The Law and the Atonement
[There Must Be An Opposition in All Things]
[Adam Fell That Men Might Be]
[We Are Free to Choose Liberty & Eternal Life]
260 We are on the second chapter of 2 Nephi, perhaps the hardest chapter in the book. It’s about the Law of Moses. We have often said that the Nephites were living by the Law of Moses. We are repeatedly reassured that salvation does not come by the Law of Moses. Then why is there so much fuss about it? It leads you and guides you on the way. What has got me going here is that I have just been reading the classic work on the subject of the history of law by a Sinologist who is also a scientist, Joseph Needham. He goes to a great extent. He goes all over, using every conceivable definition of law—when the word first appeared in the East, in the West, here, there and everywhere. He decides that law is an idea that is limited to a very special type of culture and to a highly specialized organization of society—namely, where you have a great emperor or powerful king. He lays down the law. Without that there is no law; there’s only custom and practice. They are what the anthropologists started calling mores at the beginning of the century. There’s the way of doing things, so you do them a certain way. He makes a big fuss about that. Being a Sinologist, he makes a big thing about Confucius. He says, “Forget about the law; there’s no law at all. You do the right thing. The princely man does so and so. There is the proper way.” If Needham only realized it, all his work is just a quibble because we all have the same way.
260,261 God has made laws for the worlds. This is from way back in the eighteenth century; it sounds like something from Orson Pratt or Brigham Young. For all the “worlds,” you see, and this is Newton. Many people think he is the greatest scientist who ever lived, as far as genius is concerned. So God has made laws which we follow, and we praise the Lord. “For .. . guidance”—what does that mean? Well, the GUIDANCE is the HUDA of the Koran. Incidentally, he [Needham] never mentions that, and it is very important. People who live in the desert always want guidance, of course. He also forgets a lot of other things. Remember our friend Solon? At the beginning here he makes quite a difference between ETHOS and NOMOS. He wrote a work called the EUNOMIA that we quoted from about the wickedness of the people, their greed, and the injustice of their society. He called it the EUNOMIA, the “proper NOMIA” the proper following of the rule. NOMOS, the same word as name, is “what has been declared;*’ whereas, the ETHOS, ethics, is just what people do. ETHNOI is the way it is translated in the New Testament. The ETHOS, the ethics, is just the customs and practices. We do things certain ways in our society; we wouldn’t think of doing them another way. If you did a thing the wrong way—got on the wrong side of a horse—that would be outrageous, for example. Customs and everything we do are controlled by these laws that nobody laid down; they have never been declared. Of course, they break down in the city, and we have to have laws. Everything has to be written down. We have become the most legalistic and the most litigious people in the world. The city of Salt Lake has more lawyers per cubic inch than any other city in America—it does, really. It has the highest percentage of lawyers. So we are stuck by the law. But the Book of Mormon tells us over and over again that the law is not going to save—of course, it isn’t. It’s for our guidance. It’s that with Confucius. It’s the Tao, the way you follow. It’s just a quibble whether it’s written down or not.
261 Our word LAW comes from LAG, the old Scandinavian, Norse word. The idea is that you have to have a built-up empire and you have to have an emperor in charge doing it, he [Needham] says, because that came with the despots in the seventeenth century, and with the Chinese emperors. As soon as the emperor took over, then you would get the idea of law. But that’s not so at all because the law is what is pronounced from the LOGBERG. Once a year the whole community would come together. The remains of these still stand in Iceland. It’s a circle, and they still have it in Switzerland. All the people would be summoned to a great assembly. From the top of the mountain, as Moses read the law, our Norse ancestors would read the law. As I said, it is still the law in Iceland. They recited it from memory if they knew it. That was the GODI which pronounced it. GODI means “man speaking for God.” The GODI was the high priest. The king and the GODI were often identical, but the high priest would pronounce it. Incidentally, our friend [Needham] had nothing to say about Egypt either, so he skipped a lot of things.
261,262 Well, the law is the guidance, and you have to have it to get there. But it is devised for our weakness. It caters to our weakness and we have to have it. It’s not the goal—it’s the way that gets you there. It’s like the iron rod; you cling to the iron rod. We love iron rods, and think if we have an iron rod we already have it made. We just keep the iron rod, and that’s our goal. The iron rod is just to get you to the temple. That is not supposed to be the temple. It’s not supposed to be the object. You don’t stick to the law all the time.
