Freedom from Sins

The reason "confession" of sin is required, is to free the victim. (D&C 58: 43.) Confession robs the accuser of his power to accuse. (Rev. 12: 10.)

Once the sins of Alma and Younger and the sons of Mosiah were known, confessed and public, the sins no longer had any control over them. They felt no shame for these sins because confessing and admitting they were sinful robbed sin of its power. Similarly, the Apostle Paul's admission of his sinful past allowed him to move on to accepting and celebrating God's grace. (1 Tim. 1: 12-16.)

There is power in confessing. It puts the confessor above his sin. (James 5: 16.) We confess to celebrate God's great deliverance of us. We are all weak. It is part of worshipping Him. (D&C 59: 12.) This is why the testimony of God's redemption by Alma the Younger included confession of his own sins. (Alma 36: 6, 12-14.)

Those who claim they are holy men, without sin, and thereby cover their weaknesses while courting the praise and admiration of others, have no truth in them. (1 John 1: 8.) But if we confess we are sinful and weak, God is faithful to forgive us. (1 John 1: 9.)

Freedom from sin can only come through admitting your sinful nature. When we confess, He forgives. (D&C 64: 7.)

3 Nephi 14: 21

3 Nephi 14: 21:

 

"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven."

 

This was a favorite quote from President Kimball. It really puts Christ's followers on notice that confessing with the lips with no accompanying action to obey Him will not allow anyone into the kingdom of heaven.

 

Christ could not be more clear in this statement. The evangelical crowd quotes Paul's statement, "For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation," as proof to contradict the Lord. (Romans 10: 10.) Paul does not explain salvation in that brief aside. Confession requires the confessor to go forward and present their entire life as a living sacrifice, continually obedient unto God (as he explains later in the very same letter). (Romans 12: 1-2.) This foolish error is creeping into Mormonism with each passing day. From Professor Steven Robinson's rapprochement in How Wide the Divide? to Alonzo Gaskill's awful mistake called Odds Are You're Going To Be Exalted, the erosion of doctrine to conform to the evangelical "market" continues apace.

 

They teach for doctrines the commandments of men. Their creeds are an abomination.  The professors of these creeds are all corrupt. (I'm only quoting Christ.) (See JS-H 1: 19.)  We would be better informed to draw the starkest, widest and clearest distinctions between ourselves and them, rather than seeking to be regarded as another brand of mainstream Christianity.

 

Calling Christ "Lord, Lord" will accomplish nothing. There will be those who claim they are "of Christ" but who are no better than the liars, thieves and whoremongers. (D&C 76: 99-104.) It is not a "brand name" to associate with. It is a Teacher to follow.

 

Christ teaches the will of the Father. Conforming to the will of the Father is required to "enter into the kingdom of heaven." Confession without conformity to His will is worse than meaningless. It is evidence that you are superstitious and foolish. You want Christ as a magic talisman, to be invoked to control the outcome of your life. But you do not want to honor Him by doing as He teaches. You do not want to live as He would want you to live. You do not want to surrender your sins and seek after truth and light.

 

The simple life which Christ describes in this sermon is how we are to conform to His will.  We have taken it bit by bit to examine how living that life should be accomplished. This is the blueprint for understanding the Lord and meeting Him. It is not intended to cause pride, but to provoke repentance. It is the means by which we can know Him.

 

As the sermon is ending, He reminds those present that calling out to Him and honoring Him with the title of "Lord" will never be enough. You must do as He taught.

 

There is no other way.

 

The path is identical for everyone.

 

You are as capable of doing this as any person who ever lived here. The difference between you and those who have succeeded only exists so long as you refuse to repent.  Repentance will cure your lack of faith. Your confidence will increase in the Lord as you lay aside the sins which beset you.

 

The symmetry of Christ's sermon is astonishing. The closing call to follow Him is unmistakably sobering. It is not enough to sit in an audience honoring Him by showing brief attention to His talk. The talk must become alive in you.

A Confession

Confession of sins is supposed to be good for the soul.  So I figure I'll make a confession of my attempted arson.  I offer no defense for this crime, since I need none.  The statute of limitations having run many years ago.

When my friend decided he no longer wanted to make payments on his new 1969 Chevy Nova, I offered to total the car for him so he could collect the insurance money.  As we were speeding along getting ready for me to wreck it into a collection of roadside boulders, he chickened out.  So we never destroyed it that evening.  Within a few days, however, he returned to his despair over making payments.  We discussed it for some time without any resolution to the problem.

Because of some movie (I think with Steve McQueen, but for the life of me I can't recall what it was about), we came up with a solution:  We'd burn the car.  Surely insurance would total it if burned.

So we parked it behind the Mountain Home Newspaper office, where we worked, and set the plan in motion.  My friend soaked the front seat with kerosene, lit a cigarette, tucked the lit cigarette into a match-pack, set it on the soaked front seat, and we went inside.  We were waiting for the cigarette to burn down to the matches, the matches to ignite, the ignition to set the kerosene afire, and the fire to destroy the car.  We waited.  And waited.  And nothing seemed to be happening.  We stayed in the front of the newspaper office, wanting to appear surprised when the news of a burning car was brought to us, but nothing happened.

I think it was an hour or more before we went to the rear of the building to check on how our felony was progressing, and noticed that in the upper glass block skylight there was flashing red lights, clearly showing flames licking upward from a burning Chevy Nova.  We thought it worked!  Now someone needed to notice it and call the police.  But we couldn't be the ones who discovered it.  So we retreated again to the front of the building and settled in to wait out the discovery.

When another hour or so had passed we again peeked into the back of the building and again saw that same flickering red light.  We retreated again.

Another hour later and still no sirens, no commotion, nothing.  We checked again and sure enough the red flickering was still underway.  We wondered what it was about a Chevy Nova that would let it burn for hours once ignited.  Then concluded that if no-one else was going to make the grim discovery, we could at least see the results of our handiwork directly instead of through glass block skylight reflections.

So we opened the back door and there sat the Chevy Nova completely undisturbed.  Intact, fully operational and not even singed.  Puzzled, we wondered at what we'd been seeing flickering these past hours.  It turned out to be the outdoor sign of Jovial Jerry's bar, whose sign was on the sidewalk outside the bar with which the Mt. Home News shared a parking lot.

Well the Nova didn't burn.  When we inspected our crime scene it turned out that kerosene will put out a lit cigarette without igniting.  The cigarette was there, soaked with the seat, and the matches were unusable as well.  The only damage was a cigarette burn to the front seat upholstery.

Well my friend had suffered so much from the hours of anticipation and was so relieved at the failure, that he determined to just keep the Nova.  However, from that day till the day he sold it it always stank of kerosene.

There, confessing my sin does make me feel better.  Maybe I'll cover some others in the future.