2 Nephi 2

This is such a great doctrinal chapter. It's one of those chapters that each time you read it, I think you just try to glean one important idea since there is so much in it. Reading it this time, I felt like Lehi has drawn a line in the sand for his sons. He knows by vision what is ultimate going to happen to each, and as a result to their posterity, and tries to teach them the consequences of the directions they are going in. Here again, we can see the two extremes of righteousness and wickedness. Nephi and Jacob are both men who have had personal visitations of the Savior and probably have their calling and election made sure. Laman and Lemuel continue down the path of desire for murder and bloodshed. Lehi teaches them that in mortality, there are opposites in everything. On the one side is redemption which comes only to those who are righteous through repentance and the atonement. On the other, are those who are cut of from God because of wickedness and face an eternity of misery. Those are the extremes that his sons face. Lehi tells them that there has to be these two opposites as well as opposites in everything or else there would be nothing for their agency to choose between.

Everyone has the great gift of being able to choose. I think it is very insightful what we really ultimate choose between. Lehi tells his sons they are choosing between eternal life and eternal death as we all do. But he also says that our choices either allow us to act for ourselves or to be acted upon. When we choose correctly, we gain more freedom to act and choose. When we make bad choices, we hem our lives in and outside influences control us and our lives. They act upon us and take away our freedom to choose. This is a natural law that Satan takes great advantage of. It is his chief tool in his efforts to bring us all down into captivity and have all "men be miserable like unto himself." He is still wanting to have the control and take agency away from everyone.

Lehi tells his sons that "all men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil" and men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man for them to be free to choose liberty and eternal life... or choose captivity and death." Those are the ultimate consequences of our choices. Somewhere in the middle is where most of us are. Lehi says that one choice is made "according to the will of the Spirit" and one choice is made by the "will of the flesh." Those two things are always at the basis of every important choice we make.

There is a lot about the fall of Adam in this chapter. I'm going to wait until chapter 9 to talk about that.