Winning Through Repentance After listening to the talk “Yes, We Can and Will Win!” by Elder Soares’s, I began thinking about how it is inevitable we will win. My thoughts were nothing too deep or philosophical. Just some idle musings. They went along the lines of, “Of course we’ll win. We have God on our side. Someone who knows everything, has all power, and has a personal, loving, abiding concern and interest for each of us.” Now, I’ve never had to take part in a war, but I can imagine how impossible it is for earthly leaders to intimately know everyone in their armies. It just can’t be done. Thankfully, God is not an earthly leader. God doesn’t just know us, He’s with us every single moment that we let Him be there. Not only that, but His Son, our Elder Brother, is just like Him and was willing to come here not only to die for us, but to live His life as an example for us. Christ Himself said, “For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done” (John 13:15). So we don’t just have the means of winning, we know exactly how to win. It really feels like we have an unfair advantage sometimes. Until you add in the fact that, unlike our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, we aren’t perfect. We mess up. It’s like how we could have the best teacher showing us how to ride a skateboard and when we try we fall off and skin our knees. Maybe even break an arm. Sometimes it may feel like we’re even expected to fail. Looking back on history, we tend to pick clear winners of a war or battle, but in our lives at the end of our day it might not be that clear. Maybe we were tired and snapped at our roommates or families, but then we helped someone carry groceries later. Does it balance out? Do we call it a draw? What if we mess up a lot? More than we could ever hope to fix? What do we do when we know at the end of the day that we didn’t win? You know the answer. You know how to fix it. It’s the Savior and His Atonement. We can’t truly lose when our sins can be removed by our devotion and faith in Christ. We still have to deal with the consequences, but in the eyes of God we are clean. There are wonderful stories of redemption in the scriptures. Probably some of the most talked of in the Church are Alma, Alma the Younger, and Paul. There are also many stories about those that always stayed strong like Nephi, Mormon, and his son Moroni. Elder Soares specifically talks about Captain Moroni. I love all of these people. I find courage from their lives and examples, but I’m not going to talk about them. I’m going to talk about someone that is
never really spoken of in terms of winning. I’m going to talk about Corianton, the son of Alma the Younger. Many of you know him in regards to the law of chastity. Corianton is infamous because he broke the law of chastity. Because of the discussion Corianton and his father had after Corianton’s transgression, we have some wonderful chapters where Alma explains God’s love, the resurrection, life after death, the Fall, Christ’s Atonement, and mercy (Alma 39-42). But I’m not going to talk about those chapters either. I’m going to talk about some of the only verses that mention Corianton after those chapters. We see in Alma 49 that Corianton did indeed go and preach again. He and his brothers are cited as one of the reasons why there was “great heed and diligence” given to the word of God by the Nephites and they helped to bring about the “continual peace” and “exceedingly great prosperity” that was had by that nation (30). It is clear from the language that Alma used after Corianton sinned that Corianton had many doubts concerning the gospel—He hadn’t even been able to grasp the fairly simple concept that “wickedness never was happiness” (Alma 41:10)—and yet now he was faithfully teaching these principles to others. It is not until the very last chapter of Alma that Corianton is again mentioned by name. It is stated that Corianton had “gone forth to the land northward in a ship” to bring provisions to the people there and that Shiblon needed to give the sacred records to the son of Helaman because Corianton was gone (Alma 63:10-11). From this I surmise that even after all those years later Corianton had not only remained faithful, but was faithful enough to be worthy of caring for what one day became our scripture. Heavenly Father would have trusted him with the means of bringing about the conversion of the latter days. In Corianton’s story there was no heavenly angel to strike him and he did not hear the voice of the Lord. There was no big, flashy miracle to awe us. There was a miracle that appears to us mortals as smaller. Corianton’s miracle was that he allowed Christ into his life. He allowed his doubts to be changed into faith. He allowed the Atonement to remove what would have otherwise prevented him from following Christ. We can win, not because we don’t make mistakes, but because we have Christ. The fourth How to Begin Teaching point from Preach My Gospel states that the message the missionaries bring, what we call the gospel, is centered in Jesus Christ. I love that the word in is used. It would be so easy, and perhaps more natural, to say it is centered on Jesus Christ, but I feel that the message would lose some meaning if this were done. The word in denotes that the
gospel cannot be removed from Christ. If you take an object, let’s say a rock, and set it on top of a cement block, it can be removed. Depending on the size and weight of the rock it could take a lot of effort to remove it, but it can still be removed. If you take that same rock and place it in the cement before the cement dries, the only way to remove that rock would be to destroy the cement surrounding it. Some may argue that Jesus is not the Christ, but they will never be able to destroy the fact that He is the Christ. Jesus is our Savior and He cannot be destroyed. What He has done for us cannot be destroyed. In Mosiah 18 part of Alma’s description of baptism is that we are willing “to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that [we] may be in, even until death, that [we] may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that [we] may have eternal life” (10 emphasis added). When we are baptized, we become a part of Christ and if we continue to immerse ourselves in the gospel, we will continue to be encompassed by Christ. No matter the temptation placed before us, we can resist it and gain eternal life. And if we do fail from time to time, Christ is there. He loves us. He will forgive us. Corianton had the words of the prophet, who in this case also happened to be his father, to guide him to repent, but if he had decided it was too hard or had let fear rule him and become stubborn and insisted that what he did was not wrong, he would not have recovered. Instead he chose to allow those words to become a part of him. He decided to live and share that gospel that was explained to him. President Boyd K. Packer said, “The angels of the devil convince some that they are born to a life from which they cannot escape and are compelled to live in sin. The most wicked of lies is that they cannot change and repent and that they will not be forgiven. That cannot be true. They have forgotten the Atonement of Christ” (“I Will Remember Your Sins No More”). Let us not forget the Atonement of Christ. Let us not be afraid to repent. The devil will use anything he can to turn us away from the gospel. If there is something that we have done, no matter how large or small it appears to be, Satan will continually bring it to our minds. He will try to distract us and make us feel unworthy. We do not have to live with that guilt. We have the atonement of Christ. We have the ability to change and become better. We have the ability to win. I know that “we can and will win.” We will win through repentance. We will win through the Atonement. We will win because of Christ and the loving Heavenly Father that sent Him.