God doesn’t take away temptation. He gives us sufficient reasons not to sin,3 and leaves us free to choose. While God is the source of the information that can catalyze the change to your desires, he does not cause that change,4 except in the power he gives you to make the choice yourself.5 Even God’s punishment serves as a source of information.6 Suffering can be a powerful source of information to persuade us to agree with God,7 and though it requires far less faith to notice and heed than other forms, there are still many who choose to ignore it.8 No matter what information he makes available to you, you still have to choose to perceive, receive, and act upon it.9 It is your response to this information that causes a change of heart.10
Many expect God to take away their desire for sin simply because they have asked him to. While some scriptures seem to describe God directly causing the mighty change of heart, they can only be interpreted this way by ignoring their context.11
Asking God to make you not want to sin anymore is asking him to take your agency from you, because he has already given you power to make that decision for yourself, and you’re not choosing to do it. It’s no different than asking him to help you stand and walk when you already have the ability to do so. God will not force you to find or recognize better ideas, to honestly consider them and compare them to alternatives, or to implement them.
A request for God to take away your desire for sin is a confession that you desire sin more than you desire him. Not only are you asking him to reward your ongoing rebellion against him with better outcomes than you deserve, you are also proving to him that you don’t really want what you are asking for, as you continue to choose contrary to it when you have the ability to do otherwise. God has never given anyone a reason to believe that he would answer such prayers.12
Even if God could magically change your heart to no longer desire evil, why would he not do so for everyone? If the requirement for God to magically free you from the desire to do evil is simply to ask for it, why are there so many who have asked and yet not received, and why are there so many who have chosen to sin again after being born again?
If God could magically change your desires, of what worth would it be to use the desire of our hearts as a criterion for eternal judgment, as God does?13 Why did God pay so high a price to gift us with agency if all he expects us to do with it is beg him to take it away by forcing us to desire what is good? Instead, we are told repeatedly that he has given us moral knowledge and left us free to choose.14
The atonement is not a magic trick where you get something for nothing. It’s a system where he has made a way for you to be forgiven —something you could not do yourself—while giving you the power to choose to live up to what you know about him.
No one who is waiting for God to “give” them a “mighty change of heart” will ever find what they seek. Full submission to God is a choice.15 God doesn’t forcefully change what you think or how you feel about anything. Doing so would be counter to his purpose in maximizing the joy of all people. Joy can only be found in what you desire and choose of your own free will. Removing your power of choice removes your potential for joy.
Spiritual rebirth does not magically remove your desire to sin; rather, your desire to sin abates through a conscious choice to fully reconcile your ideas, desires, and actions with your understanding of how God is, based on the reasons he provides. It is faith and repentance that bring the change of heart.16
Footnotes
- 1. Don’t conform yourself to the present world, but be transformed by completing the process by which you obtain the mind of God; improving your idea of what is good, from your present understanding of what aligns with him unto the fullness of who he is. Judge wisely... (Romans 11:2-3, Author’s Reflection) ↩
- 2. Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart. (Psalms 119:34) ↩
- 3. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted. (Hebrews 2:18) ↩
- 4. Even in cases where credit is given to God for the change of desire, the context always includes a description of it being the choice of the people in response to information from God rather than a direct action by God. For example, in Ezekiel 36:26 God figuratively explains that he will give “a new heart” and “a new spirit” to Israel, having previously described in greater detail that it is the individual who makes a new heart and a new spirit through choosing to forsake their sins in response to information from God: “Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? (Ezekiel 18:31) ↩
- 5. See Helaman 14:30, previously cited. ↩
- 6. For example, Alma’s choice to submit to God came in response to tremendous pain: “And it came to pass that I was three days and three nights in the most bitter pain and anguish of soul; and never, until I did cry out unto the Lord Jesus Christ for mercy, did I receive a remission of my sins. But behold, I did cry unto him and I did find peace to my soul.” (Alma 38:8) ↩
- 7. Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; (Hebrews 5:8) ↩
- 8. Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him. (Proverbs 27:22) A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool. (Proverbs 17:10) ↩
- 9. You should not expect Christ to lift you into heaven while your heart remains in the manner of and fixed on the things of this world—this isn’t how faith or righteousness work. Nor should you expect Christ to raise you from the dead while you still do and desire what only leads to death. But, as it is written, the word is not just something you say or do, but also something you sincerely and deeply feel. This is the word of faith, which we proclaim: Even if you proclaim by your external works that Jesus is the Lord, and that God raised him from the dead, you will only be saved if you have also fully conformed your internal desire and decisions to him, just as he conformed his internal desire and decisions to the Father. (Romans 10:6-9, Author’s Reflection) ↩
- 10. 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— (Helaman 15:7) ↩
- 11. For example, Paul wrote that the Lord said that he would “put [his] laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts” (Hebrews 8:10) after seven prior chapters of explaining that the manner of doing so was to send Jesus Christ to live, preach, and die among them. In another example, the Lord tells Israel: “...After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33) Here, “those days” refer to prolonged, intense suffering described at length by Jeremiah, through which any of the recipients of this promise must remain faithful in order to receive. These examples, like all others, support rather than refute the doctrine that God changes your heart through providing information that you still must choose of your own free will to believe and live up to. ↩
- 12. And likewise also is it counted evil unto a man, if he shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it profiteth him nothing, for God receiveth none such. (Moroni 7:9) ↩
- 13. The one raised to happiness according to his desires of happiness, or good according to his desires of good; and the other to evil according to his desires of evil; for as he has desired to do evil all the day long even so shall he have his reward of evil when the night cometh. (Alma 41:5) ↩
- 14. And now remember, remember, my brethren, that whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto himself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto himself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free. (Helaman 14:30) ↩
- 15. Therefore, O my son, whosoever will come may come and partake of the waters of life freely; and whosoever will not come the same is not compelled to come; but in the last day it shall be restored unto him according to his deeds. (Alma 42:27) ↩
- 16. See Helaman 15:7, previously cited. ↩