Every day, you and I make decisions. And each action we take
is accounted for in Heaven; whether it be righteous, or less than perfect. It
is not any profound revelation that we, as human beings who are subject to the
wiles of the natural man, make mistakes. We play in mud puddles, we trip and
fall, and we often soil our pristine white clothing. I personally fall short of
my vast eternal potential every single day. We are not perfect. The Lord knows
that. He loves us, and just as a parent knows their child well enough to
predict that, if left alone in a room with easily accessible candy, the child will
spoil their dinner, He knows us and our weaknesses well enough to know that we
will make mistakes…and a lot of them at that. He loves us through our
imperfections and wants us to live with Him, and yet, in 1 Nephi 10: 21 we are
told that “Wherefore, if ye have sought to do wickedly in the days of your
probation, then ye are found unclean before the judgment seat of God, and no
unclean thing can dwell with God; wherefore, ye must be cast off forever.” This
is a bitter pill to swallow. In Matthew 5:48, we also find this statement: “Be
ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
I know at times in my life, I have
considered this paradox. The Lord knows we are imperfect, and yet he demands
perfection of us in order to gain entrance into His presence. He must be
perfect in his justice, and cannot allow that any impure individual to return
to Him. As much as He loves us, and may desperately want to allow us to live
with Him, He cannot. Because He is a perfect being, so must He be perfectly
just. At times, I have viewed this as unfair. I can remember crying out to my
Father in Heaven “Why do you ask so much of me when you know I am not capable
of meeting the bar that you have set? Do you want me to fail? Do you even want
me to come home to you again?” In hindsight, I recognize that those questions
were juvenile, and short-sighted. But I feel like there is a possibility that
they may be more universal than I thought at the time. Everyone experiences, at
some point or another, the bitter recognition of their shortcomings, and the
ache of realizing that we are no longer qualified to dwell with our Beloved
Father again. That may be the darkest,
most empty feeling the human soul is capable of experiencing. It is cold, and
it is excruciating. We often cannot fully comprehend and reconcile the need for
justice and consequences of our actions, with the fact that we have an
immensely loving Father in Heaven who wants us to succeed. It is not difficult
to see this commandment of perfection as harsh and callous, and allow our views
of our Eternal Father to be skewed by such incomplete views of the concept of
justice. With our limited vision and understanding, we often forget that we
have a bridge to perfection. This bridge is called mercy, and it comes through
the Atonement of our brother and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Mercy is the compassionate
treatment of a person, greater than what is deserved. The Savior satisfied the demands of justice with
mercy when He stood in our place and suffered the penalty for our sins. Alma
34:14-16 sums this concept up better than I ever could in my own insufficient
words.
“And behold, this is the whole
meaning of the law, every whit pointing to that great and last sacrifice; and
that great and last sacrifice will be the Son of God, yea, infinite and
eternal. “
“And thus He shall bring salvation
to all those who shall believe on His name; this being the intent of this last
sacrifice, to bring about the bowels of mercy, which overpowereth justice, and
bringeth about means unto men that they may have faith unto repentance.”
“And thus mercy can satisfy the
demands of justice, and encircles them in the arms of safety, while he that
exercises no faith unto repentance is exposed to the whole law of the demands
of justice; therefore only unto him that has faith unto repentance is brought about
the great and eternal plan of redemption.”
How incredible this is to me, that
the Savior would sacrifice His own perfect, blameless life for someone as
stubborn in their sins as I am. That He loves me enough to allow me a way to be
“encircled in the arms of safety,” when the decisions I have made have been
dangerous or could have been spiritually fatal without Him there to make up the
difference and help me to become perfected. I love the imagery of being “wrapped
up in the arms of safety.” As children, when we touch a hot stove and get
burned, the first thing a loving parent often does, is scoop us up in their
arms and comfort us, as they take the necessary steps to heal the wound and
stop the hurt. In that moment, when our fingers are stinging and we have tears
in our eyes and a wail in our throats, it does not matter if our parents have
warned us a million times not to touch the hot surface, their first reaction is
to comfort us and make us feel safe once again. They have mercy on us, their
stubborn, rebellious children. And while justice would dictate that if we have
been warned, then we must suffer the consequences on our own, but the mercy of
their love overcomes that and we are wrapped in loving arms, and a healing balm
is applied to our wounds.
