Literature: Lehi’s elegant parallel has long been recognized for its epigrammatic power, making it perhaps the most quoted verse in the Book of Mormon. The verb tenses begin with the past and a subjunctive present (a state that occurs in the future, relative to “fell”), then the present and the subjunctive present (still communicating a future state relative to “are”). The result is a phrase that implies movement and progression. It also creates an inverted parallel of causation and existence. In the first clause, Adam’s fall leads to existence. In the second clause, existence leads to “joy.”
Scripture: Like Satan’s “misery,” humankind’s “joy” occurs in a much larger context. Adam’s fall has a purpose: that we might exist, which would not have occurred had Adam and Eve stayed in the garden. The purpose of our existence is that we might have “joy.” The purpose of existence is to use the process of opposition to receive joy in heaven.
“Joy” in Joseph Smith’s scriptural vocabulary is a state that transcends mortality. For example, in the story of Ammon, King Lamoni offers a simple but sincere prayer, falls to the ground, and is presumed dead. Ammon, however, “knew that king Lamoni was under the power of God;… the light of the glory of God… had infused such joy into his soul… that this had overcome his natural frame, and he was carried away in God” (Alma 19:6). Thus, “joy” is the physiologically overwhelming result that occurs when the light of God’s glory is infused into human consciousness.
When Ammon and his brothers were reunited with their father after their mission, they experienced a spiritual outpouring, described as “the joy of [their] God,” a divine infusion so debilitating that Ammon’s strength was “exhaust[ed]… and he fell again to the earth.” Mormon comments: “Now was not this exceeding joy? Behold, this is joy which none receiveth save it be the truly penitent and humble seeker of happiness” (Alma 27:17–18). Mormon exults: “And this is the account of Ammon and his brethren,… their sorrows, and their afflictions, and their incomprehensible joy” (Alma 28:8).
These men are filled, not with mortal happiness, but with an aspect of eternal glory. The joy that Mosiah2 and his sons taste is a portion of the joy of the Lord, which can be experienced completely only after this life. Christ told his twelve apostles in the New World: “And for this cause ye shall have fulness of joy; and ye shall sit down in the kingdom of my Father; yea, your joy shall be full, even as the Father hath given me fulness of joy” (3 Ne. 28:10).
Doctrine and Covenants 101:36 corroborates: “Wherefore, fear not even unto death; for in this world your joy is not full, but in me your joy is full.” Although Mosiah2 and Ammon are filled (“swallowed up”) with “joy,” a “fulness of joy” can be attained only in the next life. Doctrine and Covenants 93:33–34 explains: “For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; And when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy.”
“Fulness of joy” can be achieved only when “spirit and element” (or body) become inseparably connected. When are body and element inseparably connected? After the resurrection. “Fulness of joy” is a state of joy in the glory of God, part of the eternal joy that comes through our progression toward godhood.
Doctrine and Covenants 93:94 also explains why mortality is essential: “When separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy.” The equation is simple. “Men are, that they might have joy” (2 Ne. 2:25). Knowing the eternal nature of joy, this passage becomes the exact equivalent of Moses 1:39: “This is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” When human beings achieve eternal life, they will also achieve a “fulness of joy.” The physical body, reunited with the spirit at the resurrection, is necessary to allow a fulness of joy.
Doctrine and Covenants 93 also allows us to deduce a third state—body and spirit being “separably” connected, or mortality. In this state, human beings may temporarily taste eternal joy. In ways that we do not understand, the body appears to act as an intensifier for these spiritual feelings, giving us brief experiences that rapidly overwhelm the physical body but which prefigure the glorious joy that awaits the righteous.