broke the deadlock by volunteering to go down and pay the price. This opened the way; the plan could go forward; and the sons of God and the morning stars all sang and shouted for joy (see Job 38:7) in a great creation hymn that has left an indelible mark in ancient literature and ritual. The Lord had made it all possible, leaving men their agency, and obeying the Father in all things. But Satan and his followers refused to accept the majority vote; for that, Satan was deprived of his glory in a reversal of the ritual endowment and was cast out of heaven, which was the reverse of at-one-ment. 15
Only in such a context does the Atonement, otherwise so baffling, take on its full significance. There is not a word among those translated as “atonement” which does not plainly indicate the return to a former state or condition; one rejoins the family, returns to the Father, becomes united, reconciled, embracing and sitting down happily with others after a sad separation. We want to get back, but to do that, we must resist the alternative: being taken into the community of “the prince of this world.” (John 12:31.)
Hugh W. Nibley
“The Atonement of Jesus Christ, Part 2” Ensign, Aug 1990, 30
The greatest work of Christ is centered upon His Atonement. So long as there is anyone in pain, His work will continue. So long as there is anyone suffering under the burden of sin, His work will continue. So long as there is anyone who is afraid or lonely, His work will continue. So long as there is anyone who sorrows, His work will continue. So long as there is anyone who has been faithful and who needs to be lifted up and brought back to their Heavenly Father, His work will continue.
David P. Vandagriff
I Need Thee Every Hour – Applying the Atonement in Everyday Life
The greatest work of Christ is centered upon His Atonement. So long as there is anyone in pain, His work will continue. So long as there is anyone suffering under the burden of sin, His work will continue. So long as there is anyone who is afraid or lonely, His work will continue. So long as there is anyone who sorrows, His work will continue. So long as there is anyone who has been faithful and who needs to be lifted up and brought back to their Heavenly Father, His work will continue.
David P. Vandagriff
I Need Thee Every Hour – Applying the Atonement in Everyday Life
I need thee every hour,
Most gracious Lord.
No tender voice like thine
Can peace afford.
I need thee, oh, I need thee;
Every hour I need thee!
Oh, bless me now, my Savior;
I come to thee!
“I Need Thee Every Hour”, Hymns no. 98
The greatest work of Christ is centered upon His Atonement. So long as there is anyone in pain, His work will continue. So long as there is anyone suffering under the burden of sin, His work will continue. So long as there is anyone who is afraid or lonely, His work will continue. So long as there is anyone who sorrows, His work will continue. So long as there is anyone who has been faithful and who needs to be lifted up and brought back to their Heavenly Father, His work will continue.
David P. Vandagriff
I Need Thee Every Hour – Applying the Atonement in Everyday Life
Joseph Smith took the gospel of Christ back even before Abraham to Adam and beyond, revealing the Atonement as “the plan of redemption … prepared from the foundation of the world” (Alma 12:30)—that is, when it was approved at the Council in Heaven. This event is often mentioned in the earliest Christian and Jewish literature, one of the most notable texts being the “Discourse on Abbaton” by Timothy, Archbishop of Alexandria (circa a.d. 380). When the plan was voted on, according to this account and others, it was turned down. The earth herself complained, as in the Book of Moses and other Enoch literature, of the defilement it would bring upon her, knowing the kind of inhabitants to come (see Moses 7:48–49); and the heavenly host objected to a plan that would cause such a vast amount of sin and suffering.
The Only Begotten broke the deadlock by volunteering to go down and pay the price. This opened the way; the plan could go forward; and the sons of God and the morning stars all sang and shouted for joy (see Job 38:7) in a great creation hymn that has left an indelible mark in ancient literature and ritual. The Lord had made it all possible, leaving men their agency, and obeying the Father in all things. But Satan and his followers refused to accept the majority vote; for that, Satan was deprived of his glory in a reversal of the ritual endowment and was cast out of heaven, which was the reverse of at-one-ment.
Only in such a context does the Atonement, otherwise so baffling, take on its full significance. There is not a word among those translated as “atonement” which does not plainly indicate the return to a former state or condition; one rejoins the family, returns to the Father, becomes united, reconciled, embracing and sitting down happily with others after a sad separation. We want to get back, but to do that, we must resist the alternative: being taken into the community of “the prince of this world.” (John 12:31.)
Hugh W. Nibley
“The Atonement of Jesus Christ, Part 2” Ensign, Aug 1990, 30