Overcome, Even As I Also Overcame

In order to receive the blessings of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we must repent of our sins. Those who refuse to accept Jesus Christ and repent will suffer for their sins. 

Elder Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught the following about the choice to repent or suffer:

“Let not Jesus’ redemption for us stop at the immortalizing dimension of the Atonement.  Let us grasp the proffered gift of eternal life! We will end up either choosing Christ’s manner of living or His manner of suffering!” (“Overcome … Even As I Also Overcame,” Ensign, May 1987, 72).

 

Elder D. Todd Christofferson explained why we must choose to repent:

“If a man rejects the Savior’s Atonement, he must redeem his debt to justice himself. … An unredeemed individual’s suffering for sin is known as hell. It means being subject to the devil and is described in scriptural metaphors as being in chains or a lake of fire and brimstone. Lehi begged his sons to choose Christ’s Redemption ‘and not choose eternal death, according to the will of the flesh and the evil which is therein, which giveth the spirit of the devil power to captivate, to bring you down to hell, that he may reign over you in his own kingdom’ (2 Nephi 2:29). Even so, because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, hell has an end, and those who are obliged to pass through it are ‘redeemed from the devil [in] the last resurrection’ (Doctrine and Covenants 76:85). The relatively few ‘sons of perdition’ are ‘the only ones on whom the second death shall have any [lasting] power; yea, verily, the only ones who shall not be redeemed in the due time of the Lord, after the sufferings of his wrath’ (Doctrine and Covenants 76:32, 37–38)” (“Redemption,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2013, 112, endnote 4).