The verbal nod to Paul continues. Paul also preached that there was no sin where there was no law (see Romans 5:13). The concept is that it is the law which provides the division between good and evil according to God’s perspective rather than the mortal relative concepts of good or evil. Sin is therefore defined as deviating from God’s law rather than from humankind’s. It is good to obey traffic laws, and bad to break them. It is not, however, a sin to disobey a traffic law. There are consequences imposed according to local governments, but it doesn’t reach the level of sin, which distances humankind from God. It is in that light that Lehi says that if there is no sin there is no righteousness. The law that in its breach might be sin, can in its observance, lead us to righteousness.
It is an astounding theological concept to suggest that if there is no agency there is no God. Surely God’s existence is independent of our actions. While that is true, Lehi declares that agency is also fundamental to understanding who God is. It is so much a part of God that were there no agency, we would not have the God that we do. We would not have the Earth, for God created it as a location for the exercise of agency to choose. This is the meaning of the idea that humankind is placed on earth to act. We are also acted upon, for the agency of others will inevitably affect our own.
After the negative assertions that an absence of agency would mean an absence of God and His creations, Lehi turns to the positive statement. We need not worry about those negative possibilities, for, as Lehi says: “there is a God, and he had created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon.”