Come, Follow Me June 10-16: Alma 5-7
In 2024, the Maxwell Institute will offer a weekly series of short essays on the Book of Mormon, in support of the Church-wide Come, Follow Me study curriculum. Each week, the Maxwell Institute blog will feature a post by a member of the Institute faculty exploring an aspect of the week’s reading block. We hope these explorations will enrich your study and teaching of the Book of Mormon throughout the coming year.
Remembering and Experiencing Redemption
By Jennifer C. Lane
In chapter 5, we see Alma the Younger recount the origins of the church of God that his father Alma founded after Abinadi’s preaching. Alma the Younger reminds the people of the three occasions of deliverance from bondage that his father’s people experienced in the events of Mosiah 18-24: deliverance from the people of King Noah, the Lamanites, and sin. But with Alma the Younger’s lyrical development in Alma 5, a sermon preached years later to the people of Zarahemla, deliverance from sin takes center stage. From his personal experience, the urgent call to sufficiently remember captivity, along with divine mercy and deliverance, opens a window into the experiential dimension of deliverance: what is it like to be captive to sin, and what is it like to be rescued?
First, Alma reveals the nature of sin. It is a deep sleep. It is dwelling in darkness. It is being restricted by the bands of death and chains of hell. Alma starts by describing the experience of the people of the previous generation, but through his lived experience, he opens up spiritual reality and helps us see ourselves in it.
Alma reveals that there is a power stronger than spiritual sleep and death. The bands can be broken, and the chains can be loosened. Hearts can be changed. Our souls can be “illuminated by the light of the everlasting word” (Alma 5:7). And, as the light of the word of God breaks those bands and awakens us, our souls will expand, and we will “sing redeeming love” (Alma 5:9).
This is salvation. It is a condition of freedom and light, a changed heart. Redeeming love is the light that breaks the bands and loosens the chains.
And, so that there is no confusion on this most important of all topics, Alma asks the key question: What are the conditions, grounds, and causes of salvation?
To answer, he returns to the words of the prophet Abinadi and the choice of faith in the prophetic invitation to repent. “Did not my father Alma believe in the words which were delivered by the mouth of Abinadi? And was he not a holy prophet? Did he not speak the words of God, and my father Alma believe them?” (Alma 5:11).
Deliverance didn’t happen because Alma or his father Alma willed it. It was God who “changed their hearts” and “awakened them out of a deep sleep” (Alma 5:7). But it also didn’t happen without their faith. Alma connects the pieces between agency and God’s power—a question still central to theological reflections on salvation: “And according to his faith there was a mighty change wrought in his heart” (Alma 5:12).
Alma shares the means of deliverance: “And behold, [Abinadi] preached the word unto your fathers, and a mighty change was also wrought in their hearts, and they humbled themselves and put their trust in the true and living God. And behold, they were faithful until the end; therefore they were saved” (Alma 5:13).
At this point, Alma the Younger turns to his people and asks if they have been saved, but his question further reveals the existential quality of salvation, the transformation in our experience of life that happens here and now. “And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts? Do ye exercise faith in the redemption of him who created you?” (Alma 5:14-15).
Christ’s redemption has the power to wake us up, to give us a new birth, to expand our souls, to reshape our countenances. But it can only happen as we exercise faith in his redemption and leave our sins behind. Salvation is not arbitrary. Salvation is existential. Christ has “come to redeem his people from their sins” (Alma 5:21). And we have to choose to leave them behind even as the people of Alma and Limhi left their bondage.
What we have become through accepting or rejecting Christ will determine how we feel on the day of judgment. Without Christ, we are left with guilt and remorse, “a remembrance that ye have set at defiance the commandments of God” (Alma 5:18). With Christ, we not only can be pure and clean but have “the image of God engraven upon [our] countenances” (Alma 5:19). Whose we are at that day will have changed who we are.
Alma’s vision of who we become through Christ illuminates how we will feel “to sit down in the kingdom of God, with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, and also all the holy prophets, whose garments are cleansed and are spotless, pure and white” (Alma 5:24). Having once had a change of heart and having “felt to sing the song of redeeming love” will only matter at that day if we can “feel so now” (Alma 5:27). Continuing to choose repentance and redemption is continuing to choose Christ and his cleansing power. The process of leaving behind pride, envy, and a spirit of mocking is not redemption lasting a moment but a lifetime.