262 We have the Ten Commandments, the laws of Moses. Ah, yes, there is the law as far as this goes. But it is written for barbarians, as Paul tells us. The best clue to this whole thing, that matches these various chapters in the Book of Mormon, is the tenth chapter of Hebrews. It’s beautifully expressed, and fortunately I brought that along. In chapter 2 here, it says the law is going to get you there. Now what are the Ten Commandments? Do you have to be told every day that you shouldn’t kill? That you shouldn’t lie? That you shouldn’t commit adultery? That you shouldn’t bear false witness? Do you have to be reminded of that? No, the time comes, the Lord says, when “the law is written in their hearts.” Only a savage or a barbarian would have to be told over and over, “Now, you mustn’t kill anybody today.” But we still have to be reminded. We think if we’ve kept the law, then we are saved—that’s all there is to it. But that’s not it at all. That’s where it begins. This is the least requirement. It starts out with the Word of Wisdom, for example. Do we have to tell people every day, “Well, don’t go out and get drunk”? We don’t have to be told that. Even with smoking now, people are warned; we don’t have to go to the Word of Wisdom for that. Most of you would never think of doing those things. It wouldn’t occur to you because, as it says when it is given to us in Doctrine and Covenants 89, this is adapted to the weakest of all Saints; this is the lowest requirement. This is the mere beginning—the least thing that can be expected of you. We start with the Word of Wisdom. It’s the same thing with tithing.
262,263 D & C 59:5; Matthew 22:39-40 Then we get to the Ten Commandments. The Lord was asked, what is the first and great commandment. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength” (D&C 59:5). “And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:39-40). Well, if you love the Lord with all your heart, might, mind and strength and if you love your fellowmen that much, you are not going to go out and murder, and you’re not going to go and steal. You don’t need any of the [other] commandments at all; those two obviously cover the whole thing because you will do what is right. As Isaiah and Jeremiah say, “The law is written in your heart.” You wouldn’t think of doing those things because it is part of you. But again, it’s just going to lead you where you are going to go; that’s the purpose of law. So Atonement is way up there. It’s a very interesting thing in the book of Hebrews because they are still living by the law. Paul had to tell about these things, and he talked in terms of the “bloody sacrifice” that was made. This would be done away with; it was just a type and a shadow of things to come. He told them, Don’t think in fulfilling that you have fulfilled the law. That’s not it at all; it looks forward to another sacrifice [paraphrased]. This is the passage where it talks about that great and last sacrifice—the sacrifice that will just have to be made once. Whether it will be made in other worlds [or not] is another thing, of course. That’s in the Newtonian hymn, “Other worlds, for their guidance.” But we have our guidance when we have this given for us. But, you notice, this puts the Atonement way out there. We are nowhere near that league until we have fulfilled all these things. As long as we are here, we are in a miserable condition of things. That’s what we are going to have here.
263 2 Nephi 2:2 Now, let’s look at the main points as we go along here. In the 2 Nephi 2 we’ll start out with a very encouraging announcement in the fourth verse. This is a handbook of the Atonement. “The Spirit is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. And the way is prepared from the fall of man, and salvation is free.” The door is wide open. You can choose your own pace, and you can advance as you please. It’s going to be a very individual thing. And you begin on an upbeat note—the plan is made. There are various things that you might question. What can he possibly be talking about here when he says, “he shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain [verse 2]”? We mentioned that the last time. It means that you get credit for what you have endured. But then he says, ‘The Spirit is the same [you are always going to have the same Spirit], yesterday, today, and forever. And the way is prepared from the fall of man, and salvation is free.” So that’s the first note in this handbook of the Atonement—the gospel. The other world opens out to us. Then the next verse: “And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil.” You will be able to judge for yourself. Without that, of course, you wouldn’t be able to get very far—that’s an important thing. So you don’t have to look at the fine print in the law all the time to find what is good and bad. That is a sign of decadence, intrigue, dishonesty, etc., when people have to write finer and finer print in the law, because you know what’s right yourself.
263,264 2 Nephi 2:5 Brigham Young was so impatient with lawyers. He detested lawyers because they are not necessary. Any person with a little common sense would know what’s the right thing and what’s the wrong thing to do. (There are many stories told about Solomon on this subject.) But we know sufficiently good from evil; we don’t have to split hairs about it. You know when you are doing right and when you are doing wrong. “And the law is given unto men. And by the law no flesh is justified.” The law won’t justify you. A person might say, “I’m justified because I kept the law.” No, that won’t justify you all the way because there are various laws that are written in various ways, and lawyers can make it go any way they want to. They can show you are breaking the law or keeping the law. You are not going to be justified just by the law. A good example is the rich young man. He went to the Lord and asked, “What shall I do to become a follower of you?” The Lord said, “Have you kept all the commandments?” He said, “Yes, I have—I have kept them from my youth.”
The Lord said, “No, there is one you haven’t kept. You go and sell everything you have and share it with the poor.” That’s what you do; it’s the law of consecration. That’s the law that none of us can take. We get up to there and then we stop. We draw the line there. You are not going to be saved by the law unless you go all the way. Then it will deliver you on to a better world. Meanwhile, we are stuck with it. There’s no appeal; from a sentence of the law, you don’t get an appeal anyway. “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.” This is for lack of Atonement; you have to go beyond that. The point is that we are not capable of doing what is right. “Man is born to evil as the sparks fly upward.”
