Stephen E. Robinson said in his book “Following Christ:”
A common error made by some members of the Church is to equate the faithfulness that is part of enduring to the end with being sinless. Every time we commit a sin, they would argue, we are unfaithful to Christ and break our covenants. But that will not wash at all, for all the faithful Saints continue to commit sins from time to time. That is why the repentance and renewal associated with the ordinance of the sacrament is part of the gospel covenant. God has anticipated that his sons and daughters within the Church and within the covenant will mess up more or less regularly, and he has provided us with a remedy when we do.
Just as faithful spouses may not be perfect and may do things that injure their partners and wound the relationship without necessarily ending the marriage, so faithful Church members are also imperfect and may do things that stress the covenant relationship with God—without necessarily ending that relationship. I’m not arguing here that such mistakes are trivial and that they don’t matter. I’m only arguing that they don’t necessarily terminate the covenant. What does it mean when my wife, Janet, rolls her eyes and says, “Oh well, at least he’s faithful”? She certainly doesn’t mean that I’m perfect! Rather she means that despite my flaws, I am loyal to her—there is no one else. Similarly, in the gospel covenant, being faithful doesn’t mean being perfect. It just means we’re loyal to Christ, and there is nobody else (no interest, cause, or loyalty ahead of him). In our own covenants with each other, we can distinguish between being perfect on the one hand and being faithful on the other. True, some evil acts violate the marriage covenant and leave it in ruins, but forgetting a wedding anniversary isn’t one of them. That is why the Lord has instructed us to meet often to partake of the sacrament—to repent of the sins He knows we commit and thus renew our covenants. We “renew” them because they get soiled and tattered in our day-to-day lives—because we make mistakes and need to get back to base. Still, as long as Christ comes first in our lives, as long as we haven’t made him second to some other “love,” then we are still faithful partners, though we may need to apologize to him from time to time and start over in some areas of our relationship. As long as we are in mortality, we will have the need to repent and renew our covenants regularly. But that does not mean we are unfaithful—not unless some other loyalty, some other love, has taken Christ’s place as our highest concern. ~Stephen E. Robinson, Following Christ (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992), 276-278 (pocket book edition)
