“The Natural Man Is an Enemy to God”

“The Natural Man Is an Enemy to God” names the spiritual condition that follows the Fall of Adam and explains why redemption requires more than ordinary human effort. In King Benjamin’s teaching, the natural person is not merely imperfect or inexperienced but stands in opposition to God unless transformed through the Holy Ghost and the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The expression therefore functions both as a diagnosis of humanity’s fallen state and as the severe opening of a path toward sainthood.

Definition and Doctrinal Setting

King Benjamin presents the principle in a sermon concerned with the Lord Omnipotent, the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, repentance, faith, and redemption. The statement is categorical: “For the natural man is an enemy to God.” Its scope reaches back to the Fall of Adam and forward without limit, for the condition has existed since that fall and will continue “forever and ever” unless a person yields to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. The wording makes the problem universal in origin while preserving a decisive role for individual response.

The expression distinguishes the untransformed human condition from the identity of a saint. The natural man is governed by the fallen condition; the saint is made through surrender to divine influence. The contrast is not presented as a change produced by education, social status, political authority, or the keeping of outward forms alone. King Benjamin places the turning point in a person’s relation to the Holy Ghost and to the Atonement of Christ, making spiritual renewal the necessary answer to spiritual enmity.

The Movement from Enmity to Sainthood

The central verb is yielding. A person must yield to “the enticings of the Holy Spirit,” put off the natural man, and become a saint through the Atonement of Christ the Lord. The sequence describes conversion as an active relinquishment of the old condition rather than a declaration that the condition never existed. Divine grace supplies the means of transformation, but the person must respond by accepting the Spirit’s enticings and allowing the former identity to be displaced.

King Benjamin then gives the transformed character a concrete shape. The saint becomes “as a child,” a comparison that does not reduce the person to weakness or ignorance but emphasizes a posture of dependence and receptivity. The qualities named are submissiveness, meekness, humility, patience, and fullness of love. The passage culminates in willingness to submit to all things the Lord sees fit to inflict, just as a child submits to a father. These traits turn an abstract theological claim into a recognizable ethical pattern: the opposite of natural enmity is not passive emptiness but a disciplined, loving disposition ordered toward God.

Relation to the Book’s Record and Covenants

The doctrine appears within a larger work described as an abridgment of the records of the people of Nephi, the Lamanites, and the people of Jared. That work is addressed to the Lamanites as a remnant of the house of Israel, and also to Jew and Gentile; it is presented as written by commandment and through prophecy and revelation. Its stated purpose includes showing the remnant of the house of Israel what the Lord has done for their fathers and helping them know that the Lord’s covenants do not cast them off forever.

Within that setting, the expression does not define human corruption as the final word about any people. The same record that identifies the natural man as an enemy to God repeatedly frames history as a field of covenant invitation, repentance, revelation, and restoration. The work’s declared aim is to convince Jew and Gentile that Jesus Christ is the Eternal God, manifesting himself to all nations. The doctrine therefore joins a universal account of fallen humanity to an equally expansive promise that the Atonement can reach people across nations, generations, and covenant histories.

Written Witness and Spiritual Authority

The doctrine’s authority is reinforced by the book’s layered presentation of testimony. The Three Witnesses declare that they saw the plates containing the record of the people of Nephi, the Lamanites, and the people of Jared; they report that an angel came down from heaven and laid the plates before their eyes, and they attribute the translation to the gift and power of God. Their testimony links visible records to divine command and concludes with the hope that faithfulness in Christ will leave them spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ.

The Eight Witnesses provide a different but complementary form of evidence. They state that Joseph Smith showed them the plates, that the plates had the appearance of gold, and that they handled and hefted them. They also saw engravings that appeared ancient and displayed curious workmanship. Together, these testimonies frame the doctrinal expression as part of a record claimed to have been preserved, translated, and brought forth by divine power, rather than as an isolated maxim detached from the book’s material and prophetic claims.

The record’s internal writers likewise model the process by which spiritual knowledge is preserved and revisited. Nephi explains that he does not give a full account of what his father wrote because Lehi had recorded many things seen in visions and dreams. Nephi writes the things of his soul and scriptures engraved on the Plates of Brass, declaring that his soul delights in the scriptures and his heart ponders them. The expression about the natural man belongs to this same culture of remembered revelation, written testimony, and inward pondering: the fallen condition is diagnosed through revealed teaching and answered through an inwardly enacted change.

Ritual, Community, and the Evidence of Change

The doctrine’s movement from natural man to saint is echoed in the book’s communal and ritual practices. At the Waters of Mormon, Alma teaches repentance, redemption, and faith in the Lord before a covenant community is formed. Baptism and the reception of the Holy Ghost give the theological transformation a public shape, while the covenant community provides a setting in which humility, patience, love, and submission can be practiced rather than merely admired.

The sacrament prayers preserved by Moroni similarly connect communal worship with the continuing presence of the Spirit. The administration of the bread and wine remembers the body and blood of Jesus Christ and asks that participants may always have his Spirit. In this pattern, putting off the natural man is not a single private achievement completed once and then forgotten; it is sustained through remembrance, covenant, worship, and renewed dependence on Christ.

The same contrast appears in the account of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies. After God has taken away their stains, they declare that their swords have become bright and resolve to stain them no more with the blood of their brethren. Their renunciation of violence gives visible, material form to the passage’s inward logic. A former identity associated with bloodshed is not defended or disguised; it is abandoned, and the weapons that once expressed it are rendered incompatible with the community’s new covenant identity.

The expression also stands in tension with moments when people return to pride, unbelief, violence, or division. The book’s repeated accounts of conversion and apostasy show that the natural condition is not overcome by ancestry, public belonging, or a past spiritual experience alone. The passage’s emphasis on yielding and continued submission explains why covenant identity must be continually inhabited through the Spirit and through the Atonement of Christ.

Literary and Thematic Significance

As an expression, “The Natural Man Is an Enemy to God” compresses a broad narrative theology into a memorable opposition: natural man against God, and saint against the fallen self. Its force comes from the reversal it demands. The person who appears autonomous must become submissive; the person inclined toward self-assertion must become humble; the person enclosed within fallen nature must become full of love through Christ. The statement is therefore not simply a condemnation but the first half of a transformation narrative whose destination is sainthood.

Its language also gives the larger record a durable interpretive lens. Stories of prophecy, migration, conflict, covenant, worship, and communal renewal can be read as variations on the same question: will people remain in the condition produced by the Fall, or will they yield to the Spirit and receive the Atonement? The answer is never reduced to human strength. The record’s central claim is that enmity is overcome through a divinely enabled change of heart, made visible in childlike humility, patient endurance, loving conduct, and submission to God’s will.