The Word of Reconciliation

A favorite verse in Isaiah reads: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9).

We usually read these verses in isolation, and we think we understand the gist: God works in mysterious ways, some of life’s questions don’t have clear-cut answers, yada yada.

But if we back up a bit and read the verse that immediately precedes it, we learn something powerful and profound about God’s nature. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”

This is the sense in which God’s ways are not our ways. God is fundamentally merciful. He’s not scarce or stingy with his forgiveness. There’s nothing you could do that would make him love you any less. There’s nothing you can do that would even surprise him— he’s seen it all before. Whatever the cherry-picked clobber passages or shame-based theologies might try to tell you, God does not condemn you for your mistakes. His mercy is abundant.

We, on the other hand, are a different story. We live in a deeply unforgiving society. Our culture tends to view forgiveness as weakness. It sees mercy as a kind of moral complacency. In our online discourse, we join the latest social media pile-on when someone makes a public misstep. We rush to cancel those who fail to live up to our standards of orthodoxy. We see it as a sign of strength when political leaders refuse to ask forgiveness for even the most abhorrent behavior. We take secret pleasure when bad things happen to people we think are bad. And worst of all, we feel that in casting stones at others, we’re actually being righteous — “defending truth” or “standing up for what’s right” or whatever other pretty words we like to say to make ourselves feel better about being so uncharitable.

God’s ways are not our ways.

But we humans have a funny way of creating God in our own image. We find it hard to believe that God is really not as judgmental as we are. So we come up with all sorts of bad ideas about God — that he’s cold, or angry, or ashamed of us, or anxious to punish us. In maybe the most famous American sermon ever delivered, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, 18th-century revivalist preacher Jonathan Edwards paints the following picture: “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire.”

Really, Edwards is just telling on himself. When we hate ourselves and hate other people, we project that hatred onto God and assume that he agrees with us. The apostle Paul, on the other hand, teaches: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:19). In other words: God is already at peace with us. He’s already forgiven our sins. Now the ball is in our court.

Here and throughout the New Testament, Paul seems to suggest a truly universal notion of forgiveness. “By the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life” (Romans 5:18). Or in Colossians: “Having made peace through the blood of the cross, [God did] reconcile all things unto himself.” We don’t need to wonder if God will forgive us. It’s done. He has already done it. There is nothing you can do to earn his forgiveness. It has already been given. The ransom has been paid; the atonement has been performed; the sacrifice has been offered and accepted.

We waste precious time and energy agonizing about whether or not we’ve truly been forgiven for the sins we most regret. We feel that we have to be sufficiently obedient before God will extend his mercy to us. Sometimes we even make ourselves wait until we’ve “been good” for some arbitrary, self-imposed period of time before we dare to repent. We feel that unless we can prove to God that we’re worthy, our pleas for forgiveness might fall on deaf ears.

One of the more damaging misunderstandings of Book of Mormon theology has been our misreading of 2 Nephi 25:23: “It is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.” It’s not a chronological sequence or a cause-and-effect statement. As Dieter Uchtdorf pointed out, “We must understand that ‘after’ does not equal ‘because.’ We are not saved ‘because’ of all that we can do. Have any of us done all that we can do?”

Additional research into the Book of Mormon’s nineteenth-century literary context shows that the phrase “after all [so and so] can do,” in the English of Joseph Smith’s day, was a commonly used idiom meaning “despite all a person can do” or “regardless of their best efforts.”

So the Book of Mormon rejects the idea that God’s grace operates from a position of scarcity, or that we can only receive it after we’ve been on our best behavior. His forgiveness is abundant and available whether or not we deserve it — and how could we ever really deserve it? Like the father of the prodigal son, God is not waiting to see if you’ll live up to some imagined standard before deciding whether or not to forgive you. At first sight of you, while you are “yet a great way off,” he runs to you, falls on your neck, and kisses you (Luke 15:20–24).

