Posted on by Abe Austin

Redeemed Through Christ- Part One

This last Sunday I was invited to speak to my congregation, where I shared my personal experience with redemption. Preparing this message brought up some new ideas that I will explore in greater detail with upcoming posts. Other stories and ideas I have already covered in this blog. I don’t wish to bore you with redundant messages, but I did think that seeing my speech might be interesting to some of you. I’ll post the first half of it today, and the second half tomorrow.

Part One)

Stories of redemption, where people fall, and are then raised even higher, are woven all throughout our scriptures, our myths and legends, our history, even our books and movies. But of all the many stories of redemption, today I would like to focus on the one that I know best: my own. And I want to talk about it in terms of the pairings that it was made up of. The first of these pairings was the reality of damnation and then the reality of being saved.

My great demise came in the form of addiction to pornography. The whole thing started when I was about seven years old and progressed through various stages over the next twenty years. 

Now, from the very beginning I felt guilty about what I was doing, I knew it was wrong, I knew I had to repent of it. But I didn’t necessarily feel damned, because the whole time I insisted it was in my power to fix this on my own. So I tried, over and over, to just make myself be better. I kept telling myself that this next time would be the last time. I repeatedly prayed that God would just give me the determination to do things right.

And even though this approach never worked for me, I clung to it, because the only alternative would be to admit that I had become so lost that I could never find my way back again. And if you had asked me if I believed the atonement of Jesus Christ could rescue me, I would have said “yes,” but, looking back, I really only believed that in my head. I didn’t feel it in my heart. So, accepting that I was lost would include not having any confidence that anyone would ever come and find me.

Rather than accept that, I kept my addiction secret from everyone, even my wife, and pretended like I wasn’t damned. But no matter how I tried to hide it, there was a genuine darkness inside of me, and its nature was to damage me, and those closest to me. Thus, even as I was trying to preserve my life and my relationships, I was actively destroying them instead. When I finally saw this pattern, when it clicked for me, I finally decided I would rather be honestly damned than falsely holy.

So, one day, when I was alone in the house, I wrote a letter to my wife. In it, I shattered the facade I had been living behind and explained what was really going on. I left the letter just inside the entrance to the house, got in my car, and drove as far away as quickly as possible. I knew that I had to get far enough that she would make it back to the house before I could, because then I knew it was done. I couldn’t take it back, even if I wanted.

This is how I came to embrace the reality of my own damnation. At this point, for the first time in my life, I truly accepted that I was on track for hell and all that came with it. This was an absolutely necessary chapter in my personal story of redemption. I was never going to get any further without first taking this leap into the void.

What came next was a whirlwind of confession, surrender, and connection. My wife scheduled a meeting with our Bishop that very night, our Bishop recommended us to LifeStar, which does therapy for sex addicts and their couples, and my LifeStar therapist encouraged me to join a group of other men in recovery. Put simply, there was a long and difficult path of repentance and recovery set before me, one that I am still taking steps on to this day.

But while the journey has been long, redemption, much to my surprise, began immediately! Right from the day that I wrote the letter, I started to feel like my real self again. I felt like I had a soul! This was something I didn’t even know I was missing; it had been so long since I had felt it.

That rediscovery of the soul in addiction is not unusual, but what you might find unusual is that many of us addicts actually express gratitude for our addiction, even though we are in recovery from it, and we certainly don’t endorse it! See, from our perspective, if we hadn’t had something truly break us, we never would have sought out a real connection with God and the soul. And once we have found that connection, the journey that led us there, no matter how painful, is worth it, and we wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I like the way a good friend of mine put it: “if your sin isn’t real, your salvation isn’t real.” I would also say, “if you haven’t been truly broken, you don’t really know what it is to be restored.” Or as Eve, herself, put it in Moses 5:11: “Were it not for our transgression we never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption.”

Now, this isn’t meant to say that we all need to get enslaved to an addiction, but I would say that we all need to exercise our awareness of the hopeless state that we would be in if not for Christ. Sooner or later, each one of us commits a sin that is a deliberate and willful violation of our own conscience. At a certain point, each one of us sacrifices something that we know is good, for something that we know is wrong. This is a fundamental betrayal, and when it happens, something inside of us breaks, and we can either run from that, or hide it, or we can go into that broken place, accept the reality of damnation, and there meet Jesus.

To be continued…

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 40:20-23

20 And it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast unto all his servants: and he lifted up the head of the chief butler and of the chief baker among his servants.

21 And he restored the chief butler unto his butlership again; and he gave the cup into Pharaoh’s hand:

22 But he hanged the chief baker: as Joseph had interpreted to them.

23 Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him.

