Hope Through the Atonement

I've noticed a couple of messages on the theme of hope on Facebook this morning, and I'm teaching about the Atonement in Gospel Principles this Sunday, so I'd really like to blog about something like that this morning, and possibly the next two days as well. The trouble with that is that while Hope and the Atonement are closely related and easy to talk about in the same sentence, they're both such broad topics that it's hard to pull a specific message out of them. Hope Through the Atonement isn't a blog post idea. It's an idea for the theme for a blog post. I suppose I could make the topic more specific by defining what it is we have hope for.

We can have hope for a remission of sins through the cleansing power of the Atonement. We can have hope for life after death through the resurrection (which is closely related to the Atonement and discussed in the same chapter of the Gospel Principles manual). And we can have hope for Eternal Life. Those are three ideas right there, but not all of them are things I want to blog about.

I want to talk about the hope that any sin, no matter how foul, can be forgiven, but to receive forgiveness for any sin, even the most minor ones, we must meet the condition of repentance. It's very much all-or-nothing, isn't it? Even the worst sinner in the world could be made clean if only they chose to repent, and the best saint in the world could be brought down for even just a single sin for which they refuse to repent. No matter how dire or minor the sins on your soul are, either you repent and are saved, or you don't and you're not.

It's also important to understand what repentance means. It's not just an apology. It involves a commitment to not sin again. However, that doesn't mean that you need to be perfect in order to truly repent. Despite you're commitment, you're still going to be tempted again and might slip. I've blogged about this before.

In rereading that blog post, I'm reminded of something I said almost a year ago:

In our hearts, there must be the willingness to forsake our sins, even if the ability is beyond us. If we have the willingness, God can give us the strength, with which we can truly forsake our sins.

So, can we and do we need to actually forsake our sins or not? I think the answer is "yes" in both cases, which is both encouraging and a little daunting. Yes, we're human, and we keep making the same mistakes, but with God's help, we can avoid those mistakes. We may not be strong enough or wise enough to make the right choices, but God can give us all the strength and wisdom we need. We have to ask for that help, which we can do while we make the commitment to forsake that sin, but God is willing and eager to grant it. The only reason He doesn't help us when we need it is because we choose not to ask Him to, and He doesn't often help people without their permission.

So, to recap, in order to repent, we need to confess and forsake our sins. If we do, we are cleansed through the power of the Atonement. The trouble is that forsaking our sins can be difficult and seemingly impossible. However, we can receive the help we need to forsake our sins through the power of the Atonement.

By tapping into the enabling power of the Atonement, we become capable of tapping into the cleansing power of the Atonement. To add another layer to this formula, becoming cleansed from our sins makes it possible for us to tap into the exalting power of the Atonement. In October 2004, Elder David A. Bednar taught:

The enabling and strengthening aspect of the Atonement helps us to see and to do and to become good in ways that we could never recognize or accomplish with our limited mortal capacity.

-David A. Bednar, In the Strength of the Lord.

Without the Atonement, there would be no hope. We would be damned to suffer eternally for even one human mistake. But because of the Atonement, we can have hope the receive strength beyond our means, to break free from our sins, and to receive Eternal Life and exaltation in the presence and glory of God.