Scripture: Lehi continues to develop his exposition of the nature of the law and the atonement. After establishing the atonement’s necessity in overcoming the penalties of the law (the atonement’s fulfillment of justice), he now discusses the opposite problem: whether mercy can supplant the law.
He begins with a truism: If there is no law, there is no sin. One definition of sin would be a violation of eternal law. Lehi obviously begins here to demolish the concept that the absence of sin would be a good thing. That concept was implicit in Satan’s thinking—that by preventing the pains of violating the law, he would prevent sin (implied in Moses 4:1).
Lehi emphatically denies that the absence of sin is beneficial. In Lehi’s theology, the absence of sin also means the absence of righteousness. His explanation is constructed in parallels, each of which builds on the previous idea. (The parenthetical phrases are implied):
• If no sin, then no righteousness.
• If no righteousness, then no happiness.
• If no happiness, then no misery nor punishment.
• If none of these, then there is no God.
• If there is no God, then we are not.
• (If there is no God,) then the earth is not.
• (If there is no God,) then there is no creation.
These examples highlight Lehi’s proposition that there must be an opposition in all things and that this opposition is so significant as to be the purpose behind all creation. Without creation, things would not exist, either as the subjects or the objects of action, “wherefore, all things must have vanished away.” The law of opposites creates a condition in which there are “things… to act [or] be acted upon.”
Lehi’s essential teaching is not simply that opposites exist but that they function to create situations in which “things” either act or are acted upon. While we typically concentrate on the opposed conditions, it is really this “acting” that is the point of Lehi’s argument. The opposites merely provide the field in which “acting upon” occurs.
Variant: The typesetter for the 1830 edition dropped and at the beginning of the second sentence. Each of the sentences originally began with “and if.… ” The parallelism of these sentences is much more obvious with the original and reinserted.