LDS Quotes on Atonement
Although we do not fully understand the sacred mechanics by which the Savior’s atoning sacrifice heals and restores, we do know, that to ensure a righteous judgment, the Savior will clear away the underbrush of ignorance and the painful thorns of hurt caused by others. By this He assures that all God’s children will be given the opportunity, with unobscured vision, to choose to follow Him and accept the great plan of happiness.
| Ensuring a Righteous Judgment - General Conference 2020
Our only hope for true perfection is in receiving it as a gift from heaven–we can’t “earn” it. Thus, the grace of Christ offers us not only salvation from sorrow and sin and death but also salvation from our own persistent self-criticism.
| Be Ye Therefore Perfect--Eventually
“God and Christ are omniscient, and yet the promise is: ‘He who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.’ Our Lord is like the mother of Wendell Berry’s poem, whose forgiveness is ‘so complete that I wonder sometimes if it did not precede my wrong.’ He purposely forgives our sins, to extirpate our shame. The act is sublime.”
Had agency come to man without the Atonement, it would have been a fatal gift.
“I suspect that you and I are much more familiar with the redeeming power of the Atonement and not as associated with the enabling power of the Atonement. The Atonement is also for saints. I don’t think many of us get it. We mistakenly think that we have to make the journey from good to better all by ourselves. Individuals through faith in the Atonement receive strength and power to do good works that they could not do otherwise.”
| "The Atonement and the Journey of Mortality"
I suspect that you and I are much more familiar with the redeeming power of the Atonement and not as associated with the enabling power of the Atonement. The Atonement is also for saints. I don’t think many of us get it. We mistakenly think that we have to make the journey from good to better all by ourselves. Individuals through faith in the Atonement receive strength and power to do good works that they could not do otherwise.
“It was required, indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind—us, all of us—would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.”
| "None Were With Him," Conference April 2009
Let us ask ourselves how important the Lord’s atonement is to us. How dear to us is the Lord Jesus Christ? How deeply are we concerned about immortality? Is the resurrection of vital interest to us? We can readily see that observance of the Sabbath is an indication of the depth of our conversion. Our observance or nonobservance of the Sabbath is an unerring measure of our attitude toward the Lord personally and toward his suffering in Gethsemane, his death on the cross, and his resurrection from the dead. It is a sign of whether we are Christians in very deed, or whether our conversion is so shallow that commemoration of his atoning sacrifice means little or nothing to us. Do we realize that most national holidays are observed more widely than is the Sabbath, so far as its divine purpose is concerned? Then have we put God in second or third place? And is that what we want to do? Is that where he belongs? I bear you testimony that to properly observe the Lord’s holy day is one of the most important things we can ever do. It is an essential step toward our eternal salvation.
| “The Sabbath Day,” Ensign, May 1975, p. 49
“Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who condescended to come into this world of misery, struggle, and pain to touch men’s hearts for good, to teach the way of eternal life, and to give Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind. How different, how empty our lives would be without Him. How infinite is our opportunity for exaltation made possible through His redeeming love.”
| Stand a Little Taller
“Man unquestionably has impressive powers… But after all our obedience and good works, we cannot be saved from the effects of our sins without the grace extended by the atonement of Jesus Christ… Man cannot earn his own salvation.”
| "What Think Ye of Christ?", Ensign, November 1988