Could not look upon sin

Through faith in Christ, you can conquer all sin. Jesus said:

19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. 
20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
21 To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. (Revelation 3)

John wrote:

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15)

People, by default, love the world: “For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s.” (Philippians 2:21) Through faith, a person’s desires can be turned away from sin:

4 Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.
5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2)

Through faith in Christ, many people have become sanctified to the point that they were disgusted by sin:

`Now they, after being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, having their garments made white, being pure and spotless before God, could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence; and there were many, exceedingly great many, who were made pure and entered into the rest of the Lord their God. (Alma 13:12)`

The root of why we find pleasure in sin lies in our ignorance of things as they really are. Sin is not desirable to those who know the true value, cost, and benefit of things as they really are.

Your desires are not changed by magic. Desires only change through information—believed through precept (reason) or through experience. You don’t desire what you believe will harm you. You don’t desire what you don’t believe is worthwhile. Unless you are a liar, you don’t desire things that you know are a lie, or are a counterfeit to the real thing. Only a fool finds mirth in folly.¹ Only the ignorant or dishonest find pleasure in sin.

God brings about remission of sins through belief in him—not through a magic change that comes independent of you changing, but because he gives you the reasons to change in what he teaches you about himself, and because you choose to believe them:

7 Behold, he changed their hearts; yea, he awakened them out of a deep sleep, and they awoke unto God. Behold, they were in the midst of darkness; nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word; yea, they were encircled about by the bands of death, and the chains of hell, and an everlasting destruction did await them.
8 And now I ask of you, my brethren, were they destroyed? Behold, I say unto you, Nay, they were not.
9 And again I ask, were the bands of death broken, and the chains of hell which encircled them about, were they loosed? I say unto you, Yea, they were loosed, and their souls did expand, and they did sing redeeming love. And I say unto you that they are saved.
10 And now I ask of you on what conditions are they saved? Yea, what grounds had they to hope for salvation? What is the cause of their being loosed from the bands of death, yea, and also the chains of hell?
11 Behold, I can tell you—did not my father Alma believe in the words which were delivered by the mouth of Abinadi? And was he not a holy prophet? Did he not speak the words of God, and my father Alma believe them?
12 And according to his faith there was a mighty change wrought in his heart. Behold I say unto you that this is all true.
13 And behold, he preached the word unto your fathers, and a mighty change was also wrought in their hearts, and they humbled themselves and put their trust in the true and living God. And behold, they were faithful until the end; therefore they were saved.
14 And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts? 15 Do ye exercise faith in the redemption of him who created you? Do you look forward with an eye of faith, and view this mortal body raised in immortality, and this corruption raised in incorruption, to stand before God to be judged according to the deeds which have been done in the mortal body? (Alma 5)

7 And behold, ye do know of yourselves, for ye have witnessed it, that as many of them as are brought to the knowledge of the truth, and to know of the wicked and abominable traditions of their fathers, and are led to believe the holy scriptures, yea, the prophecies of the holy prophets, which are written, which leadeth them to faith on the Lord, and unto repentance, which faith and repentance bringeth a change of heart unto them—
8 Therefore, as many as have come to this, ye know of yourselves are firm and steadfast in the faith, and in the thing wherewith they have been made free.
9 And ye know also that they have buried their weapons of war, and they fear to take them up lest by any means they should sin; yea, ye can see that they fear to sin—for behold they will suffer themselves that they be trodden down and slain by their enemies, and will not lift their swords against them, and this because of their faith in Christ. (Helaman 15)

One may ask: if sin is only desirable to those who either don’t know or intentionally ignore true value, cost, and benefit, why is sin so prevalent, even among those who profess to believe in God? The answer lies in the almost universal lack of faith in Christ.

Until a person seeks more information through faith, they will not be able to learn what prevents them from seeing the true cost of sin.

Obtaining more knowledge about reality is not for the faint of heart. It requires immense trust in God, as well as effort in seeking and diligence in obeying what is learned in order to learn more about reality.

