Repentance is not a backup plan in case our primary plan to live a perfect life fails.
To be complete, repentance must be combined with the covenant of baptism.
Jesus’s visit to the Nephites after His Resurrection was carefully organized to teach us the things of greatest importance. It began with the Father testifying to the people that Jesus was His “Beloved Son, in whom [He was] well pleased.” Then Jesus Himself descended and testified of His atoning sacrifice, inviting the people to “know of a surety” that He was the Christ by coming forth and feeling the wound mark in His side and the prints of the nails in His hands and feet. These testimonies established without doubt that Jesus’s Atonement was complete and that the Father had fulfilled His covenant to provide a Savior. Jesus then taught the Nephites how to obtain all the blessings of the Father’s plan of happiness, which are made available to us because of the Savior’s Atonement, by teaching them the doctrine of Christ.
… The scriptures define the doctrine of Christ as exercising faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repenting, being baptized, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.
If this had been a person’s first exposure to the plan they would have been starting with a solid foundation.
It is the doctrine of Christ that allows us to access the spiritual power that will lift us from our current spiritual state to a state where we can become perfected like the Savior. Of this process of rebirth, Elder D. Todd Christofferson has taught: “Being born again, unlike our physical birth, is more a process than an event. And engaging in that process is the central purpose of mortality.”
Thinking of our physical birth as an event is like thinking of our spiritual rebirth as simply accepting Christ. In truth, out rebirth is a process which generally takes a lifetime and beyond. Likewise, our birth generally takes the better part of a year.
Because Jesus was a God in the premortal existence, lived a sinless life, and during His Atonement satisfied all the demands of justice for you and me, He has the power and keys to bring about the resurrection of all men, and He made it possible for mercy to overpower justice upon conditions of repentance. Once we understand that we can obtain mercy through Christ’s merits, we are able to “have faith unto repentance.” To rely wholly upon Christ’s merits then is to trust that He did what was necessary to save us and then to act upon our belief.
Once again, faith leads to righteous action.
Repentance is a precious gift from our Heavenly Father that is made possible through the sacrifice of His Only Begotten Son. It is the process that the Father has given us by which we change, or turn, our thoughts, actions, and our very being so that we become more and more like the Savior. It is not just for big sins but is a daily process of self-evaluation and improvement that helps us to overcome our sins, our imperfections, our weaknesses, and our inadequacies. Repentance causes us to become “true followers” of Christ, which fills us with love and casts out our fears. Repentance is not a backup plan just in case our plan to live perfectly fails. Continual repentance is the only path that can bring us lasting joy and enable us to return to live with our Heavenly Father.
We misunderstand the plan if we think repentance was secondary or simply a fail-safe.
To be complete, repentance must be combined with the ordinance of baptism administered by someone who holds the priesthood authority of God. For members of the Church, the covenants made at baptism and other occasions are renewed as we partake of the sacrament.
Covenants (the first being baptism) are the first and foundational works marking repentance.
As our constant companion, the Holy Ghost gives us additional power or strength to keep our covenants. He also sanctifies us, which means to make us “free from sin, pure, clean, and holy through the atonement of Jesus Christ.” The process of sanctification not only cleanses us, but it also endows us with needed spiritual gifts or divine attributes of the Savior and changes our very nature, such “that we have no more disposition to do evil.”
Repentance is what we do to come to God but sacrificing is what He does to seal us His.
Elder Dale G. Renlund described the process of enduring to the end as follows: “We may be perfected by repeatedly and iteratively … exercising faith in [Christ], repenting, partaking of the sacrament to renew the covenants and blessings of baptism, and receiving the Holy Ghost as a constant companion to a greater degree. As we do so, we become more like Christ and are able to endure to the end, with all that that entails.”
Enduring to the end could be summed up as an indication that while ordinances such as baptism are one-time events, the cycle of faith, repentance, making covenants and doing good works, and being sanctified by closer association with the Holy Ghost is a repetitive and iterative cycle throughout our lives.
So how can we apply the doctrine of Christ more fully in our lives? One way would be to make a conscious effort each week to prepare for the sacrament by taking some time to prayerfully consider where we most need to improve. We could then bring a sacrifice of at least one thing that keeps us from being like Jesus Christ to the sacrament altar, pleading in faith for help, asking for necessary spiritual gifts, and covenanting to improve during the coming week.
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