The atonement provides for the return to life after both types of death. The death of the body is overcome by the resurrection. The spiritual death that separates us from God is overcome by redemption from our sins, allowing us into his presence.
The Book of Mormon prophets preach this atonement but make it clear that the atonement accomplishes these reconciliations in two different ways. The resurrection of the body requires nothing from us. It is a free gift to all. This aspect of the atonement probably led to (or allowed) the Nehorite heresy that all would be saved. The Nehorite error was in extending this concept past the resurrection into the qualitative, moral reconciliation or our relationship with God. The atonement provides this reconciliation as a free gift, but we must take action to complete it. Even though there are conditions placed on receiving the full benefit of the atonement for spiritual death, there is no way that we can atone for ourselves. Samuel emphasizes this second aspect of the atonement.
How does it operate? It recompenses for sins—in advance, as well as retrospectively. The easiest way to understand what the atonement does in this aspect is to examine how it works in the case of future sin. How could someone repent of something he has not yet done? It would be impossible if we viewed the atonement only as payment for something that has happened. The atonement covers all sin, including future sins, and therefore does not easily fit the model of “payment.” What the atonement does is bring about the ability to repent.
At this point Samuel’s statement becomes the clearest exposition of this aspect of the atonement. Note his emphasis: that the atonement “bringeth to pass the condition of repentance.” It does not bring repentance to pass, we must do that ourselves. Nor does it bring to pass our ability to live the laws of a celestial kingdom (D&C 88:22), but it does bring to pass the “condition of repentance”—meaning that, because of the atonement, we are able to repent.
This ability to repent is all-important:
O the wisdom of God, his mercy and grace! For behold, if the flesh should rise no more our spirits must become subject to that angel who fell from before the presence of the Eternal God, and became the devil, to rise no more.
And our spirits must have become like unto him, and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies, in misery, like unto himself; yea, to that being who beguiled our first parents, who transformeth himself nigh unto an angel of light, and stirreth up the children of men unto secret combinations of murder and all manner of secret works of darkness. (2 Ne. 9:8–9)
While verse 8 is most explicit on the Messiah’s atonement for physical death, the statement that the “spirits must have become like unto him” (v. 9) is the logical consequence of a world in which repentance is impossible. The cumulative weight of unrepented, uncleansed sin, would create such a condition.
Theologically, then, the Savior’s atonement provides an absolute resurrection and an absolute condition of repentance. That part of the atonement is universally available. Whether we do or do not repent, the very fact that it is possible is due to the atonement.