The "Natural Man"

Very likely, the most illustrative verse of scripture on the role, attributes, and future of the “natural man” was uttered by King Benjamin in his majestic address to his people. “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19).

What do we learn from this verse of scripture? Until Adam and Eve submitted themselves to the enticings of Lucifer and fell from a state of immortality to one of mortality taking the world and its contents with them the earth thus evolving from a terrestrial sphere to one of a telestial nature, God’s spirit children could not be branded “natural” in the scriptural sense of the word. Indeed even after their fall, Adam and Eve were not examples of natural persons given that in the garden they were made knowledgeable about the gospel which understanding they took with them as they were ushered out of their plush surroundings and began tilling the hostile earth. Children were born to them in the course of time, “And Adam and Eve blessed the name of God, and they made all things known unto their sons and their daughters” (Moses 5:12). It was at this point, in the progression of things, that “Satan came among them, saying: I am also a son of God, and he commanded them, saying: Believe it not; and they believed it not, and they loved Satan more than God. And men began from that time forth to be carnal, sensual, and devilish” (Moses 5:13).

So who are the natural men? The children of our first parents down to this very day who have never had the opportunity to hear the gospel preached or who rejected the gospel when it was preached to them or turned their backs on the gospel after they had received it. The Prophet Benjamin makes clear that in general terms the believers or saints are not numbered among the natural men because they have “put off the natural man and become [Saints] through the atonement of Christ the Lord.” In Benjamin’s words, we are obligated to “become as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord sees fit to inflict upon us, even as a child doth submit to his father.” The Lord expressed this notion somewhat differently when He said “no power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:41-42).

However, again I say, we Saints, those of us who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, should take to our hearts and understandings the realization that we may fall from our somewhat protected standing if we fail to actively pursue our sainthood. Unfortunately, many about us and before us have done so. Here are the warning words of Brother Hugh Nibley and the Prophet Nephi: “Being carnal, sensual, and devilish is an acquired skill. Nephi gives up on his own people but cannot excuse them: ‘And now I, Nephi, cannot say more; the Spirit stoppeth mine utterance, and I am left to mourn because of the unbelief, and the wickedness, and the ignorance, and the stiffneckedness of men; for they will not search knowledge, nor understand great knowledge, when it is given unto them in plainness, even as plain as word can be’ (2 Nephi 32:7)” (Hugh Nibley, “One Eternal Round,” Temple and Cosmos, 387).

It is a simple dichotomy. Natural men “love Satan more than God,” while Saints love God and embrace the gospel while rejecting all things which are of Satan. Saints seek to be one with God by means of the atonement. Or as Brother Nibley taught, “Those humans, spirits, or angels who are ‘at one’ with God are naturally at one with each other and with all his creatures” (Ibid., 379).