Adeyinka A Ojediran | The Covenant Path: The Way to Eternal Life | April 2022 General Conference

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The Covenant Path: The Way to Eternal Life
By Elder Adeyinka A. Ojediran

Of the Seventy

The path to perfection is the covenant path, and Jesus Christ is the center of all ordinances and covenants.

A powerful king desired for his son to rule over one of his kingdoms. The prince had to learn and grow in wisdom to sit on the throne. One day, the king met with the prince and shared his plan. They agreed the prince would go to a different town and gain experiences. He would face challenges as well as enjoy many good things there. The king then sent him to the town, where the prince was expected to prove his faithfulness to the king and demonstrate that he was fit to receive the privileges and responsibilities the king had in store for him. The prince was given the liberty to choose to receive these privileges and responsibilities or not, depending on his desires and his faithfulness. I am sure you want to know what happened to the prince. Did he return to inherit the kingdom?

Dear brothers and sisters, each of us is a prince or princess. We have been sent to mortality by a loving Heavenly Father to enjoy the blessing of a body that would become immortal through the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are expected to prepare to return to God’s presence by proving that we will “do all things whatsoever the Lord [our] God shall command [us]” (Abraham 3:25).

To help us, the Savior came to redeem us and show the path to return to God. God’s children are invited to come to the Savior and be perfected in Him. In the scriptures, we find the invitation for us to come to the Lord repeated over 90 times, and more than half of these are personal invitations from the Lord Himself. Accepting the Savior’s invitation means partaking of His ordinances and keeping our covenants with Him. Jesus Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and He invites us “all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him” (2 Nephi 26:33).

Our gospel learning and teaching deepen our conversion to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and help us become more like Them. Even though not all things have been revealed concerning “the precise time and manner in which the blessings of exaltation [will be] bestowed,” we are nonetheless assured of them (M. Russell Ballard, “Hope in Christ,” Liahona, May 2021, 55).

Alma the high priest, teaching in the land of Zarahemla, recounted a profound invitation by Jesus Christ:

“Behold, he sendeth an invitation unto all men, for the arms of mercy are extended towards them, and he saith: Repent, and I will receive you.

“Yea, he saith: Come unto me and ye shall partake of the fruit of the tree of life” (Alma 5:33–34).

The Savior Himself invites us to come unto Him and take His yoke upon us that we may have rest in this tumultuous world (see Matthew 11:28–29). We come unto Christ by “exercising faith in [Him], repenting daily, making covenants with God as we receive the ordinances of salvation and exaltation, and enduring to the end by keeping those covenants” (General Handbook: Serving in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1.2.1, ChurchofJesusChrist.org). The path to perfection is the covenant path, and Jesus Christ is the center of all ordinances and covenants.

King Benjamin taught that because of the covenants we make, we become sons and daughters of Christ, who has spiritually begotten us, and under His head are we made free, for “there is no other name given whereby salvation cometh” (see Mosiah 5:7–8). We are saved as we endure to the end by “following the example of the Son of the living God” (2 Nephi 31:16). Nephi counseled that all is not done by merely getting into the strait and narrow path; we “must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men” (see 2 Nephi 31:19–20).

General Conference Sunday Afternoon Session April 2022

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