2 Nephi 2:14-16

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Reference Search: 2 Nephi 2:14-16

14 And now, my sons, I speak unto you these things for your profit and learning; for there is a God, and he hath 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.

15 And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.

16 Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.

Quotes for Discussion

Agency

Excerpts from Free Agency and Freedom, by Dallin H. Oaks

A. Agency (free agency): An exercise of will, power to choose

Freedom: Power and privilege to carry out our choice

B. Free agency is absolute, but in the circumstances of mortality freedom is always qualified.

Freedom may be qualified or taken away 91) by physical laws, including the physical limitations with which we are born, (2) by our own actions, and (3) by the actions of others, including governments.

C. Interferences with our freedom to not deprive us of our free agency. When Pharaoh put Joseph in prison, he restricted Joseph’s freedom, but he did not take away his free agency. When Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple, he interfered with their freedom to engage in a particular activity at a particular time in a particular place, but he did not take away their free agency.

D. …we all have our free agency and God holds us accountable for the way we use it in thought and deed. That is fundamental.

E. The Prophet Joseph Smith described agency as “that free independence of mind which heaven has so graciously bestowed upon the human family as one of its choicest gifts” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 49; hereafter TPJS). The word free is also used to describe free agency in this hymn Latter-day Saints have been singing since our first hymn book in 1835:

Know this, that ev’ry soul is free

To choose his life and what he’ll be;

For this eternal truth is giv’n

That God will force no man to heav’n.

He’ll call, persuade, direct aright,

And bless with wisdom, love and light,

In nameless ways be good and kind,

But never force the human mind.

--Hymns #240

F. A loss of freedom reduces the extent to which we can act upon our choices, but it does not deprive us of our God-given free agency. A woman who has spent much of her life confined to a wheelchair expressed that thought in verse. Annie Johnson Flint writes:

I cannot walk, but I can fly;

No roof can house me from the stars.

No dwelling pen me in its bounds,

Nor keep me fast with locks and bars.

No narrow room my thoughts can cage,

No fetters hold my roving mind;

From these four walls that shut me in,

My soaring soul a way can find….

And when the long, long day is done,

I clasp the dearest book of all,

And through the dim, sweet silences,

I hear my Father’s accents fall.

Then, though in chains, yet I am free;

Beyond the pressure of my care,

Above earth’s night, my spirit mounts

On eagle wings of Faith and Prayer.

--“My Wants” by Annie Johnson Flint

(unpublished copy in possession of writer)

G. A person who insists that he is not responsible for the exercise of his free agency because he was “born that way” is trying to ignore the outcome of the War in Heaven. We are responsible, and if we argue otherwise, our efforts become part of the propaganda effort of the Adversary.

Individual responsibility is a law of life.

H. Regardless of a person’s susceptibility or tendency, his will is unfettered. His free agency is unqualified.

I.

1. Before the world was created, we existed in the presence of God.

2. Free agency is a gift of God.

3. We had free agency in the pre-existence.

4. There Satan presented a plan that would have taken away our free agency.

5. When God rejected Satan’s plan, he and those who followed him rebelled and were cast out of heaven.

6. Pursuant to God’s plan, Adam and Eve made the choice that caused the Fall, making mankind subject to mortality and sin in the world.

7. We are here to be tested, and this cannot occur without opposition in all things.

8. To provide that opposition, Satan is permitted to try to persuade us to use our free agency to choose evil.

9. If we choose evil and do not repent, we can ultimately become captives of Satan.