From the book “Protecting Against Eternal Identity Theft:”
Hugh Nibley insight-fully observed:
“Who is righteous? Anyone who is repenting. No matter how bad he has been, if he is repenting, he is a righteous man. There is hope for him. And no matter how good he has been all his life, if he is not repenting, he is a wicked man. The difference is which way you are facing. The man on top of the stairs facing down is much worse off than the man on the bottom step who is facing up.The direction we are facing, that is repentance; and this is what determines whether we are good or bad. (“Funeral Address, Approaching Zion,” Collected Works of Hugh Nibley [Salt Lake City” Deseret Book, 1989], 9:301-302
This is the principle the Lord Himself tried to teach His disciples in the parable recorded in Matthew 20:1-15. This parable. often called the parable of the workers in the vineyard, teaches us that we don’t have to be at a certain level of righteousness to have access to the love and enabling power of Christ. We start wherever we are and the eventual reward is the same for everyone. “Even if ye can no more than desire to believe,” as the prophet Alma taught, “let this desire work in you” (Alma 32:27). Alma knew this from personal experience. His desire sprang from desperation born of exquisite suffering for his sins. Only then did he care to remember his father’s teachings about Jesus Christ, The Son of God, who would atone for the sins of the world. When his mind “caught upon this thought, [he] cried within [his] heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me[!]” (Alma 36: 17-18). He not only found immediate relief, but he experienced joy that was as exquisite as his suffering. Of course, a demonstration of his sincerity had to follow, but the beginning of access to Christ’s Atonement can be as close as one righteous thought, one sincere desire, one earnest prayer.
President Boyd K. Packer declared that except for defection to perdition after having known a fullness, no other sin or rebellion or addiction is exempt from forgiveness. When we sincerely desire it and are willing to pay the “uttermost farthing,” our sins and rebellions and addictions are transferred to the Lord, and He settles our account in a way that we with our mortal understanding cannot comprehend (see “The Brilliant Morning of Forgiveness,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 19-20). This is the confirming doctrine of the Atonement. ~Barbara D. Lockhart, Wendy C. Top & Brent L. Top, Protecting Against Eternal Identity Theft, Covenant Communications, Inc. (American Fork, Utah, 2013). 81-82
