Line upon Line

I am convinced that every one of us has at least one thing we do that is wrong, and we know it’s wrong, but we keep doing it over and over anyway.

We recommit, repent, tell ourselves never again, but this one thing – our weakness – seems to win the temptation battle over and over no matter how hard we try.

For some of us, our weakness is anger, pride, self-deprecation; for others it’s gambling, pornography, unchastity in all its forms, alcohol, drugs, excessive gaming, eating disorders, overeating, debt and money management problems, fashion, keeping up with the Joneses – you name it. We try to overcome, but we fail over and over. We know it’s hurting us, and usually hurting people around us, be we just can’t seem to stop. We feel helpless, hopeless, and weak – and eventually we start wondering, “Maybe deep down inside I’m really just a bad person.”

We start becoming desperate for someone to value us so we can value ourselves. We do a lot of visible good things to try to prove to ourselves and other people that we really do have something good in us. Or we try to distract ourselves by intensely pursuing hobbies, fame, fortune, or by turning right back to our sins or something else to try to numb or distract us from the pain.

But it doesn’t work. And it usually makes things worse than they were in the first place.

So, what do we do with ourselves? Are we just destined for failure? Isn’t there any way to overcome and finally find peace?

The Korihor Approach

One popular way of dealing with our hopelessness is to choose to believe there is no such thing as right and wrong. It’s all just a silly game made up by your grandparents to guilt you into behaving the way they want you to.

So, stop beating yourself up! Like Korihor said, “this derangement of your minds comes because of the traditions of your fathers” (Alma 30:16). You only feel bad about yourself because of other people’s beliefs about God and right and wrong. They are just imposing their beliefs on you, and it’s tearing you up and making you feel worthless.

So, just stop believing the haters. There really is no God, no right and wrong, and no reason to feel guilty. Free your mind, embrace your authentic self, and stop trying to live up to other people’s expectations.

It all sounds great! A simple solution to our plight.
There are at least two problems with this approach, though.

First of all, rejecting belief in God means you have to accept the almost-laughably outlandish (though somehow trendy) idea that all of the precise and beautiful complexity of life and the universe somehow just came to be by a long series of statistically-impossible random chances. That is an idea that takes a remarkable amount of faith to believe!

Second, though we try to deny it, somewhere deep down inside we still know we are doing something morally wrong. We tell our friends we feel great, and we put on a happy face with our new-found freedom from religion and stigma, but when we’re being honest with ourselves, we know we really are doing wrong and really aren’t very happy.

The Christian Approach

But what if I just can’t get myself to accept Korihor’s arrogant claims of no God and no right and wrong? I know there’s a God, and I know what I keep doing is wrong, but I just can’t seem to stop, and it’s killing me!

The Christian answer is not in denying right and wrong, but in relying on a Savior who took the pain and punishment of our wrongs on Himself so we wouldn’t have to. He, who did no wrong, out of love for us suffered all of the wrong everyone will ever do so that we don’t have to face the eternal consequences of our sins. So, we can stop beating ourselves up about our sins, even the recurring ones, because He has taken them from us.

Without a Savior, we really are hopeless. We have already messed up our chances of saving ourselves through obedience to God’s laws, and we are destined for eternal misery. Our only hope is through the grace of Jesus Christ.

The Christian approach is definitely the better, more honest, more authentic answer. But, how does it work? How do we accept Christ and have our guilt removed?

Saved by Grace Only

One popular view within Christianity is to believe that because Jesus suffered for our sins, we have nothing to worry about. We can do whatever we want. We can give up trying to stop sinning – we’ve already tried and we know we can’t, so what’s the use of exhausting ourselves in trying more?

It’s true that we are hopeless without a Savior. We can’t save ourselves. We have to rely completely on Him. And there are plenty of scriptures and conference talks making it clear that the Savior’s capacity to forgive and save us is infinite (see, for example, Alma 34:8-12 or The Atonement of Jesus Christ by Tad R. Callister Recently Released Sunday School General President, April 2019 General Conference).

So why not embrace His grace and stop the endless fight with our One Thing that makes us feel so bad all of the time? Why not let the sins that seem like such a natural part of us win, stop fighting, and let Jesus take the punishment away?

