Elder Klebingat: The Atonement, Judgment Day, and You
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A General Authority Seventy describes four attitudes toward the final judgment and how the Atonement lets disciples face it with confidence.
Elder Jörg Klebingat, a General Authority Seventy, gave a BYU devotional address on October 22, 2024, later published in the Religious Educator (vol. 26, no. 1, 2025) by the BYU Religious Studies Center. The full text is free to read on the RSC website. It asks how the Atonement of Jesus Christ can help us stand with confidence before God at the Day of Judgment.
Four attitudes toward judgment
Elder Klebingat describes four ways people think about the final judgment. One is to ignore it. Another is to see God as a wrathful judge, which he illustrates with a well-known eighteenth-century sermon and a plastic spider as a visual aid. A third assumes that God's love means obedience does not matter. The fourth belongs to imperfect but striving disciples who look forward to seeing the Lord's face with pleasure.
Why the middle views fall short
He argues that the first cannot last, since scripture says every knee will bow. The second misreads the character of a God whose work is to bring about our immortality and eternal life. The third, he says, forgets that what is on trial is our love for God and not His love for us. He cites recent teachings from President Russell M. Nelson and President Dallin H. Oaks on this point.
Cheap grace and costly grace
The abstract also contrasts “cheap grace” with “costly grace,” urging sincere discipleship, daily repentance and obedience to God's commandments. He encourages students to build a personal relationship with the Savior, treat repentance as a source of joy, and prepare for Judgment Day by aligning their lives with divine principles, relying on Christ as a practical, personal Redeemer.
This summary covers the published address; read the full text for his scriptural references and personal stories.
How we wrote this: we read the source page linked above and summarized it in our own words, quoting at most a short line with attribution. We have not added facts from outside that source. If anything here differs from the original, the original is correct.