Lessons on the Temple
Lesson No. Ten

The Temple and the Plan of Ordinances

The plan of salvation is the way that we must follow to become like our Heavenly Parents – We are the children of Heavenly Parents.  Therefore if we mature properly we can become like them. Over the course of his ministry Joseph Smith continued to teach more about our relationship with God.  A few weeks before his death Joseph gave his valedictory address on this subject known as the King Follett sermon.  Here Joseph introduced the doctrine expressed by the well-known couplet:  “As man is God once was; as God is man may become.”

The atonement, which the Book of Mormon often refers to as the plan of redemption,  is central to the plan of salvation – All gospel ordinances, including temple ordinances, pertain to and remind us of the atonement of Jesus Christ.  For example, we are to sacrifice in similitude of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  (See Moses 5:6-8).  Only He could lay down His life for the redemption of mankind.  We sacrifice by giving our lives to the Lord, to His work, and for our families.  The family is the fundamental unit of the kingdom of God both on the earth and in heaven.  I believe we most closely follow Jesus’ example of sacrifice by being willing to sacrifice all that we have even our own life, if necessary, to sustain and defend our marriage and our family.

The plan of ordinances – In Nauvoo in 1840 while restoring the doctrine of temple worship Joseph Smith spoke of "the plan of ordinances for the salvation of [Adam's] posterity unto the end" (TPJS, p. 167).  The term “plan of ordinances” describes another essential part of the plan of salvation. “Whenever the Lord has had a people on the earth who will obey his word, they have been commanded to build temples in which the ordinances of the gospel…that pertain to exaltation and eternal life may be administered” (LDS Bible Dictionary, Temple, p. 781).

The ordinances of the temple unlock the full power of the redemption and resurrection – Elder John A. Widtsoe taught that “power is knowledge made useful and active.”  We learn the plan of Salvation though latter day scriptures and prophets.  This knowledge is made useful and active through the ordinances of the gospel as we keep our covenants.  Remission of sins is extended through the ordinance of baptism.  We retain a remission of our sins from week to week through the ordinance of the sacrament.  By receiving temple ordinances and living temple covenants we receive the full redemptive power of the Lord’s atonement.

The priesthood and priesthood ordinances are essential – We only have a rudimentary understanding of them and their use in the eternal worlds – The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that "the ordinances of the gospel...were laid out before the foundations of the world" and "are not to be altered or changed.  All must be saved on the same principles....If a man gets the fulness of the priesthood of God, he has to get it in the same way that Jesus Christ obtained it, and that was by keeping all the commandments and obeying all the ordinances of the House of the Lord" (TPJS, pp. 367, 308).

The priesthood and priesthood ordinances are eternal – After His crucifixion the Lord taught the righteous spirits who were in the spirit world, and He "gave them power  to come forth, after his resurrection from the dead, to enter into his Father's kingdom, there to be crowned with immortality and eternal life"  (D&C 138:51).  I believe this power was given through an ordinance.  In the marriage ordinance, conditioned on our faithfulness, we receive this same power.  There are ordinances performed in temples in the spirit world which make effective the vicarious work we do in our temples.  (See The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, P. 252-53).  Ordinances are performed by the power of the priesthood in the pre-earth life, in mortality, in the spirit world, and in eternity after the resurrection.