Just as Joseph foretold, three days later the fate of the chief butler and the chief baker were forever changed. It happened to be Pharaoh’s birthday, a time for refreshing, and the ruler turned to the cases of these two men and brought each to their final conclusion. One was elevated back to Pharaoh’s good graces, the other consigned to death.

This idea of judgment and dichotomy is a powerful image in our society. It immediately calls to mind the great judgment that awaits us all after we die, on the one hand to the justifying and redeeming of the innocent, and on the other to condemning and damning of the guilty.

As for Joseph, though, he remains in purgatory, forgotten in prison and still awaiting his own judgment. He knows that in the day of evaluation that he will be worthy, but that time has not yet arrived. After all the other virtues he had already displayed, he still must exercise the one of patience.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Need for Law- Romans 8:2-4

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

COMMENTARY

The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
Yesterday we considered how God gave us His Law, which took us from the destiny of the grave, and split that into two paths, one towards salvation and one towards damnation. The problem, though, was that each of us breaks God’s Law, which consigns us to the path of damnation, an even worse situation that what we were in before.
But God’s plan did not end here. In addition to putting His Law upon us He provided a Savior as well. In a previous study we examined how Christ is able to pay for the demands and punishments of every law. Yes, each of us breaks God’s Law, but now it is Christ who is consigned to our damnation, having taken that burden upon himself as part of his atoning sacrifice.
Thus, as Paul suggests, we are free at last from both the law of death (required by mortal law) and the law of sin (required by divine law).

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us.
It is important for us to acknowledge and appreciate the doom of mortality’s law and the strictness of divine law, but now we do not have to regard them or their condemnations as our own. Now, if we will allow it, we can subscribe to the law which Paul called “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ.” And if we satisfy the demands of this third law (and this one, thankfully, we can satisfy the terms of!), then we avoid the two terrible destinations of death and hell, and may instead access the third destination, the one that we desire.
It took the quite process to get here, but at last we have the option to obtain resurrection, forgiveness, and salvation with God.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Need for Law- Alma 41:3-4, 2 Nephi 2:5

And it is requisite with the justice of God that men should be judged according to their works; and if their works were good in this life, and the desires of their hearts were good, that they should also, at the last day, be restored unto that which is good.
And if their works are evil they shall be restored unto them for evil. Therefore, all things shall be restored to their proper order, every thing to its natural frame—mortality raised to immortality, corruption to incorruption—raised to endless happiness to inherit the kingdom of God, or to endless misery to inherit the kingdom of the devil, the one on one hand, the other on the other.

And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil. And the law is given unto men. And by the law no flesh is justified; or, by the law men are cut off. Yea, by the temporal law they were cut off; and also, by the spiritual law they perish from that which is good, and become miserable forever.

COMMENTARY

Men should be judged according to their works; and if their works were good, that they should be restored unto that which is good. And if their works are evil they shall be restored unto them for evil.
Raised to endless happiness or to endless misery, the one on one hand, the other on the other
Previously we observed that the natural order of the world is entropy and extinction. Eventually all of us will go quiet, cease all existence, and that would be the end of it. It is a silent and bleak destiny, devoid of anything whatsoever. To be fair, there is no pain or suffering in it, but that comes at the expense of there being no other things as well.
However, as we saw, this somber ending is given an escape in the form of God’s law. God interrupts our path and introduces an afterlife as a new final destiny for us. This afterlife is split in two, though. Instead of having just one destination, there is a division. One of the potential destinations is one of joy, the other is of misery.
This is blessing and the curse of God’s law. It is a medium, like water, by which those that are validated ascend to the surface, and those that are invalidated are sunk to the bottom. By it we have the greatest potential, but also the greatest of danger.

And the law is given unto men. And by the law no flesh is justified.
And here we find the big catch to all this plan: none of us can keep God’s law. It offers everlasting joy…but only to those that keep its strictures perfectly, which none of us will. It is good to have a law of righteousness to guide us, it is good to be given a choice in life, it is good to have the potential for exaltation…but all that good won’t actually do us any good when we inevitably break the law.
And remember, this isn’t just a law, it is a Law, capital L. It is eternal and irrefutable. We aren’t going to be able to just vote it away, it must be enacted universally, and must be compensated for entirely. God’s Law would take the surety of dead nothingness, and effectively replace it with the surety of damnation instead. Not really a better situation for us!
But…with that law came a plan. It turns out that there actually is a way for us to get the benefits at the positive endpoint of God’s Law, and avoid the detriments at the other endpoint. To accomplish that, though, requires some sort of mediator to bridge the gap.