Well, for one thing, if you had a friend who kept doing something you knew was hurting them, wouldn’t you want to help them stop? Jesus loves us deeply. Yes, He has suffered for our sins, but He also knows our sins are hurting us, and He wants to help us stop sinning and avoid more suffering.

The Savior doesn’t just forgive us; He wants to help us to be better people. He wants us to improve and progress and become like Him, which is the only way we can feel truly happy and peaceful in the long term. So, He doesn’t want us to just give up and wallow in our sins, knowing that He’ll keep forgiving us as we continue hurting ourselves. He wants us to change. He forgives us, then tells us to go and sin no more (John 8:11).

Furthermore, He deeply respects our agency, so He won’t make us change for the better against our will, even though He has the power to and knows it will make us happier. He wants to help us learn to choose to be better.

Saved by Agency

In the Church, most of us have been taught the error of eat, drink, and be merry enough that we quickly reject it as a copout. But maybe sometimes we take that rejection a little too far. In many ways, the focus on grace is really close to the truth. Many of us beat ourselves up about our sins even after we’ve let the Savior take them “as though there had been no redemption made” (Moroni 7:38). We want to avoid a grace-only approach so much that we almost start believing in no grace at all. We think of Jesus as our Exemplar, but not our Savior.

We read scriptures like “it is by grace we are saved after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23) or “if ye deny yourselves of all ungodliness… then is his grace sufficient for you” (Moroni 10:32) or “if ye love me keep my commandments” (John 14:15) and think that salvation is a matter of choosing to make correct choices consistently; that only after we’ve done everything in our own power to fix ourselves and stop our sins – only then does grace come in as a little cherry on top of our sundae of self-mastery.

And furthermore, if we ever sin again, we can read scriptures like “go your ways and sin no more; but unto that soul who sinneth shall the former sins return” (D&C 82:7) and come away thinking that the atonement of Christ is nullified and all of my past repentance reversed if I ever make the same mistake again.

And that brings us right back to where we started. I have a predisposition toward doing wrong repeatedly in at least one area in my life, and I can’t seem to stop doing it. If I can’t access the grace and forgiveness of the Savior until after I’ve done everything I can (and I can always do more) and after I’ve learned to deny myself of ungodliness by my own efforts, and if I lose all the forgiveness I already received if I ever sin again, well then I’m just as hopeless as I ever was! Forgiveness is only for those who have fixed themselves already, and I’ve tried everything I can to fix myself, and it just isn’t working.

So what can we do?

We can turn back to trying to prove ourselves valuable through accomplishing notable things. We could try to numb the pain with substances or distractions. Maybe it will work this time?

We can always try the Korihor approach. There’s a whole great and spacious social media mob mocking us into doing so. Maybe they’re right?

Or we could give up trying and join the grace-only Christians. At least there’s some sense of hope there, although no priesthood authority or doctrinal consistency.

Agency and Atonement
Thankfully, there is an answer to all of this! We can find peace and hope!

The answer is that we have to believe fully in our ability to choose right (our agency) and our complete dependence on the atonement of Jesus Christ – all at the same time.

Nobody likes to feel weak or incapable or vulnerable. So, when we mess up again, we try to shift the blame to whatever we can. We tell ourselves God made us this way, so we had no choice but to do wrong. We blame The Fall for making us prone to sin. We think of all of the people and circumstances in our lives that made it impossible to resist sinning, so we really couldn’t help it. I know I sinned – again – but I can’t be blamed! I had no choice!

That is the first thing we have to deal with to find peace. No excuses, no blaming, no justifying. We have to fully believe that we have agency to choose the right. It doesn’t matter what has happened in the past or what the circumstances are now – we have to believe that we could have made the right choice now if we really wanted to, but we didn’t; that God “will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13). I chose to sin, and I have no one and nothing to blame but me.

That is a humbling realization.
That is what we call a broken heart and a contrite spirit.

Our excuses and our pride have fizzled. We see ourselves in our true state, and it’s not pretty. We realize how desperate we are for help.

