God Doesn’t Sing Amazing Grace; He Never Was a Wretch Like Me

Ralph, a Mormon, writes,

To say that the LDS God was a sinner would be like an LDS saying that the Traditional Christian God cannot forgive sins and make men perfect.

We all know from the Bible that God has promised that those who believe in Him will have their sins forgiven and He will remember them no more. That through the blood of Jesus all our garments, although they be as scarlet will be washed white as pure as snow. I could possibly find a few more but these make the point. We are perfected and our sins are removed never to be remembered as if they never happened – in fact according to God they never did happen (that is the point of NOT REMEMBERING). In this respect any person who achieves heaven (ie the presence of God whether LDS or Traditional Christian) for eternity are perfect and sinless.

Now we don’t teach nor spend much time discussing our Heavenly Father’s life before He gained His potential, but if He was like us instead of a Saviour of His world, then any wrong He did has been forgiven and forgotten and He was perfected and made sinless. So no He never was a sinner nor did He commit sin. That is the role of the Saviour – to completely remove sin from the person being saved because He paid the price and we have been freed.

I just heard this explicated five days ago by another Mormon as well:

“More than could have been a sinner; I believe that God the Father was a sinner. But He completely repented of His sins, and therefore lives His life as if He had never sinned.”

I’ve heard this from a lot of Mormons: that if God the Father was a sinner he has had his sins cleansed by another atonement, so now it is “as though he never sinned.” I wish that the Mormons who believe God the Father was a part of a royal line of sinless saviors would acknowledge the existence of such fellow Mormons, instead of pretending they don’t exist. Often such an obstinate denial will persist in a discussion thread where both Mormon positions are clearly articulated.

Anyways, I deal with this in the Q&A of GodNeverSinned.com. I answer the question, “Shouldn’t we respect the power of the atonement by overlooking God’s putative sins?”, with, “The whole beauty and power and value of the atonement is based on the fact that it was accomplished by a God who never, ever sinned.”

I have even talked to one Mormon who said that God (and his own God above him) literally and actually and non-figuratively forgot that sin was ever committed. As a theist who doesn’t believe God literally “forgets” anything, I believe the language of not remembering my sins means that he will never hold my sins against me, even though he can, in a manner of speaking, recall in his memory that I did sin. I find that very important, because I believe I will be, in a manner of speaking, singing Amazing Grace for all eternity. It’s hard to eternally thank God for his grace if both he and I literally forget that I ever sinned.

God, however, doesn’t sing Amazing Grace to his own God. He never was a wretch like me.

Ralph, if I could put all my cards on the table face-up: You need to repent of believing that God the Father could have been a wretch like you, and stop justifying it by saying that an atonement would have rendered it as though he never sinned. God the Father never needed an atonement, ever. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.

Grace and peace in Christ for those who freely receive eternal life,

Aaron