Let me continue sharing some insights I have had about Alma’s lecture to his son Corianton. Through Alma, we learn that Corianton believes it's unfair that a sinner should be consigned to a state of misery. In chapter 42, Alma explains how the justice of God and the punishment of the sinner can be reconciled; here is where I have always gotten hung up. You might expect Alma to say something about how sin makes one unclean and no unclean thing can dwell in the presence of God; therefore, all unclean sinners would be separated from God and, hence, miserable. But he doesn’t; instead, he starts talking about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. He reminds Corianton that when the couple was cast out of the Garden, God placed a barrier between them and the tree of life, lest they put forth their hand, eat, and live forever.
Now why was it important that they not live forever? According to Alma, because Adam would have had no space for repentance, and the great plan of salvation would have been frustrated. Instead, it was appointed unto man to die, after having been granted a probationary time (earth life) to repent. Now the thing I’ve never understood is how living forever and being able to repent are mutually exclusive. It seems to me that living forever would have given Adam plenty of time to repent.
Why can’t someone who has attained immortality repent? I have struggled to understand this until the other day, when I read Alma 42:5 again and saw the word “space”. This time it took on a different meaning for me and made it all clear. Previously, I had always interpreted “space” to mean that God lengthened man’s life enough to let him repent; God gave him “space” in the temporal sense. That interpretation may be accurate, but if you define space spatially or geographically, then we read that God gave mankind physical space, away from God, in order to repent. In other words, eating from the tree of life would have made Adam live forever in the presence of God, and for some reason repentance is impossible when you are with God, kind of like how a child eventually needs to eave his parents in order to keep learning. We read in v. 7, “Ye see by this (death) that our first parents were cut off both temporally and spiritually from the presence of the Lord; and thus we see they became subjects to follow after their own will.” This means that repentance is only possible when we have to exercise faith in someone we don't see. Alma then goes on to teach how only through that exercise of faith unto repentance can the mercy of God, brought about through Christ’s atonement, apply to the sinner. Ultimately Alma’s message to Corianton is this: If it weren’t for God’s mercy through the Atonement, yes, it would be unfair to consign sinners to a state of misery. The mercy of God turned on by repentance, however, can overpower justice and bridge the space between man and God.