But God knew that would be the case with every one of us. Lehi taught:

“And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil. And the law is given unto men. And by the law no flesh is justified; or, by the law men are cut off. Yea, by the temporal law they were cut off; and also, by the spiritual law they perish from that which is good, and become miserable forever.” (2 Nephi 2:5).

In other words, everyone knows God’s law of right and wrong deep down inside, and we all break it, are cut off from God, and are miserable because of it. We know we ought to do right, and we don’t. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.

And that’s exactly why we need a Savior. Lehi continues:

“Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth. Behold, he 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 2:6-7).

Jesus offers himself as a sacrifice for our sins “to answer the ends of the law” – or, to cover all of the parts of God’s law that we disobeyed. Through His grace and atoning sacrifice, we can be cleansed and made holy. We can let go of our guilt, despair, and self-loathing because He has saved us from ourselves. We can have peace and joy and hope in the future because of Jesus Christ.

But His grace isn’t given to everyone automatically. Remember, He so deeply respects our agency that He won’t force us to accept His gift. We have to want His help, want to change, and ask Him to help us do it.

And even if we want His grace, as Lehi pointed out, the Savior’s grace is only available to “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). So, He will save us, forgive us, and make us holy, happy, and full of peace about ourselves, but only if we come to him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit – with deep, real humility.

As it turns out, both the grace-only and the self-perfection approaches prevent us from the broken heart and contrite spirit that are necessary to access the grace of Christ.

With grace-only, we see ourselves as natural-born sinners that couldn’t improve even if we tried. We deny the true extent of our agency and blame our bad choices on our predisposition for sin or on our circumstances. By doing so, we never accept full responsibility for our sins, avoid the discomfort of admitting to ourselves how willfully bad we’ve really been, and never find the broken heart and contrite spirit required to access the grace of Christ.

With the fix-myself approach, we see ourselves and our own efforts and abilities as the key to perfection. The Savior helps us erase past mistakes, if necessary, but salvation depends on me and my power to make myself like Him through sheer grit and determination. And in the end, I will get the credit for my perfection.

Self-perfection sounds fine and good, but although we truly do have the agency to make the right choice every time, in practice, we often don’t make the right choices. We keep allowing ourselves to fall into our same old sins, and we quickly get back to feeling hopeless, despairing, and self-loathing. And why do we hate ourselves? Because our pride tells us that other people sin, but I should be better than them. I know about the gospel and know that I should be like Jesus, but I sin just like them, so I must be worthless.

While all of the despair and self-hatred may sound a little like humility, it’s not. It is actually a manifestation of our pride – the feeling that I’m a little better than other people, so I expect more from myself than I expect of the sinners. If I sin, then I’m just like everyone else and not as special as I thought, but I want to be more special than them, so I hate myself for not being more special.

With the saved-by-agency approach, we’re really a lot like the pharisee in the Savior’s parable:

“Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” (Luke 18:10-14)

While the pharisee pridefully heaped upon himself visible good works to show his righteousness (doubtless in an effort to feel better about himself despite his secret sins), the publican, humbly acknowledging his sins and his desperate need for a Savior, was the one who was justified and forgiven.

While it’s theoretically possible to choose our way to heaven, in practice the only Person who succeeded in that approach was the Savior Himself. The key for the rest of us is to, like the publican, recognize our desperate need for a Savior and humbly ask for His help.

So, grace-only and agency-only both fail to bring us to a broken heart and contrite spirit, and they both don’t work.

We need true humility to access the grace of our Savior, and that can only come through believing in both 100% agency (taking full responsibility for our choices to sin) and 100% grace (humbly recognizing that even though we could choose the right, we consistently don’t and must rely on the Savior’s atonement to make up where we lack).

“Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will of God, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved.” 2 Nephi 10:23- 24).

Agency and atonement. The Only Way

So, why are we so weak? Why are we predisposed to sin over and over despite our best efforts? Does God just like to watch us suffer?

Of course not!

It’s because God wants us back. The only way to return to Him is through Jesus Christ, and the only way to be saved through the grace of Christ is to come with a broken heart and a contrite spirit.

God needs us to be humble.

That’s we He gave us the weakness we hate so much: “I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me.” (Ether 12:27).

