2 Nephi 2:7-8

Brant Gardner

Lehi’s discussion of the Atonement continues. He had mentioned that God had given laws, and now declares that Jehovah himself, in his mortal ministry, gave himself as a sacrifice for sin to answer the law. This imagery was powerful for an Israelite. They had been offering sacrifices for atonement since the law was given. Thus, Lehi places Jehovah the Messiah as paralleling the way Israelites already understood that the law could be reconciled. Just as a burnt offering would atone for the sin that separated Israel from their God, so this ultimate sacrifice atoned for the conditions that kept God and humankind separate.

During Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, he indicated that the way we bring our sacrifices to God can alter their effectiveness (see Matthew 5:23–24). Thus, Lehi here teaches that the effectiveness of this ultimate sacrifice comes only to those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit. Salvation may be free, as Lehi indicated in 2 Nephi 2:4, but it is not without effort.

The message in verse 8, that the understanding of the redemption of humankind through the Redeeming Messiah should be made known to all of the inhabitants of the earth, is couched in language that could easily appear to be Christian and therefore out of place for Lehi. However, this is the message that Lehi and Nephi have preached from the beginning, and Nephi saw it as a restoration of a teaching that had been lost among those in Jerusalem. Importantly, as Lehi explains the Atonement, he does so in terms that invoke the understanding of the law of Moses.

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