Mormon Beliefs: Plan of Salvation

Mormon beliefs teach a plan of salvation created by God before the world was made. It takes place in three stages and each stage brings us closer to the possibility of eternal life in God’s presence.

The purpose of our existence is to live forever with God. We cannot accomplish this on our own. To achieve eternal salvation requires the sacrifices of a Savior. The plan of salvation is designed to help us choose and accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and to choose to accept His atoning sacrifice.

The Bible tells us we began our journey before we were born. God told Jeremiah that He had known him since before he was born.

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations ((Jeremiah 1:5).

God created our spirits and we lived with Him for a time. During this time we had no body, but we did have agency (the right to choose) and personality. We learned about God and His plan and had opportunities to decide what sort of person we were. We made decisions about our level of obedience and trust in God.

However, we could not stay in this safe environment forever. God called all his spirit children together and told them He was creating the Earth for us. We’d have the opportunity to live there, gaining a family, a body, and other blessings. We would not remember our time with God, but He would send us with the Light of Christ, which would help us to recognize truth if we honestly sought for it.

However, the laws of justice would require us to face the trials and temptations of life perfectly, with no mistakes. That, of course, would not be possible. Because God tempers justice and mercy, He offered us a Savior who would come to earth as the Son of God and as the son of a mortal mother. This combined heritage would allow Him to live a mortal life and experience all the trials and temptations mortals face, but to resist them, to take on the sins of the world, and to overcome death. This atonement must be voluntary. Jesus, the firstborn Son of God, volunteered for this daunting task. It would be our responsibility to discover who our Savior was, to accept Him and His gospel, and to keep the commandments He would teach. If we accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior, activated the atonement, and kept the commandments, we could return home. We were to do all we could do ourselves and the atonement would make up the difference. Without the atonement, we could not return home, since none of us could live perfectly or overcome death on our own.

However, Satan tried to defeat the plan. He worked on the insecurities of the spirits in Heaven to offer them a more secure program. He offered to be our savior, but his offer was a self-centered one. He would control every aspect of our lives so we couldn’t possibly sin, thus eliminating the need for an atoning sacrifice on his part. He was not willing to suffer for us. In return for his services, he wanted all the glory and wanted us to worship only him. In other words, he wanted to replace God in our hearts.

Unfortunately, a third of the spirits preferred the “safe” route and followed Satan. Since Satan’s plan was not an option because it denied us our agency, Satan was removed from Heaven and those who had supported him were also forced to leave. They were denied the opportunity to come to earth and to benefit from the atonement they had rejected. Since that time, Satan and his followers have devoted themselves to making us miserable and attempting to prevent us from successfully completing our mission on earth.

The remainder of the spirits in heaven began coming to Earth to live. Life on earth is challenging for God’s children. It is meant as a time to learn and to grow, and so we must face trials and make choices. Even though the trials and choices might seem overwhelming, God promised never to leave us alone. We can always turn to Him for comfort and guidance. In James 1:5, we learn that if we pray, God will tell us what is true. This allows us to find and recognize His church.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus instructed us that mere faith or saying certain words is not enough to get us back home to God.

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 which is in heaven (Matthew 7:21).

God gave us commandments to help us safely navigate our life on earth. Our obedience to those commandments, when done in a spirit of love and faith, is a measure of our love for God and our willingness to sacrifice for Him. Obedience done just to get a reward or for show have no impact on our salvation—it must be done as a measure of how much we love God and want to obey Him. This means that after finding Jesus Christ and accepting Him as our Savior, we must then build a loving and personal relationship with Him. This motivates us to obey the commandments for the right reasons.

The final stage of the Plan of Salvation is life after death. When we die, we go to the Spirit World to wait for our resurrections. We will also account to God for how we spent our lives and how well we obeyed the commandments:

So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God (Romans 14:12).

Those who did not have an opportunity to learn about and to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior on earth will be given that opportunity after they die. It is not a second chance, but a first chance. Because God is unfailingly loving and fair, He would never condemn someone for something beyond the person’s control. Christ Himself considered missionary work for the dead so important He preached to these souls in Heaven during the space between His death and resurrection:

18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:

19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;

20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water (1 Peter 3:18-20).

Everyone who dies will have a chance to hear the gospel if they have not already had a fair chance to hear and to accept it. They will be judged according to their heart and their actions and those who have aligned themselves with God’s commandments in an honest and sincere spirit of love will have the opportunity to live with Him forever.