The Atonement and Our Part in It | A. Theodore Tuttle | 1983

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"Tonight I have not come to entertain you; I have come to teach you—to teach you the most important thing I know. I cannot do this, however, without your help. The words and many of the principles I intend to teach you have already heard before. Tonight we approach the season of the celebration of the birth of the Son of God. We join with the rest of the Christian world in observance of His birth at this time. To us He is far more than the Babe born in Bethlehem. I want to teach about the culminating event, the single most important thing He did—the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ—and, for us, equally important, our part in it.

I’ve done everything I know how to do to prepare for tonight—except to write a talk! That is why I especially need your help. Would you please pray for an outpouring of the Spirit of the Lord? The promise is that if you will do this, we can enjoy a sweet, spiritual experience that will bring great growth. You will be able to understand more than I say. My common words will take on relevance and have meaning. You will gain insights that I will not have explained. The united faith and prayers of this great body can call down from heaven a mighty spiritual power. Will you please pray for that Spirit to come?

Some Basic Principles
I have time to put in place only a few basic principles about the atonement. No doubt the best part of my effort tonight will be when, in your future thought and study, you will have strokes of insight come that you have not experienced before.

I call to your mind again the pleading words that the First Stake choir sang so beautifully. Charles Gounod couched in beauty and eloquence the universal plea of all men who finally come to realize their total dependence upon the “Divine Redeemer”:

Grant me pardon and remember not my sins.

Oh, help me, my Savior.

When we finally understand that, then we pray for mercy—especially when we realize our dilemma—standing as it were, subject to all the demands of justice.

Keep in mind that God is just. The law is just. The plan is just. Our part is to learn this and to learn how the plan of mercy operates to free us from the total demands of justice. We can turn to Alma where, nearing the close of his life, this great prophet instructed his young sons.

Corianton did no understand some of these principles we are going to explain tonight. He thought (what many mistakenly think today) that he could “sow his wild oats,” then later be restored to righteousness. In the three preceding chapters (Alma 39–41) his father instructed him in some basic principles.

1. “Wickedness never was happiness.” Some never learn that until it is too late.

2. The meaning of the word restoration. Corianton thought he could sow wickedness and reap happiness. That is not restoration. Restoration is evil for evil and good for good, etc.

3. “No unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of God.” It is this fact that causes our dilemma—especially in view of the plan that we were to come to earth, get a body, hear the gospel, and go back to our Father in Heaven.

Alma told Corianton that if we transgress and become unclean, we cannot make it! Keep these thoughts in mind as we go to the scriptures to work out the solution to this dilemma as we “feast on the words of Christ.”

Spiritual and Temporal Death
The forty-second chapter of Alma is one of those difficult ones to understand unless we have some guidance and inspiration. Alma started by talking to his son about the condition of our first parents.

The Lord God sent our first parents forth from the Garden because they had transgressed—they had partaken of the forbidden fruit. The penalty of death was a part of that commandment.

“And now, ye see by this that our first parents were cut off both temporally and spiritually from the presence of the Lord” (Alma 42:7).

Spiritual death means to be separated from the presence of God the Father. Temporal death means the separation of body and spirit. They died a spiritual death when the Lord thrust them out of the Garden, and they were no longer in His presence. They had previously been under His instruction as He walked and talked with them. Adam experienced temporal death when he was 930 years old—which was “in the day” that the Lord had said he would die.

And thus we see they became subjects to follow after their own will. . . ."

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