Repent, part 3

Repentance is the good news of the gospel.

It is the key to opening the atonement in our lives.  We waste much of the atonement if we fail to repent.  Bruce Hafen observed that the atonement allows us to learn from our experiences without being condemned by them. To repent is to turn again towards Him, to chose His will in our life and to leave behind our sinful ways.  Basically to repent is to change.

Since we are all eventually subject to justice, we are left with a choice: repent or suffer for our own sins. "For behold, I God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;" (D&C 19:16-17).

Lehi taught that we all know good from evil.  We all have a portion of the "law".  But because we all make mistakes constantly, we are not justified by the law but rather condemned by it.  Or as Lehi states "by the law men are cut off" (2 Nephi 2:5).  All of us are cut off.  100% of us.  The best and the worst among us.  Everyone falls short.  None of us can ever hope to be good enough or to do enough to earn our way back on our own.

There is only one way out of our dilemma.  The Holy Messiah "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 emphasis added)

There is a saying I like but do not know where it came from.  It is simply, "even saints have a past, and sinners have a future."  In our journey through life, I'm not sure which is more important--where we are at a given point in time or which direction we are heading.  Of the two it may be more important the direction we are going.

The Lord can and does forgive even very serious sins and errors (Isaiah 1:18).  The scriptures are full of examples of the Lord's patience, long-suffering and willingness to forgive sins.  In most cases, he probably forgives us long before we ever commit the sin.  He can certainly work around our mistakes.  A great example of this is His inspiring Mormon to insert the small plates of Nephi into the abridgement of the Book of Mormon to compensate for the lost 116 pages.  The Lord did this about 1400 years before Joseph Smith made the mistake.

Brother Hafen is correct.  The atonement allows us to learn from our life's experiences without being condemned by them.  Good news indeed!

I don't know about you, but I choose to repent.  I have a single New Years Resolution this year.  It is simply to repent more fully of my sins so that I might have the Spirit in my life daily.

So if repentance is the good news why does it sometimes carry a negative connotation?  And if the Lord has totally compensated for our sins and is quick and willing to forgive, then why is repentance so hard at times?  We'll examine some reasons in the next entry.