Why have laws and commandments?

My last two posts I have tried my best to explain two things. One is that there is a moral law that each and every one of us has. We may not always follow it but it is there. In my second post I used the fall of Adam and Eve to try to explain that we chose to have this moral law. We chose to know good and evil and accept all of the consequences that come with that. My post today I want to talk about why we made this choice and why we have the law. If you are like most Christians and you don't believe in a pre-existence it is at least worth it to consider why Adam and Eve chose enter into mortality and learn the knowledge of good and evil. 

So why did we/Adam and Eve make that choice to know good and evil (or impose the moral law upon ourselves)? It is literally impossible for us to always choose the right. We are all going to fall short of what we know is right. The laws are going to restrict our freedoms. It seems to me that I would like to live forever in a garden of eden where I am oblivious and everything is given to me and I never disappoint God. These ideas sure sound appealing but without the law we cannot be truly happy. It is important to think about God and his example. God has laws too that he follows. Whether he created them or whether he is just following them is irrelevant. What matters is that he is perfectly following these laws. Learning what God gains from obeying these laws will help us to know what we gain from following the commandments.

God is a perfect being. He has perfect love. He is perfectly good. He is perfectly happy. He is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. He is our Creator and Father. I can go on and on. But why does he follow laws? It is evident that the laws that God follows do not restrict him. But instead they enable him. In fact the Book of Mormon states that if he did not follow his laws "God would cease to be God" Alma 42:22. Thus when we keep God's commandments we are not restricting ourselves but we are becoming better. We are becoming more Christlike and God will give us strength beyond what we have. That is why we chose this mortality. We wanted to be tested. We wanted to learn and grow and become more like our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ.

It is important for me to mention too wrong ideas that are polar opposites and yet seem to confuse a lot of people. The first is a belief that a lot of very good Christians believe. They believe that there are laws and commandments but that they are not necessary. They believe that all we have to do is accept Christ as our Savior and we will be saved. What they are missing is the point of Jesus's sacrifice. Why did Jesus die for us? It was not to merely save us so we could go right back to where we started in God's presence. It was so that we could learn and grow and be more like him. It was so we could repent when we mess up and receive the strength we need to truly change our natures. That can only be done by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel. Those who argue that all we need to do is to accept Jesus as our Savior are twisting Paul's words and using them over Jesus Christ's own words. Indeed Christ consistently talked about obedience. That includes how important it was for him to be obedient and how important it is for us to be obedient. 

The second idea is an idea that we need to work super hard to keep the law and whatever we can't accomplish Christ will make up the rest. But this too misses the purpose of the Atonement. 2 Nephi 2:5 says "And by the law no flesh is justified; or, by the law men are cut off." We don't receive praise from police officers for stopping at red lights. Keeping the law doesn't mean we get a reward. In fact all of us have broken the law several times a day for our whole lives. We are toast. But why do we even bother then? The answer is the same as before. Because of Christ's Atonement we can be forgiven and change our natures. The law is not justifying us. It is only Christ's grace and Atonement. But the only way we can truly be using Christ's Atonement the way he intended it to be used is if we keep his commandments. That is what he asked of us. As we keep his commandments we are allowing the Atonement to change our hearts and natures and we become more like God who always keeps his commandments.