CHRIST CAN MAKE ME HOLY

I wrote in an earlier post that the word holy is related to the words heal and whole. When I think of the atonement, I think of being whole and healed in the sense that my sins, as a penitent, can be forgiven.  I hadn't really thought of the atonement as having the potential to make me holy until reading Mosiah 3.

After teaching his people to heed the Holy Spirit rather than the evil spirit, he taught them how to overcome the sins that come with listing toward evil through the atonement of Jesus Christ.

If you choose well, you will be blessed to prosper and to have joy.  Said he,  ... whosoever should believe that Christ should come, the same might receive a remission of their sins, and rejoice with exceeding great joy, even as though he had already come among them. (Mosiah 3: 13)  In other words, Christ's Atonement is infinite in that it's effects have no beginning nor end.

I believe that eternal torment

comes from the guilt within

your own head.

Choose to listen to the evil spirit and do not subsequently repent, you will have no claim on mercy or a fullness of joy.  The consequences of conscious rebellion against God are explicitly painful: . . . if they be evil they are consigned to an awful view of their own guild and abominations,  which doth cause them to shrink from the presence of the Lord into a state of misery and endless torment, from when they can no more return; therefore they have drunk damnation* to their own souls.. . . which justice could no more deny unto them than it could deny that Adam should fall because of his partaking of the forbidden fruit; therefore, mercy could have claim on them no more forever.  And their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames are unquenchable, and whose smoke ascendth up forever and ever. (Mosiah 3: 25-26)

I don't know about you, but I want no part of that!

~ ~ ~

That brings me to the hard part. I have never had a problem believing in Christ, but it has taken me over 70 years to believe Christ when He said, "and I the Lord shall remember them no more." (Doctrine and Covenants 58: 42.) What I still struggle with is this: have I repented of sinning and not just of sin?  Are there flaws in my spiritual character that leads me to commmit the same sins over and over because of the weakness of my flesh? Like Nephi, I say, "O wretched [person] that I am because of my flesh." (2 Nephi 24: 17) I take great comfort in King Benjamin's words that I can put off the natural man and become a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord. (Mosiah 3: 19)

In order to allow Jesus' Atonement to make me holy, I must emulate Him and become:

• submissive
• meek
• humble
• patient
• full of love and
• willing to submit to the [will of the Father] (Mosiah 3: 19)

These words describe Jesus Himself.  They also describe Nephi, King Benjamin, and many other prophets who have partaken of the blessings of the atonement.

Other scriptures describe the traits of holiness using similar words.  Here are three that come to my mind:

1 Corinthians 13: 4-8

Charity suffers long, and is kind; charity envies not; charity vaunts not itself, is not puffed up, doth no behave itself in an ungodly manner, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil; rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.  Charity never faileth:

Doctrine and Covenants 121: 41, 42, 45

No power of influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by loved unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile -  . . . Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all me, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish they thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy conficend wax strong in the presence of God . . .

Moroni 7: 47

But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him. 

I pray that I might have the love, strength, and wisdom enough to allow Jesus Christ's atonement to make me whole again, to heal my scars, and to make me holy. I pray this in His Name, Amen

© Dr. Kathleen Rawlings Buntin Danielson, April 2020