Our Living Past

Recently at Education Week, Elder Gong taught this: “Jesus Christ’s ‘great and last sacrifice,’ His ‘infinite and eternal’ Atonement, overcomes the monster of death and hell—physical death (of the body) and spiritual death (or separation of the soul from God and each other). Instead of our being held captive to old pasts, His Atonement can free us to new futures. Jesus Christ atones. He redeems. He restores not only what was but what can be.” He continued with this insight, “There may be a spiritual distinction between our lived past and our living past. Our lived past encompasses the lived facts of our intents, decisions, and actions. Our living past reflects the possibility of redemptive changes to our past. Please remember, Jesus Christ and His Atonement can cleanse, sanctify, and transform the effects of our intents, decisions, and actions. Through our faith unto repentance and our Savior’s Atonement, God our Father and His Son Jesus Christ can bless us and those we love with all the divine goodness, change, and forgiveness we are willing to receive.” I love this idea of a lived past vs. a living past. We cannot change our lived past—what happened, happened. That will never change. But through Jesus Christ we can change ourselves, thus changing at least the way we and God see our past. The Savior declared, “Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:42). Surely the Lord could still recount the details of our lived past; in other words, I don’t think He physically cannot remember what happened in the past. But because we have changed, it is as if that past did not happen. He sees us and sees that this past is no longer in us; we have so changed that the person from the past is no longer the same person who has been redeemed in the present.

                For me the most powerful example of the transformative power of repentance and the atonement of Jesus Christ in the scriptures is Alma the Younger. He recounted his experience to Helaman this way, “And it came to pass that as I was thus racked with torment, while I was harrowed up by the memory of my many sins, behold, I remembered also to have heard my father prophesy unto the people concerning the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world. Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death.” At this moment, the redemptive change of which Elder Gong spoke altered in a way Alma’s past: “And now, behold, when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more. And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!” The lived past of course did not change; Alma had still done what Alma had done. But the living past was altered in the most powerful way—it was no longer painful. It is interesting that this verse doesn’t say that Alma could no longer remember his sins, for he surely still could remember them. But he no longer remembered the pain of his sins. Perhaps that is the key to this living change to our past; the Savior’s atonement can take away the pain associated with the mistakes we have made in the past and we can become a new person in the present. From this point on Alma became so different from his previous self that it was as if they were two distinct people.

                I love the way that Paul spoke about this transformative power of Jesus Christ. He said, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that 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 5:17-19). We can be new creatures in Him and the pain of our past sins pass away through His reconciliation. He no longer imputes our trespasses to us when we have been reconciled through Jesus Christ. Elder Gong urged us with this powerful invitation to embrace that reconciliation: “Dear brothers and sisters, Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ see, know, and love you. They know everything about you and love you all the more. Our hearts and who we are can change through faith unto repentance and our Savior’s Atonement. Please do all you can to make yourself and your relationships celestial—something you can bring into the presence of God our Father and His Beloved Son Jesus Christ.”