God does not struggle with forgiveness. We do. We are the ones who need to learn to forgive. Maybe this is what’s meant by the puzzling statement that “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men” (D&C 64:10). At first glance, the verse seems to cast God’s universal forgiveness in doubt. But why would God hold himself to a lower standard of forgiveness than the rest of us? Perhaps this verse is suggesting that forgiving us just isn’t something God spends a whole lot of time worrying about. He’s already done it; now it’s our turn.

But if we accept that we’ve already been forgiven, wouldn’t we just stop trying to be good? Why not just lie and cheat and steal and hurt other people to get what we want? If God has already forgiven us, we might as well let our worst impulses run wild.

Not so fast.

The scriptures are clear that repentance is absolutely necessary for salvation. But I’m afraid that we’ve misunderstood why it’s necessary. We don’t repent in order to persuade God to let us into heaven. We repent because without inner transformation, we’re unlikely to want to be in heaven at all. Again, it’s not God’s forgiveness that we struggle to secure — it’s our own.¹ “The Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you” (Isaiah 59: 1–2). God’s willingness to forgive us isn’t diminished when we sin. His forgiveness is constant and non-negotiable. But our sins have the effect of making us so ashamed that we turn away from God and reject the mercy he has already offered us. In the words of C.S. Lewis, “hell is locked from the inside.”²

God doesn’t run from Adam and Eve when they partake of the fruit. In fact he goes looking for them, calling them by name. It’s Adam and Eve, not God, who are distressed by their sin. God takes it in stride, knowing that sin is a painful but necessary part of the plan. Adam and Eve, on the other hand, recoil away from God. “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:8–10).

Christ flips our notion of justice upside down. Ancient peoples sacrificed flesh to God, hoping he would eat and forgive. Christ offers his flesh to us, hoping we would eat and forgive. When we accept that offering, we can finally begin to accept ourselves.³

So now we move from God’s forgiveness to the much harder problem: our own. Jeffrey Holland gives some important caveats: “It is…important for some of you living in real anguish to note what [Christ] did not say. He did not say, ‘You are not allowed to feel true pain or real sorrow from the shattering experiences you have had at the hand of another.’ Nor did He say, ‘In order to forgive fully, you have to reenter a toxic relationship or return to an abusive, destructive circumstance.’ But notwithstanding even the most terrible offenses that might come to us, we can rise above our pain only when we put our feet onto the path of true healing.”

When Elder Holland calls forgiveness a form of healing, he invites us to think of sin and its effects as a kind of wound or illness. And since we all sin, that sickness is a shared experience. You’re not healed by denying treatment to another, and you don’t get any better by pretending you’re not sick. You and your worst enemy are far more alike than you care to admit. Maybe the first step in healing is acknowledging that you need it just as much as the next guy. After all, “He that is whole hath no need of a physician, but he that is sick” (Luke 5:31).⁴

I believe that for many of us, learning to forgive is a slow and gradual process. I won’t propose any quick fixes or easy solutions. But I can offer my belief that the atonement of Jesus Christ is the ultimate means to achieve complete forgiveness. How is this the case?

First and foremost, the Savior is able to offer us a power beyond our own ability. If the natural man, as we’ve discussed, is stubborn and unforgiving, then we need a truly supernatural power if we’re ever going to be able to forgive completely. I believe that this power is real; I don’t know how else to explain how people can find the strength to forgive the most egregious wrongs. I believe that when we need it the most, Jesus can impart to us a fragment of the infinite love and forgiveness that define his existence, enabling us to let go of even our most entrenched pain. I don’t know how this happens. I don’t think we can force it. But we can believe in it, and ask for it, and hold out hope that it will come. Truly we are saved by grace, beyond all we can do.

If this sounds a bit mystical, the Savior’s atonement also offers an eminently practical approach to forgiveness. Because in addition to providing us with grace, the suffering and death of Christ also serve as a blueprint or an instruction manual, teaching us how we can start the healing process. I’ll be the first to say I’ve got a long way to go in learning to forgive. But when I study the Savior’s example in the final moments of his life, I notice a couple of concrete steps that I can try to take as I navigate the murky waters of forgiveness.