264,265 2 Nephi 2:7,8 “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 [the set terms] of the law be answered.” This is where you come in, you have to be able to accept this. Merely keeping the law isn’t going to do it. You can keep-the set terms and the ends and escape the sentences etc., but this is another thing entirely, you notice, a broken heart and a contrite spirit. A court can’t test you on that or anything else like that. They can’t look into your heart; they have to deal with facts, always with facts. Of course, this is silly. “Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the earth [this great gulf between us and reality], that they may know that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God.” That is the question, you see. Standing up in the court and getting cleared by the judge or the jury is one thing. But standing in the presence of God who can see everything, every flaw and everything you have in you, that’s another thing. We would rather have the rocks and the mountains cover us than have to do that. That’s the worst torment we can have—worse than any hell. Anything but that, you see. [People might say], “Give us hell, we can enjoy hell, but don’t let us have to do that.” Well, that’s true. That’s the hardest thing we could do, to be so completely out of place. Hell is a place where you are out of place, where you don’t want to be. But the worst thing about hell is that you belong there, that you are among your own kind, etc.
265 2 Nephi 2:8 Well, he goes on here, “There is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah [how is this going to be done?], who layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise.” We cannot achieve it all; this is another thing here. This is a very important part of it if we are going to carry on. The whole thing is this other life we are concerned about. That’s what the gospel looks for. We have the rules for this life. People write books on “the happy life,” etc. They are just careerism, as far as that goes. Your career goes up, and then it comes down with a bump. And that’s that. We’ve got to think in other terms. If life is to be endurable, we have to think in other terms.
266 2 Nephi 2:9,10 “Wherefore, he is the firstfruits unto God.” What does he mean by the firstfruits? That’s an image that the Jews all understood. It means the best you have—the best and most beloved. It is the prize. It couldn’t be anything less, you see. Nothing less than the supreme sacrifice could be made. You can’t settle for less here. “Inasmuch as he shall make intercession for all the children of men; and they that believe in him shall be saved. And because of the intercession for all, all men come unto God; wherefore, they stand in the presence of him, to be judged of him according to the truth and holiness which is in him.” Then after your resurrection, you still have “to be judged of him according to the truth and holiness which is in him.”
266 2 Nephi 2:10,11 With the Lutherans, death erases everything. A person’s death is his own atonement. If that was the case, there would be no place for hell. We’d all be equal in the hereafter, which is not so, of course, no more than we were before [this earth life]. “Wherefore, the end of the law which the Holy One hath given, unto the inflicting of the punishment which is affixed, *-*which punishment ... is in opposition to that of the happiness.” Being bound by punishment rather than by your spontaneous good will is the opposite “of the happiness which is affixed, to answer the ends of the atonement.” Permanent happiness and exaltation is the end, the object of the Atonement. To answer that, you must have something better than that [law]. “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.” This is an important point. Why? Well, the first law of energy for one thing (Newton’s first law, actually) is that all motion is equal and opposite in direction. All motion is equal in force and opposite in direction. If you push in this direction, you are going to have an equal and opposite resistance in the other direction. It’s a natural law. Without that [opposition in all things], we wouldn’t have anything, “neither happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.”
266 2 Nephi 2:13 I have some interesting quotations here from the early church fathers on this subject. These were the earliest writers, and they make it rather clear. This was a popular doctrine before—the idea that there must be opposition in all things, the right and wrong. He says in verse 13 here, “And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin [to break it], ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness.
273 [The ruling Kings] would say, “We are God’s representatives on earth and whatever we do, after all, is in the name of virtue. We want everyone to be virtuous, and it is our business to see that everybody is virtuous.” I’m quoting from somebody there, as a matter of fact. In this they were quite sincere.
273 Remember, that was Satan’s plan. He didn’t want to damn anybody. He wanted to make everybody virtuous. He didn’t command Cain to sacrifice to the devil or anything like that. He said, “Sacrifice to the Lord.” He wanted the gospel plan to go through as long as he was in charge, you see. He told Adam and Eve to do a thing that had been done in other worlds. They were expected to eat that fruit, as a matter of fact. But he got them to obey him. That was the whole point: they were taking orders from him. That’s what he wanted. He wants to run the whole thing. He will use any guise, any trick he can. As Joseph Smith said, “He will tell a thousand truths to put over one error.” Then you see how that confounds everything. The thing is he wants to be in charge. Remember how he introduces himself at the beginning of the book of Moses. He says, “I am the only begotten; worship me.” He stamps on the ground and rages and rants in a “five-star tizzy” because he wants to be worshipped. He wants to run things; that’s his desire. He is ambitious, and his plan is to make everybody virtuous, not vicious. He was the model and archetype of those monarchs of old who insisted on banishing all sin by edict.