He gave us our weakness – our predisposition to do wrong in at least one thing – because it’s our best chance for becoming humble and finding the grace of Christ and returning to God. But it only works if we reject all of the other philosophies and embrace both agency and the Savior’s atonement.

“For if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.” (Ether 12:27)

Once we gain a broken heart and contrite spirit and trust that the Savior really can forgive us and cleanse us and change us through His power, He will make us stronger. We will actually change for the better. And it will be through His power, not our own effort. And we will know it was only through His power. And He will get the credit. And we will love and worship Him forever for it. And we will be filled with a desire to share His grace and goodness and love with other people so they can experience it too (see Enos 1:2-9; Moroni 7:33-48; Jacob 4:4-7; Alma 26:12; Alma 36:6-36; Free Forever, to Act for Themselves By Elder D. Todd Christofferson Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, October 2014 General Conference).

Don’t think that this will all come through pretending to be humble or pretending to have faith in Christ. Our genuine honesty helps bring us to genuine humility as we’ve said. But our faith that He is real and has the power to forgive and help us can’t just be a distant and superficial thing. It requires us to choose to toss aside all of the secular ideas about the Savior that dismiss Him from being what He really is and intentionally choose to believe that He really did live, really is the Son of God, really did atone for my sins, and really loves me enough to take them from me.

Then we can and will experience the love and cleansing and enabling power of the Savior Jesus Christ, and it will change us forever.

But what if I sin again? What if my weakness doesn’t go away?

Sometimes it will go away immediately through the Savior’s power. Many times, though, it’s a lifelong process, little by little, learning how to combine our agency with the Savior’s power to recognize and overcome our evil tendencies until we are finally perfected in Christ sometime in the distant future.

In the meantime, there’s no need to despair as we slip backwards along the way. Just let it humble us again, remind us how desperately we need a Savior, and firm up our resolve to choose better in the future. The direction we are headed is far more important than our current location.

If we are struggling to quit smoking (or looking at pornography, or getting angry) but are honest, humble, and genuinely recommitted to stop every time we slip up, the Savior will cleanse us again (immediately), help us stand up again (immediately), and help us have the power to face our temptations once again. He doesn’t give up on us, just like a parent doesn’t give up on a toddler who keeps falling while learning to walk.

And it doesn’t matter if our change is coming along slower than other people. It doesn’t matter if it takes us longer to fully overcome. As long as we are honest, humble, committed to the Savior, and heading in the right direction, the permanent change will ultimately come through a combination of our agency and the Savior’s grace, but not necessarily on our timetable (see Mosiah 26:29-30; Moroni 6:7-8; Am I Good Enough? Will I Make It? By Elder J. Devn Cornish Of the Seventy, October 2016 General Conference; You Can Do It Now! By President Dieter F. Uchtdorf Second Counselor in the First

Presidency, October 2013 General Conference; Until Seventy Times Seven By Elder Lynn G. Robbins Of the Presidency of the Seventy, April 2018 General Conference; Worthiness Is Not Flawlessness By Bradley R. Wilcox Second Counselor in the Young Men General Presidency, October 2021 General Conference).

The Covenant Path

Now, we’ve spent too long just talking about the very first steps towards embracing the Savior and His gospel. Once we have acknowledged that right and wrong are real, that we consistently choose wrong and it’s nobody’s fault but our own, and that Jesus Christ can heal us and give us power to become better people, then we are ready to commit our lives to Him – to covenant with Him that we humbly and openly acknowledge our complete dependence on Him and our desire to give up everything to follow His way above any other way.

We obviously can’t covenant to never sin again – we know we can’t, or won’t, keep that covenant. But we can covenant to be loyal to Him, genuinely strive to obey Him, and honestly, humbly repent whenever we sin again. He asks us to make this covenant official through being baptized in water – in the way He has prescribed. And He offers greater covenants, ordinances, and power over time.

But that is a topic for another day.

For now, we can take the first steps on the covenant path and can find real, deep hope and peace, despite our many failings, by taking full responsibility for our own choices and at the same time “relying wholly upon the merits of Him who is mighty to save.” (2 Nephi 31:19).