“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
| Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Atonement
LDS Quotes on Atonement
The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can go home but that—miraculously—we can feel at home there. If Heavenly Father and His Son did not require faith and repentance, then there would be no desire to change.
Think of your friends and family members who have chosen to live without faith and without repentance. They don’t want to change. They are not trying to abandon sin and become comfortable with God. Rather, they are trying to abandon God and become comfortable with sin.
If the Father and the Son did not require covenants and bestow the gift of the Holy Ghost, then there would be no way to change. We would be left forever with only willpower, with no access to His power. If Heavenly Father and His Son did not require endurance to the end, then there would be no internalization of those changes over time. They would forever be surface and cosmetic rather than sinking inside us and becoming part of us—part of who we are. Put simply, if Jesus didn’t require practice, then we would never become Saints.
“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
You need not know everything before the power of the atonement will work for you. Have faith in Christ, it begins to work the day you ask.
| Ensign, May 1997, p. 10
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
“We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ.”
“This may raise the ridiculous idea that the Fall took God by surprise and upset His plan, or else — more ridiculously still — that God planned the whole thing for conditions which, He well knew, were never going to be realised. In fact, of course, God saw the crucifixion in the act of creating the first nebula.”
Of all the tests we face, none hurts more than the death of a loved one. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ all are delivered from death, and all will rise in the Resurrection. And by the Atonement of Jesus Christ, all may gain peace in this life washed clean from the sorrows of sin and have hope of a glorious resurrection with the just…At this Easter season we give our sure witness that Jesus is the Christ, the Redeemer of all mankind. Because of His atoning sacrifice, He stands as our Advocate and Savior. Though He was crucified, He rose triumphant from the tomb to our everlasting blessing and benefit.
| First Presidency Easter Message [Thomas S. Monson, Henry B. Eyring, Dieter F. Uchtdorf], LDS Church News, March 31, 2013
“It is doctrinally incomplete to speak of the Lord’s atoning sacrifice by shortcut phrases, such as “the Atonement” or “the enabling power of the Atonement” or “applying the Atonement” or “being strengthened by the Atonement.” These expressions present a real risk of misdirecting faith by treating the event as if it had living existence and capabilities independent of our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ…There is no amorphous entity called “the Atonement” upon which we may call for succor, healing, forgiveness, or power. Jesus Christ is the source. Sacred terms such as Atonement and Resurrection describe what the Savior did, according to the Father’s plan, so that we may live with hope in this life and gain eternal life in the world to come. The Savior’s atoning sacrifice–the central act of all human history–is best understood and appreciated when we expressly and clearly connect it to Him.
“God does not begin by asking us about our ability, but only about our availability, and if we then prove our dependability, he will increase our capability!”
| Ensign, July 1975, p. 7