In 1842, Joseph Smith the first prophet and president of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints wrote down 13 of the religion's fundamental beliefs.
Number three on the list says this: we believe that through the atonement of
Christ all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of
the gospel. So let's talk about salvation.
Alright guys, here's the deal. The big-ticket topic of this article of
faith has to do with the age-old question, are we saved by grace or works?
But it will help immensely if you first understand what salvation means for
Latter-day Saints so that's what we're gonna cover in this video. I'll dedicate
an entire episode to the grace verses works question in the future. In fact, I
already have it written but for now just know that we believe we are saved by
grace. There's absolutely nothing we can do to save ourselves or earn our way to
heaven. But keep an eye out for an entire episode just about this in the future.
Now, salvation. What do we need to be saved from? To put it simply, physical and
spiritual death. Our bodies are gifts from God. Eventually God wants each of us
to have a perfected, glorified, eternal, and resurrected body like Jesus Christ
but as we're all keenly aware of, we're all going to die. One day our bodies are
gonna wither away and decompose and there's absolutely nothing we can do
about it. That's one problem. Spiritual death, also
known as sin, is another problem. No unclean thing can dwell in the presence of
God. Right. Well, that means we're kind of screwed because we've all sinned and all
come short of the glory of God. If Christ had not intervened on our behalf, sin
would keep us forever banished from our heavenly home and there would be nothing
we could do about it. Jesus Christ saves us from the consequences of both
physical and spiritual death. Because he was resurrected, we will all be
resurrected thereby overcoming the obstacle of physical death and because
Jesus Christ paid the price for our sins, repentance is possible, we can be
cleansed of sin thereby overcoming the obstacle of spiritual death. Technically
that's what we're saved from and that's salvation in its most basic form. That
said, exaltation is a little different than salvation, though Latter-day Saints,
including our prophets, will often use the two words interchangeably. That gets
confusing for people outside of our religion so I'm separating the two
before we move on to exaltation. Let's review Latter-day Saint teachings about
heaven because that's important. To most Christian denominations, there's heaven
or hell and that's it. It's eternal happiness or eternal
punishment. To us we believe in at least three different levels or degrees of
heaven. Those in the lower levels are more separated from God than those in
the highest level but because of Christ's grace, essentially everyone who
ever lives will eventually end up somewhere in those three kingdoms of
heaven but exaltation is more than just living somewhere in heaven. It's living
in the highest degree of heaven and having the opportunity to literally
become like God. Yeah, I just said that. Not replacing God but learning how to do
the things he does, know the things he knows, and be the kind of person he wants
us to be. Exalted beings live in God's presence and share in his glory and joy
so salvation has to do with overcoming sin and death and inheriting a home
somewhere in heaven. Exaltation has more to do with what we will be doing in
heaven. Knowing the difference is important. So when the article of faith
says that through the atonement of Christ all mankind may be saved by
obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel, it's actually referencing
exaltation, not just salvation. Salvation comes by grace alone. The scriptures are
clear on the exaltation is also an act of grace but it's reception is
conditional upon our obedience to God's commandments but again, we're gonna jump
into that a lot more in an upcoming episode. If you still have questions
about what salvation and exaltation are check out the links in the description.
Read more about this topic on SaintsUnscripted.com, send us a message, leave a
comment and we'll get back to you. You guys are awesome and we'll see you next
time.