Purpose of Life

Throughout the ages, many wise people have tried to answer the questions about the purpose of life. It seems they have never really gotten anywhere. People around the world still ask these questions today: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? These questions are answered very simply and profoundly by the gospel of Jesus Christ through the Mormon doctrine of the plan of salvation. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon Church is officially known, is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, as He organized it while living on the earth. The plan that God has for His children is called the Plan of Salvation or the Plan of Happiness by Latter-day Saints. This doctrine is taught to children from the time they learn to talk. It is simple enough for a child to grasp the basics.

Members of the LDS Church believe that all those who will ever live upon the earth are literal spirit children of God. He is our Heavenly Father. He is concerned about our well-being and wants us to be happy. We are created in His image. He is a knowable, loving God, who has a body of flesh and bone. He created us as spirit children before we came to this earth. Our spirit lived long before it came to this earth to get a body. This period of time, when our spirit dwelt with God, is known among Mormons as the Pre-Existence. During this time, we were taught eternal principles by our Heavenly Father. However, we were limited in how much we could grow and progress. In order to become more like our Heavenly Father, as was His wish for us, we had to obtain bodies. There was only one way for this to be done.

God presented His plan to all of us. He would create a world where we could come and gain bodies. However, this time which we would spend in a temporal body would be a time of testing for us. We knew that we would make mistakes, but, since God is a perfect being, He cannot tolerate sin in His presence. Here was the conundrum. How could we overcome the consequences of a temporal life and return again to God if we became separated from Him by sin? God provided a way for us to overcome sin and imperfection. This pathway to redemption involved the willing sacrifice of a perfect being to satisfy the law of justice.

Justice demands that a price be paid for the breaking of any law. Mercy demands that a person be given a second chance to improve and learn from his mistakes. These two laws stand in opposition to one another, unless there is someone who will pay the price for someone else and then extend mercy, saying, “I have paid the price for your mistakes; thus, you do not have to pay that price.” Jesus Christ, our spirit brother, offered to be the one to do this. He would come to the earth, the literal, Only Begotten Son of God. In this unique roll, He could live a perfect life. As the son of a God as well as the son of a mortal mother, He had power over life and death. With his immortal traits, He had the ability to take upon Himself the sins and infirmities of the world. He suffered everything that will be suffered by anyone, ever, on this earth. He did so in order to succor us and to redeem us. By paying the price for our sins, He earned the right to choose for whom to apply that redemptive power. He has promised all of us that if we follow His commandments, He will apply that redemptive power to our souls and cleanse us.

Mormon doctrine teaches that the roll which Jesus Christ offered to take upon Himself of paying the price for our sins, becoming an intermediary between us and God, is called the atonement. The atonement’s power extends beyond paying the price for our sins, though. As a being who was half God, half man, He had the power to lay down His life and take it up again. When He was raised on the cross, after He had suffered for the sins of the world, He willingly gave up His life when He said, “It is finished,” and “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.” He gave up His life that He might take it again, breaking the hold of death over all of us. Because He overcame death, we will all be resurrected at the day of our Final Judgment. Each of our souls will be reunited with our bodies for eternity. Then we will be judged according to our works in this life, and then it will be determined if we lived worthily to return to dwell in the presence of God.

The Plan of Salvation, the Plan of Happiness, is a perfect plan. There will be those who fail to return worthily to the presence of God, but it will be because of their own choices, not because they were not given a chance to repent and improve.

When God presented this plan to us in the Pre-Existence, Latter-day Saints believe there was another plan presented as well. Lucifer, who became Satan, offered to come to earth and force everyone to obey, thus guaranteeing that all of us would be worthy to return to the presence of God. However, free agency (or free will) is an eternal principle. Each of us has a right to choose for ourselves. We even had a choice then. While God’s law is not a democracy, all of His spirit children had the right to choose which plan they wanted to follow. One-third of the host of heaven chose to follow Lucifer. They were all cast out of heaven for rebellion, the consequences of their choice, but the choice was still theirs to make. These spirits follow Lucifer as he continues to try and frustrate God’s plan by leading us away from keeping the commandments and becoming worthy, through the power of the atonement of Jesus Christ, to return to live with God.

The choice is still ours to make. The Plan of Salvation if full of hope and love. It is never too late to turn to God and make our lives better. If we follow the pattern of repentance and do our very best to keep the commandments, Jesus Christ has promised to apply the cleansing power of the atonement in our lives. This power can heal us in every way: physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally. There are effects of life which have nothing to do with our own choices from which He can heal us. If we draw near to our Savior, we feel His love and want to do all we can to draw even closer to Him.