JESUS CHRIST

Paul taught that to come unto Jesus Christ is to enter a new realm of existence, a spiritual realm. It is to forsake death and come unto life, to put away evil and darkness and learn to walk in righteousness and light. “Know ye not,” Paul asked the Romans, “that so many of  us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Romans 6:3-6). (more…)

The Fall of Adam brought into the world both physical death, which is the separation of the spirit from the body (James 2:26), and spiritual death, separation from God or alienation from the things of God (Alma 12:32). The Atonement of Christ redeems, or ransoms, us from the effects of the Fall. “Redemption,” Bruce R. McConkie taught, is of two kinds: conditional and unconditional” (Mormon Doctrine, 2d ed., Bookcraft, 1966, 623.)

Unconditional redemption provides two free gifts to mankind. The first unconditional gift is that all who ever have or ever will live in mortality will be redeemed from physical death through the Resurrection, because Jesus “taste[d] death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9). John recorded the Savior’s own testimony that all “shall come forth; they who have done good, in the resurrection of the just; and they who have done evil, in the resurrection of the unjust (Inspired Version, John 5:29). (more…)

In the October 1995 general conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes known as The ‘Mormon’ Church), President Boyd K. Packer, [modern apostle], said:

[Except for] the very few who defect to perdition, there is no habit, no addiction, no rebellion, no transgression, no apostasy, no one exempted from the promise of complete forgiveness. That is the promise of the atonement of Christ (”The Brilliant Morning of Forgiveness,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 20). (more…)

Jesus Christ is the author of peace, the Prince of Peace. In this learning laboratory of mortality, we find that peace comes as we put Him first in our lives. We come to know that He lives, that Christ truly paid the price of our sins, our poor vision, our weaknesses, by suffering personally for each one of them, and that He has become our Advocate with the Father through Christ’s atoning sacrifice, to enable us, lift us, save us, and redeem us. He alone can bring peace to us through the gift of His Spirit.

The Savior’s words are literal and are for you and I: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14: 27). (more…)

Let not ignorance and thoughtlessness lead us into the error of assuming that the Father’s foreknowledge as to what would be, under given conditions, determined that such must be. It was not His design that the souls of mankind be lost; on the contrary it was and is His work and glory, “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). Nevertheless He saw the evil into which His children would assuredly fall; and with infinite love and mercy did He ordain means of averting the dire effect, provided the transgressor would elect to avail himself thereof. The offer of the firstborn Son to establish through His own ministry among men the gospel of salvation, and to sacrifice Himself, through labor, humiliation and suffering even unto death, was accepted and made the foreordained plan of man’s redemption from death, of his eventual salvation from the effects of sin, and of his possible exaltation through righteous achievement. (more…)