Agency | Royden G. Derrick | 1983

Royden G. Derrick explains how the gift of agency is central to the plan of salvation and how choosing to follow God’s commandments gives us true independence and power over our destiny.

This speech was given on June 14, 1983.

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https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/royden-g-derrick/agency/

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"Last week a young man came into my office with a serious problem. He had been given a gift that was most precious and had misused it, as did the Prodigal Son. You and I have been given that same gift. Whether we succeed or fail in life will depend upon how we use it.

That precious gift which the Lord has given us is agency—the right to choose for oneself. Since the beginning of time, wars have raged over this issue. Agency is the most vital political issue in the world today. The Lord said to Enoch, “In the Garden of Eden, gave I man his agency” (Moses 7:32). It was also in the Garden of Eden that the Lord said to Adam and Eve, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee.” (Moses 3:17).

What was given to them? It was that most precious gift, the right to choose for themselves—their agency.

We often refer to agency as free agency. Adding the word free is descriptive. It is also repetitive, for agency implies the capacity or freedom to act.

Agency in Premortal Life

In the Garden of Eden, the Lord gave man his agency. We also had our agency before we came to earth. If not so, Lucifer could not have rebelled against God, for rebellion requires the exercise of agency. Nor could one-third of the hosts of heaven have followed Lucifer. They chose to rebel against God. They supported Lucifer’s attempt to destroy the agency of man. As a penalty, they were cast down (see Moses 1:3).

In section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord explained,

Every spirit of man was innocent in the beginning; and God having redeemed man from the fall, men became again in their infant state, innocent before God. [D&C 93:38; emphasis added]

So when we entered our premortal life, we were innocent, and when we were born into mortality, again we became innocent before God.

If I said to you today, “I’m going to Denver.” Then if I said to you next week, “I’m going to Denver again,” I would have had to go to Denver and return, or I could not properly use the word again. By that same reasoning, if we entered the spirit world innocent before God, and then we became again, in our infant state, innocent before God, we obviously left our state of innocence in the premortal world, else we could not have returned to a state of innocence as we entered mortality. We cannot return from a place where we have not been.

The Plan of Salvation

Adam and Eve were commanded by the Lord:

Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat,

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee; but, remember that I forbid it, for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. [Moses 3:16–17]

Adam and Eve exercised their agency. They partook of the fruit of the tree of which they were commanded not to partake. As a penalty, they were cast out of the garden and were cut off both spiritually and temporally from the presence of God. They suffered a spiritual death as the Lord had said they would. That is, they no longer had the Spirit of the Lord with them, nor could they walk in his presence. They were alone—alone in the lone and dreary world! Had they continued in that condition, they would have been lost forever and would never have had the opportunity to return to the presence of God, either spiritually or temporally. The prophet Alma explained:

Therefore, as the soul could never die, and the fall had brought upon all mankind a spiritual death as well as a temporal, that is, they were cut off from the presence of the Lord, it was expedient that mankind should be reclaimed from this spiritual death. [Alma 42:9]

Alma also said, “And thus . . . a time [was] granted unto man to repent, yea, a probationary time, a time to repent and serve God” (Alma 42:4). We refer to this probationary time as mortality. For each of us, it is our own life span.

In their new world—that is, this earth—Adam and Eve were taught by messengers of God. They were taught..."

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