Of Coming to Heaven and the Lord’s Supper

The lyrics to a Spanish song that I enjoy listening to include this line:

Para entrar en el cielo, no es preciso morir.

That translates into, “In order to enter heaven it is not necessary to die.”  Of course, that is true.  I have often said and know from some experience that eternal life can begin even in mortality, since the core element of eternal life is to possess the spiritual gift of charity, meaning the pure love of Christ (see Moroni 7:47), the one spiritual gift that never ends.

While it is not necessary to die to receive eternal life, we do need to come unto Christ.  Eternal life means living with God the Father, in His presence, and inheriting all that He has.  To qualify for that existence where perfect love and goodness prevail from this world of imperfection, corruption, and sin, it is necessary to come unto Christ, who has overcome all and who offers to help us to overcome all.

We come unto Christ only on His terms.  We cannot command that He come to us on our terms.  He is the perfect being, and we are very much short of that.  We are the ones with distance to cover.  Christ condescended to come as mortal man into our presence and our world of evil, but He did not condescend to partake of the evil.  We have.  He left our world through death, as we all will, but then was resurrected, which none were before Him, but because of whose resurrection all will follow.

Following resurrection, we will all be judged by the Father to determine whether we may remain in the Father’s presence and continue to grow and develop under His care.  At that judgment, Christ will identify for the Father those who have come to the Son and thereby qualified to remain in heaven.

How do we come unto Christ?  What are His terms?  Just these, that we solemnly promise by covenant with Him and the Father that we will accept Him and keep His commandments.  That is, we promise that we will follow Christ and stay with Him.  How can coming unto the Savior mean anything less?  Either we come unto Him or we do not.

The Savior has declared that this solemn promise and covenant is to be made in such a way as to be unmistakably imprinted on our minds, rich with the symbolism of washing away sin, burying the unrighteous way of life, and then rising to newness of life in accordance with the laws and ways of heaven.  This covenant and symbolism are present in the ordinance of baptism.  We place ourselves in the Savior’s hands via those whom He has personally chosen to represent Him.  We are buried in water, washed and cleansed from sin, and arise out of the water in the image of the resurrection into a Christian life.

The person who approaches baptism truly repentant of all of his sins, genuinely committed to a complete turning away from all evil, will feel the powers and joys of heaven filling his heart.  He will enter into the presence of God through the power of the Holy Ghost.  In fact, shortly after baptism, the next step in coming unto Christ is to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands of Christ’s representatives, just as the Samaritans anciently, who were baptized by Philip and soon thereafter were given the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands of the Apostles Peter and John (see Acts 8:12-17).

I have experienced those steps personally and testify that it works just that way.   Through faith, repentance, and baptism, sins are washed away, and through the gift of the Holy Ghost the heart is changed and filled with the gift of charity, the pure love of Christ.

Sad to say, and I would not excuse myself by noting that it happens to us all, not long after the covenant is made the covenant is broken, and it is not broken by God.  He perfectly fulfills His part.  On our part, sins are once again indulged in, old or new ones, or both.  The Spirit is grieved and withdraws, the gift of charity is also withdrawn, the man is left back on his own.  With the covenant broken what are we to do?

With a graciousness that far surpasses the patience of any mortal man, God allows us to remake the covenant and come unto Christ again.  We need not be rebaptized.  God has provided another ordinance that allows us to reaffirm the baptismal covenant and reclaim its powers and blessings.  As with baptism, it is a physical action that embodies a spiritual commitment.  Also, like baptism, it is designed and prescribed by God in a symbolic form that reminds us of Jesus Christ through whom our redemption is possible.

I refer to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  As with baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper comes in two parts.  In the first, we partake of broken bread, reminding us of the Savior’s body broken for us and soon after resurrected.  In the second we partake of water or wine to remind us of the blood shed by Christ in Gethsemane and on the cross.

As we partake of the sacrament with the same intent and spirit with which we were baptized, the whole baptismal covenant is reaffirmed and renewed, and we resume our Christian life.  We return to Christ.  We need this sacrament or our baptism would be nullified by our later sins.  We need it to retain the effects of our baptism.

It is astonishing, really.  It is a marvelous manifestation of the grace of God that He offers us this opportunity, weekly, to renew our solemn baptismal promises that we not so solemnly break.  While we renege, the Lord does not.  In fact, He offers us the second, third, and hundredth chance, which by all rights and justice He need not do.  Which of us would have such patience with those who broke their promises to us?

Because of the Lord’s patience, to enter into heaven, the presence of God, again and again, it is not necessary to die.  It is necessary to live, and to do that we must come unto Christ, and He beckons to us, all the time.  Why wait to answer His call?