I was asked to speak about the fall and the atonement, which I didn’t mind since all the study I have been doing over the last year has made me appreciate what a wonderful blessing they are.

It almost goes without saying that the fall and the atonement are parts of one process, and that process is about us and for us. The purpose of this process is to bring about the immortality and eternal life of God’s children.

Loving parents raised us until we had progressed as far as we were able to in our spirit form. To become like our Heavenly Parents we also had to acquire a physical body and have our agency tested. This could only be accomplished here on earth with Adam and Eve~Rs fall to mortality and with Christ’s atonement. Christ was chosen to be our savior because of his righteousness and obedience to our Father. In Hebrews 1:8-9 we have the Father speaking to Christ. (Read verse)

Now we also know that Satan wasn’t very happy with this decision and because of his rebellion to our Father’s plan he, and 1/3 of our brothers and sisters who also rebelled, were sent here to earth, forever denied a physical body. However they are permitted to use their spirit powers to try and frustrate God’s plan, providing the necessary opposition to test how we will use our freedom to choose.

Adam and Eve were placed in the garden, innocent and immortal. In 2 Ne. chapter 2 we learn that in this state they could have no children, they had no knowledge of joy cause they knew no misery, doing no good cause they knew no sin.

Now two of the commandments they were given were to have children and not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Two commandments that were at odds with each other. While they stayed innocent they could have no children, but if they ate from the tree they would die. But just as we had to choose in Heaven which savior to follow, mankind had to choose here. Would we be content to live by divine direction in all things or whether we would seek “to be as gods, knowing good and evil” gaining wisdom through our own experiences. Also in chapter 2 of 2 Ne. Lehi states: (read 2 Ne. 2:22-25)

Modern scripture makes it clear that it was the will of the Father, as part of the plan that Adam and Eve transgress and thus be moved out of Eden. Satan had unwittingly furthered the plan “for he knew not the mind of God” (Moses 4:6)

Adam and Eve ate the fruit and sin entered the world. They became mortal and were now able to have children and fulfill the purpose for which the world was created. Because they were courageous enough to eat that fruit, two other blessings come to us through their fall into mortality: agency and accountability. We became free to choose liberty and eternal life or choose captivity and death. Freedom of choice cannot be exercised without accountability for choices made.

So they were cast from the garden, at that point their contact with God changed. They were no longer in God’s presence and now they were subject to death, physically and spiritually. As mortals they were subject to illness, sin and all the ills of mortality. But because of their mortality we could now be born. As mortals Adam and Eve were taught the plan of salvation and of the atonement which was to come. In Moses 5:11 it says: (read verse)

In order for us to have redemption and eternal life, an infinite atonement was required. And according to eternal law, that atonement required a personal sacrifice by an immortal being not subject to death. Yet he must die and take his own body again, that could only be done by our savior Jesus Christ. His mother was mortal so he had the power to die; His father was immortal so he inherited the power over death. Only by his unique parenting could he have the power to lay down his life and take it back up again. Without Christ’s resurrection we would have died in our sins and would have been subject to the same fate as Lucifer and his host, bodiless and eventually banished to outer darkness.

However, Christ did take his life back and as it says in 1 Cor. 15:22: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

But taking his life back wasn’t enough to return us to our Heavenly Father. As we go through this life we have to deal with opposition and agency. And no matter how careful we are we face temptations. Even Christ was subject to it and his temptations, according to President David O. Mackay are typical of the type of temptations that make all of us spotted. Which come as [1] a temptation of appetite (for Christ this was turning stones into bread,) [2] a yielding to the pride and fashion and vanity of those alienated from the things of God (to cast himself from the temples pinnacle) and [3] a gratifying of the desires for the riches of the world or power among men (to sell his soul for earth’s treasures.)

But God knew that all of his children but one would fall prey to these temptations as they journeyed through life. And in His desire to have His children return home, he gave us time. Time to work out our mistakes, time to overcome our sins, time to prepare for a reunion. (Read Alma 12:24)

But Heavenly Father knew we could not make it home without divine help. Therefore He promised us a Savior. (Savior and Messiah are Greek and Hebrew for ‘the annointed’) From the one child who had been anointed and sanctified with the power and authority necessary to be that perfect sinless sacrifice.

Christ did two things in performing the Atonement, He died so that he could conquer death with his resurrection, and he took on all the pain of sin.

The Resurrection is universal; it covers everyone who is born into a physical body no matter what they believe. And that gift brings immortality in heaven. But it takes the gift of Eternal life to return to the presence of the Father in heaven and that is conditional upon acceptance of the Savior. When you repent you are allowing Christ to shoulder the pain of that mistake. And therefore you learn to become perfect. In Matt. 5:48 we are commanded to be perfect just as our Father is perfect. Perfection is an eternal goal, not a mortal possibility. It is however a commandment that can, over time and because of the Atonement, be kept.

President Joseph Fielding Smith observed: “I believe the Lord meant just what he said: that we should be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. That will not come all at once, but line upon line, and precept upon precept, example upon example, and even then not as long as we live in this mortal life, for we will have to go even beyond the grave before we reach that perfection and shall be like God. But here we lay the foundation. Here is where we are taught these simple truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ, in this probationary state, to prepare us for that perfection. It is our duty to be better today than we were yesterday, and better tomorrow than we are today. Why? Because if we are keeping the commandments of the Lord, we are on that road to perfection, and that can only come through obedience and the desire in our hearts to overcome the world. It is the duty of every man to try to be like his Eternal Father. Feelings of inadequacy or anxiety about perfection should not surprise us. Only with the Savior’s help, including the Atonement and Resurrection, will perfection ever be possible. But the marvelous promise is that He can and will help!”

The path that brings us back to our Father is just as difficult for our Father in heaven as it is for us. He must allow us our choices and he had to allow his Only Begotten Son in the flesh to undergo a terrible agony for our sakes.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said in the May 1999 Ensign: “I am a father, inadequate to be sure, but I cannot comprehend the burden it must have been for God in His heaven to witness the deep suffering and crucifixion of His Beloved Son in such a manner. His every impulse and instinct must have been to stop it, to send angels to intervene but He did not intervene. He endured what He saw because it was the only way that a saving, vicarious payment could be made for the sins of all His other children from Adam and Eve to the end of the world. I am eternally grateful for a perfect Father and His perfect Son, neither of whom shrank from the bitter cup nor forsook the rest of us who are imperfect, who fall short and stumble, who too often miss the mark. Even as He moved towards the Crucifixion, He restrained His Apostles who would have intervened by saying, ‘The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?’ When that unspeakable ordeal was finished, He uttered what must have been the most peaceful and deserved words of His mortal ministry. At the end of His agony, He whispered, ‘It is finished. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ Finally it was over. Finally He could go home.”

The path back to our Father is paved with choices. Adam and Eve had to make a choice, Christ had to make a choice, and we have to make our choices. And because of the Fall and Atonement, we get to become who and what we really are. Said President Brigham Young of our Heavenly Father: “There is no spirit but what was pure and holy when it came here from the celestial world. He is the Father of our spirits; and if we could know, understand, and do His will, every soul would be prepared to return back into His presence. And when they get there, they would see that they had formerly lived there for ages, that they had previously been acquainted with every nook and corner, with the palaces, walks, and gardens; and they would embrace their Father, and He would embrace them and say, ‘My son, my daughter, I have you again;’ and the child would say, ‘O my Father, my Father, I am here again’”