Here’s one: when the Savior was on the cross, he prayed for his crucifiers. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). The Savior’s command to pray for your enemies has been the single most helpful step in my personal struggles to forgive others. When I practice asking God to bless those who have hurt me, I’m forced to replace thoughts of bitterness with generosity. I’m forced to see that person as a child of God who is every bit as valuable as I am. In my experience, nothing invites the free flow of the Holy Ghost into my heart quite like this simple Christian practice.

Here’s another: even when Jesus was being tortured, he ministered to other people. He ensured that his aging mother would be taken care of after his death (John 19:26–27). He helped ease the fears of the criminal being crucified alongside him, promising to meet him in paradise (Luke 23:43). When we serve other people, we invite the healing love of Christ into our lives. As we move to ease others’ pain, we often find that we forget our own, or at least that the burden feels a little bit lighter.

Jesus went even further in the Garden of Gethsemane. When Peter cut off the ear of the servant to the high priest, Christ instantly healed him — a man who would have him captured and killed (Luke 22:50–51). Sometimes the most healing thing we can do is reach out to our offender and show them kindness. Obviously, individual circumstances will vary — we are not asked to enable abusive behavior or subject ourselves to constant revictimization. But many grudges persist simply because both parties are waiting for the other to make a move. Treating our enemies with charity is a subversive way to reclaim our own power. We refuse to let another person’s actions limit our happiness. We accept that we are strong enough to move forward in kindness.

If the proactive approach is inappropriate, we can at least refuse to return fire for fire. If the situation requires it, we may choose to adopt Christ’s stance before Pilate and the chief priests: dignified silence and peaceful non-engagement (Matthew 27: 11–14).

Finally, we can follow the Savior’s lead by practicing empathy. This might be the hardest one of all. Alma teaches that in suffering for us, Christ took upon himself our pains and infirmities (Alma 7:11–12). He somehow entered into our place and allowed himself to see and feel the totality of our experience. Christ forgives us because he sees the full picture. He understands the reasons we act the way we do, how our life history and unchosen circumstances and biological predispositions and past traumas all work to shape our behavior. He is equally familiar with our badness as with our goodness. He knows, from firsthand experience, what it is to be you and why you hurt and how you hurt. And so he is “moved with compassion” toward you (Matthew 9:36).

In a sense, the atonement is radically, uncomfortably intrusive. There is not an inch of your soul that Christ hasn’t seen in up-close, perfect, 20/20 vision, including the parts you most despise. And he loves you anyway. In fact he loves you for all that you are. When you truly grasp that shocking truth, you can never be the same again. When you accept that you are accepted, you feel moved to extend that same grace to your brothers and sisters. The least you can do is feel a fraction of the empathy that Christ has already felt for you — because everyone else is hurting too, and Christ loves them just as much as he loves you.⁵

At the close of the Civil War, American poet Walt Whitman composed a set of poems based on his interactions with wounded soldiers. Some scholars see evidence that the narrator of the following poem is an African American soldier tasked with disposing the bodies of the dead on the battlefield. I hope we can see ourselves through his eyes. We are all, in a sense, wounded soldiers, fighting endless battles, committing fratricide, forgetting our true relationship to each other. And yet we have within us the capacity to forgive. It’s a powerful and haunting image of what is ultimately possible in our nation, in our communities, and in our souls when we give way to the Savior’s grace.

WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world:
…For my enemy is dead — a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin — I draw near;
I bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

It’s my testimony that the Savior can breathe into our dead bones and dead relationships new life; that he can wash the hatred and bitterness out of our soiled hearts; that he can give us eyes to see one another, and ourselves, as we really are.

Additional Sources:

¹Eugene England, “That They Might Not Suffer: The Gift of Atonement,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 1, no. 3 (August, 1966): 141–55

²C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (Harper, 2002), 626.

³Richard Rohr, “Why Did Jesus Die?” in The Universal Christ (Convergent Books, 2021), 139–58

⁴Fiona and Terryl Givens, “Sin: From Guilt to Woundedness,” in All Things New, (Faith Matters Publishing, 2020), 103–11

⁵Paul Tillich, “You Are Accepted,” in The Shaking of the Foundations (Wipf and Stock Publisher, 2012), 153–63