As I consider this concept in an
eternal perspective, I wonder what I have done to deserve this amazing grace.
And the answer is that I have done nothing for it. And I will never be able to
earn it, or repay that debt which I owe to Christ. But that is not what He
asks. He simply asks us to believe on His name and practice faith unto
repentance. What a small output of effort, for such an enormous and priceless
treasure. “He offereth Himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the
law, unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and unto
none else can the ends of the law be answered.” (2 Nephi 2:7) We are receiving
a literal sacrifice of a perfect being to save us from an eternity of torment,
guilt and woe; and what is our price? A broken heart and a contrite spirit. I
cannot even comprehend the enormity of the benevolence of the Atonement fully
at this time, and I pray that one day I will have a perfect understanding of
it. But I do know, in my young and limited view, that the cost is greatly
disproportionate to the gift we receive.
Elder Marion D. Hanks once said
“the specialty of the Savior is mercy.” When we purchase any sort of goods, we
tend to want the best quality we possibly can. We want to know that the
craftsman is a specialist in his specific trade, and that the item we are
purchasing is of the highest caliber; but that kind of specialty often comes
with a heavy price-far beyond our checkbook’s ability. So imagine, when selecting
the builder of our path that will allow us to cross from a flawed and filthy
state to the glory of the presence of God, would you want a specialist in
building bridges of mercy? Would you want the very best man for the job? One
whose work is known for it’s perfection and unending strength, no matter how
much weight and stress is put on it? I think the answer is an obvious and
resounding “yes!” And now imagine, that as you are awaiting to hear the
exorbitantly high price that you will most likely have to pay for this peace of
mind, that the builder turned to you and said “I will build you this bridge. I
will offer you safety and peace, and an ability to cross over unto the banks of
perfection for all eternity; no matter how many times you have to use it or how
heavy your load is, I promise that it will not fail you. All I ask in return,
is that you come unto me in humility when you have fallen short, and when you
realize that you cannot even drag yourself across it on your own, and you allow
me to pick you up, wipe your tears and hold you close, and carry you across
that bridge myself.” What an incredible act of love. The Savior is, in fact, a
specialist in mercy. His sacrifice satisfies God’s need for perfect justice,
and perfects us so that we can live in His presence again.
I think one of the most powerful
testimonies of the beauty and majesty of the Savior’s merciful sacrifice came
from Elder Holland’s talk titled “Laborer’s in the Vineyard” from the April
2012 General Conference, and while it is a bit lengthy, I would like to include portions of it. “…I heard many years ago that surely the thing God
enjoys most about being God, is the thrill of being merciful, especially to
those who don’t expect it and often feel they don’t deserve it…However late you
think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many
mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however
far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you
have NOT traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you
to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines….there is nothing that you have done that
cannot be undone. There is no problem which you cannot overcome. There is no
dream that in the unfolding of time and eternity cannot yet be realized. Even
if you feel you are the lost and last laborer of the eleventh hour, the Lord of
the vineyard still stands beckoning. “Come boldly to the throne of grace, and
fall at the feet of the Holy One of Israel. Come and feast without money and
without price at the table of the Lord.” Do it for the sake of the Lord Jesus
Christ, who paid an unfathomable price for the future He wants you to have.”
I add my testimony to that of Elder
Holland and countless others; through the incredibly merciful Atonement of
Jesus Christ, I know that the justice of our Heavenly Father can be fulfilled
and we can be perfected to live with Him again. I am grateful for the
expectation of perfection that we have, but more than that I am eternally
grateful for the ability we have been given to reach it through our loving
brother and Savior.
Alyssa
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