No Broken Laws

In Priesthood this afternoon, we discussed Tad R. Callister's talk titled The Atonement of Jesus Christ, in which Brother Callister shared an analogy of a skydiver. Without a parachute, the skydiver would be subject to the full consequences of the laws of physics. The skydiver would fall like a rock until he or she hit the ground, hard. But with a parachute, the skydiver could survive, not because the parachute broke or nullified the laws of physics, but because the parachute worked within the laws of physics to bring about the desired outcome.

Similarly, the Atonement doesn't break or nullify the laws of justice, but rather works within those laws to bring about the desired outcome. Without the Atonement, we would be just as doomed as a skydiver without a parachute. Our spiritual debt would come due, and our spiritual death would be certain. However, through the power of the Atonement, we can avoid that grisly fate, not by breaking the laws of justice, but by cleverly working within them. In the garden of Gethsemane, Christ paid our spiritual debt in full, satisfying the demands of justice, and in turn allows us to repay our debt to Him by repenting and keeping His commandments. By buying our debt, Jesus worked within the laws of justice to prevent our otherwise inevitable spiritual death.

The Atonement doesn't break the laws of justice any more than a parachute breaks the laws of physics, yet they both save physical and/or spiritual lives through clever applications of those laws. God is a God of justice, but He is also a God of mercy, and that isn't a contradiction; it's the result of what one hymn calls "redemption's grand design, where justice, love, and mercy meet in harmony divine" (Hymn 195).