Learning more about reality is the most harrowing experience life has to offer. It requires a great deal of faith to endure—let alone seek—God’s instruction on how things really are.

As God reveals to you the true cost and true benefit of what is available in life, you will find far less value in what everyone tends to value. You will find severe cost in what others consider innocuous. You will yearn for deep things of eternity. You will find very little satisfaction or joy in the things of this world. The moorings of all things considered valuable to the world will be violently ripped from your heart. What’s worse, the removal of desire for the things of this world must occur while there is as yet nothing to replace it. One must truly be empty to be prepared for God to fill them, and it might take decades of enduring the emptiness before you are finally filled with the truth you seek.

Sanctification is the process of learning—through faith—the truth of all things, while necessarily reconciling your desires, reasons, and actions to that truth. As you learn more and more about reality, you will obtain a more correct understanding of what is good, what is evil, the true cost of things, who pays it and how, and the true benefit of things. This will create in you a greater willingness to learn more about and submit wholly to God through an increased awareness of your nothingness and his loving sacrifice in the face of reality. In the scriptures, this is called a “broken heart and a contrite spirit.”

When you realize that what you thought was good in and around you is really not very good at all—and may actually be evil—your heart breaks and your spirit becomes submissive:

1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
7 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
11 Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; 
12 That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:
13 But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
14 For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;
15 Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;
16 And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: (Ephesians 2)

When you realize that, through your “trespasses and sins,” you are “dead,” that your actions were “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,” or according to “the lusts of [y]our flesh” and the “desires of the flesh,” and that you are doomed to the “wrath” of eternal punishment for your choices, you will develop a broken heart and a contrite spirit. You will realize that God, in his rich mercy and “his great love,” has extended his grace and kindness towards you through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as a gift from God. You will realize that you did not and could not deserve his gift of reconciling you to the Father through your forsaking of sin, and this will cause you to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit.

Willingly submitting to this incrementally increasing knowledge is as desirable as subjection to immense pressure is to a lump of coal. Without faith—perceiving and believing what is far from your sensual experience with unshakable certainty—you will only be able to see sanctification as immense, and purposeless, pain and sorrow. But if you see the end of your suffering with the eye of faith, you will see how it is the only possible way to convert you into something much more valuable. A lump of coal cannot see its potential as a diamond, but through faith, you can see enough of the divine potential God makes possible in you to endure and even desire the unimaginably intense experience necessary to realize it.

Willingly submitting to the truth of all things is a burden so sore that it is impossible to imagine except to those who have done it. Try to imagine what it is like for your concept of what is good to expand closer to the fullness of who and what God really is. Try to imagine what it would be like to realize that everything you thought had value has far less (or even negative) value than you had supposed. Imagine everything you previously valued moving farther behind you, causing you the pain of loss and robbing you of all the crutches you have leaned on to shelter you from your weakness, while what you previously considered to be God moves farther ahead of and away from you than you previously thought possible. This is what Daniel meant when he said, “my comeliness became corruption.” (Daniel 10:8)

Imagine walking further into the dark, through faith only, while simultaneously letting go of the flicker of what you supposed was a bright light. It is a trial so completely harrowing—both in its intensity and consummate duration—that only those who experience it can comprehend it, and yet it is required of all who will come to Christ, as it is the very way we do.

Without walking in faith towards a more accurate understanding of the truth and value of things, we can never marshal sufficient desire for eternal life and every good outcome, which are the same. If we do not have sufficient desire, we will never have the required mindset or motivation to engage in the content or intensity of reason required for eternal life and obtaining every good outcome. Without sufficient reasons, we will never exercise the actions required for eternal life and obtaining every good outcome.

Sanctification is not an optional process. It is the incessant iterative application of the faith cycle to every aspect of life. It is walking deeper into the darkness in order to obtain more light. It is gaining a greater understanding of the truth and value of all things. It is letting go of what God has shown you is lesser for what—in the eye of faith—you now see as better. It is discipleship. It is what it means to have a broken heart and contrite spirit. It is what it means to walk by faith and not sight.