“As the sparks fly upward” Parts IV–V

“If any man live in Christ, he is a new creature.”

By reason of transgression cometh the fall, which fall bringeth death, and inasmuch as ye were born into the world by water, and blood, and the spirit, which I have made, and so became of dust a living soul, even so ye must be born again into the kingdom of heaven, of water, and of the Spirit, and be cleansed by blood, even the blood of mine Only Begotten; that ye might be sanctified from all sin, and enjoy the words of eternal life in this world, and eternal life in the world to come, even immortal glory; •for by the water ye keep the commandment; by the Spirit ye are justified, and by the blood ye are sanctified (Moses 6:59–60).

The context of the Fall which is the presupposition of this world enables the Atonement to redeem it.

The redemption which is made for you is brought to pass the resurrection from the dead. •And the spirit and the body are the soul of man. •And the resurrection from the dead is the redemption of the soul. •And the redemption of the soul is through him that quickeneth all things, in whose bosom it is decreed that the poor and the meek of the earth shall inherit it. •Therefore, it must needs be sanctified from all unrighteousness, that it may be prepared for the celestial glory (D&C 88:14–18).

Obedience to the commandments is integral to repentance, not because it effects an “atonement” or can cleanse sin (being still under the curse of the broken law), but because it permits remission of sins to take place (D&C 76:51–53; Moroni 8:25). Paul wrote, “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified alone by faith without the deeds of the law” (^IVRomans 3:28). The redemptive Atonement justifies the repentant; the quickening Atonement sanctifies him.

Unto every kingdom is given a law; and unto every law there are certain bounds also and conditions. •All beings who abide not in those conditions are not justified (D&C 88:38–39).

Justification is to be made straight, or upright. The Atonement redeems the individual, bringing us from under transgression and into the death ordained. Justification has been cast down previously in this essay as an inadequate and futile action. Now, we are cut upon the double edge of the sword: justification is not to justify our acts before God, but ourselves (Alma 41:15). It is not an act of our part towards God, but of His part towards us, and any other theological usage of this word must fail before this.
Sanctification is to be made holy. The Atonement quickens the repentant person, bringing him through the death ordained and into the new life. As a parable of the individual child of God’s sanctification, of the earth it is written that,

The earth abideth the law of a celestial kingdom, for it filleth the measure of its creation, and transgresseth not the law—•wherefore, it shall be sanctified; yea, notwithstanding it shall die, it shall be quickened again, and shall abide the power by which it is quickened (D&C 88:25–26).

There is a redemption wrought, and there is a quickening wrought. As surely as the Fall underlies all of Creation, so too does the Atonement. The end result is that, “the sanctified … shall not any more see death” (D&C 88:116). With the obstructing elements of death finally removed, “your whole bodies shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in you; and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things” (D&C 88:67; see also D&C 130:9).

Moroni’s final, solemn injunction to the faithful was to receive the justification and sanctification which the Atonement effects for all.

Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God. •And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot (Moroni 10:32–33).

“In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.”

We collide radically with death and Atonement every minute of every day, whether we recognize this or not. The Gospel is new and everlasting. The very decision we make to have, to pursue, to accept faith in God, rather than to reject it, tilts the axis of the world—the Moment.

This is the meaning of what was said … about the love of Christ being at one and the same time a sword that kills man and a sword that gives man life. It means that there is an undercurrent running through the gospel to the effect that no matter where a man is or what he is doing, he comes into touch with the cutting sword of de-cision (Nishitani, 40).

The key insight, the kernel of truth which must fall within your soul and die to bring forth life, is that this nihility, this backdrop of Angest, is not an obstacle to be overcome, but a gateway to be followed. This is the veil, so to speak. Behold the great mystery of telestial existence!—there is no meaning. The grand, overarching ‘why’ of all existence is unanswerable in the thought of a telestium such as ours.

The grain of nihility is fundamental to this life—it is the veil. There is no meaning to our life, being completely Fallen, and thus it is incumbent upon us to create meaning; and inasmuch as our created meaning causes us to die and allows us to be born again, we progress in a meaningful sense towards salvation and exaltation. (Just as the lukewarm are spewed out of the mouth, it is higher to create any meaning than to create none.) The horror of existence, the open-endedness of our life (and its closedness) means that any human satisfaction is arbitrary and created. “A particular standpoint is no standing place” (Barth, 230).

Creativity is not the genitor or enabler of the new life. Those roles are Christ’s, as the Atonemaker. It may be a way that we allow our wills to be sublimated into that of the Father’s, but we run the risk of elevating our created meaning as well, though it be not salvatory. Such meaning faces the void of death as certainly as do we: indeed, it is only in encountering and passing through and beyond death, quickened in Christ Jesus, that our meaning, the constructed story of our life, becomes of consequence.