273,274 2 Nephi 2:4,5 So let’s go back to the Book of Mormon which is talking along these lines in the second chapter of 2 Nephi. First we had, the Spirit is the same, it’s open, salvation is free. Then, you are instructed, you have sufficient knowledge, etc., to carry on so you can be judged. With that law of good and bad, of course, we can make laws, but we have to make them for everything we do. If the Spirit isn’t in you and you don’t know what’s right, all the laws in the world aren’t going to help. But as I said, we are very litigious, and we use it as a means of controlling wealth. But there is the Atonement which requires the “broken heart and contrite spirit” and then the Resurrection and standing in judgment.
274 2 Nephi 2:11,13; 2 Nephi 9:7 And “there must needs be an opposition in all things.” Otherwise, if this wasn’t so, “all things must have vanished away.” That’s the heat death. Entropy or the heat death is referred to in 2 Nephi 9:7: “Wherefore, it must needs be an infinite atonement.” How is it going to cover everything? Because of that good old second law—the law of entropy or the heat death—everything runs down. Heat can only move from a hotter to a cooler body, that’s all. When it finally has distributed itself evenly, then there’s nothing. Things must have vanished away, etc. It’s the same thing here. The more complex materials always break down to the more simple. Well, by theory then, the more complex shouldn’t have existed by now. They should have vanished long ago, but they haven’t. This is a great puzzle to scientists today; they talk a lot about it. “Wherefore, the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration.” And this is what happened. He says, when you die you are dead—
that’s the normal thing. What is happening here is that a mind far greater than inert matter has intervened and is running things. But it has to take the intervention of something because in the normal situation of things this is what happened: “And if so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more.” Well, that’s entropy, that’s real. It rots, it crumbles, it falls and reaches a dead level, and that’s the end.
274,275 2 Nephi 2:15,16 We have something much better than that, of course, in the Atonement. So we go on, and this part is very nice. I like this an awful lot. Verse 15: “It must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and i the other bitter. Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself.” And you are enticed by the one or the other, and you are enticed equally in either direction, as we are told in chapter 7 of Moroni. He says that, remember. The devil enticeth and inviteth in one direction. At the same time God inviteth and enticeth in the other, and you are pulled between orbits. Which way you go depends on you; you will decide which one you will follow. Neither one is overpowering or irresistible because if that was so then you wouldn’t be responsible. You’d say, “It’s stronger than I and I have to yield.” But that’s not so. But Satan here, this old rascal, is seeking the misery of all mankind. Well, somebody is doing an awfully good job [of that].
275 2 Nephi 2:21 “And the days of the children of men were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh.” That’s good, that gives me another day— hooray, hooray! I’ll need it. We must repent, you see. This is very important. After all, if we are so completely involved in the things of this world, as we necessarily are, we are never clear unless we make our first step and repent and decide we prefer to move in another direction. Repentance is a file of intention to change your way, but you have to keep repenting. Remember, we talked about repentance before. And it’s a state of probation. You always have a chance to repent; it’s not too late. And “their time was lengthened” to give them more time to repent. This is the greatest thing you can have. Remember, as Irenaeus said, the angels don’t have the capacity to repent. They don’t have the choice. That makes us envied of the angels because we can always do better. We can repent and make the resolve. “For he gave commandment that all men must repent; for he showed unto all men that they were lost, because of the transgression of their parents.”
275 “And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end [see, there was no entropy at all there; they must have remained whatever they were]. And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good for they knew no sin.”
275,276 2 Nephi 2:25-29 So is passing the test enough? No, it isn’t. We must repent continually. You never pay the full price because, of course, you can’t—even from day to day. Atonement is absolutely necessary; repentance once is not enough. Just what is the mechanism of repentance? How is it done? How does atonement work? This is the thing that escapes everybody. Let’s see if it escapes us. Then we have the most famous passage in the Book of Mormon in verse 25: “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.” This is the bottom line, “that they might have joy.” How do you define joy. Well, you can’t define anything that is really important, can you? You have to be redeemed from the fall. “And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves [they can move in all directions]. ... Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself. And now, my sons, I would that ye should look to the great Mediator, and hearken unto his great commandments [we have to have Him].... And not choose eternal death, according to the will of the flesh and the evil which is therein [the will of the flesh and the laws of nature and running down, entropy], which giveth the spirit of the devil power to captivate, to bring you down to hell.” Well, what about the spirit? It doesn’t run down. Yes, but what is it? It is subject to the devil after that. This would be a terrible thing to have happen.
276 So that second chapter is a very hard one, actually. The third one is a genealogical chapter, which is an interesting one too. There’s enough nourishment here. There’s enough meat to keep us guessing.