Alma 5

Where we are

Alma 5 is the Book of Mormon's master examination chapter, and the longest single sermon in the record. Alma asks the Church more than forty pointed questions about their inner spiritual state — questions that themselves function as the sermon and the call to repentance. The chapter is one of the clearest pre-Pauline articulations of the examine yourselves discipline (2 Cor. 13:5), but in a fuller and more systematic form than Paul's single line. Read carefully, it is the master text of the Latter-day Saint spiritual life.

The chapter has seven movements:

1. The introduction and the recalled deliverance of Alma the Elder (vv. 1–13).
2. The image-of-God examination (vv. 14–19).
3. The cleansed-garments examination (vv. 20–25).
4. The song-of-redeeming-love examination (vv. 26–35).
5. The good-shepherd-and-the-voice examination (vv. 36–42).
6. The call to repentance and the true shepherd (vv. 43–55).
7. The come-out-from-the-wicked and receive-the-Holy-Spirit closing (vv. 56–62).

Eight verses carry most of the weight:

1. v. 7 — behold, he changed their hearts; yea, he awakened them out of a deep sleep, and they awoke unto God. Behold, they were in the midst of darkness; nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word. The chapter's darkness-to-light deliverance formula.
2. v. 14 — have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts? The chapter's master triple-question.
3. v. 19 — can ye look up to God at that day with a pure heart and clean hands? I say unto you, can ye look up, having the image of God engraven upon your countenances?
4. v. 21 — there can no man be saved except his garments are washed white… through the blood of him… who should come to redeem his people from their sins. The cleansed-garments doctrine.
5. v. 26 — if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?
6. v. 38 — the good shepherd doth call you; yea, and in his own name he doth call you, which is the name of Christ.
7. v. 41 — if a man bringeth forth good works he hearkeneth unto the voice of the good shepherd, and he doth follow him; but whosoever bringeth forth evil works, the same becometh a child of the devil.
8. v. 57 — come ye out from the wicked, and be ye separate, and touch not their unclean things.

The introduction and the recalled deliverance (verses 1–13)

Now it came to pass that Alma began to deliver the word of God unto the people, first in the land of Zarahemla, and from thence throughout all the land. — Alma 5:1

The chapter opens with a quietly significant phrase: first in the land of Zarahemla. Zarahemla is the Nephite capital, the largest and most prosperous city in the land — and Alma begins there. The chapter teaches what Peter would later put plainly: the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God (1 Pet. 4:17). The richest, most comfortable, most established part of the Church is the first to receive the call to repentance, precisely because it has the most to lose and the most to forget.

And these are the words which he spake to the people in the church which was established in the city of Zarahemla, according to his own record, saying: — Alma 5:2

A rare and important attribution: according to his own record. Mormon almost always paraphrases his sources; here he tells us he is quoting Alma directly, from Alma's own first-person account on the large plates. Alma 5 is therefore one of the cleanest unmediated windows we have onto a Nephite prophet's voice — Mormon stepping back, letting the source speak, and signaling that he is doing so. When the source is luminous, the redactor gets out of the way.

I, Alma, having been consecrated by my father, Alma, to be a high priest over the church of God, he having power and authority from God to do these things, behold, I say unto you that he began to establish a church in the land which was in the borders of Nephi; yea, the land which was called the land of Mormon; yea, and he did baptize his brethren in the waters of Mormon. — Alma 5:3

Alma names his priesthood line explicitly. His authority comes from his father; his father's came from God (Mosiah 18:18 — having authority from Almighty God). The verse is a clean statement of the Nephite doctrine of unbroken priesthood succession.

Notice also where Alma anchors the Church's memory: the land which was called the land of Mormon… the waters of Mormon. The name Mormon is older than the redactor who would later carry it — it belongs first to a place, a place where the Church of Christ was founded by baptism. The redactor of the Book of Mormon, then, is typologically named for the waters where the Nephite church began. The pattern is quiet, but it is there.

And behold, I say unto you, they were delivered out of the hands of the people of king Noah, by the mercy and power of God. And behold, after that, they were brought into bondage by the hands of the Lamanites in the wilderness; yea, I say unto you, they were in captivity, and again the Lord did deliver them out of bondage by the power of his word; and we were brought into this land, and here we began to establish the church of God throughout this land also. — Alma 5:5

Alma compresses Mosiah 18–24 into three sentences: deliverance from Noah, captivity under the Lamanites, second deliverance, arrival at Zarahemla. The phrase that does the doctrinal work is the Lord did deliver them out of bondage by the power of his word. This is the same doctrine as Mosiah 24's burdens made light — the word of God as the actual instrument of deliverance, not merely its announcement.

And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, you that belong to this church, have you sufficiently retained in remembrance the captivity of your fathers? Yea, and have you sufficiently retained in remembrance his mercy and long-suffering towards them? — Alma 5:6

The first of the chapter's forty-plus questions, and it is a question about memory. Have you sufficiently retained in remembrance. The whole Deuteronomic discipline of Israel runs through this verse — remember the Lord thy God (Deut. 8:18), remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt (Ex. 13:3), I will remember the works of the Lord (Ps. 77:11). Alma begins his examination where every covenant people must: the prior generation's deliverance, and whether this generation still carries it in mind.

Behold, he changed their hearts; yea, he awakened them out of a deep sleep, and they awoke unto God. Behold, they were in the midst of darkness; nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word; yea, they were encircled about by the bands of death, and the chains of hell, and an everlasting destruction did await them. — Alma 5:7

One of the chapter's most luminous verses. Alma describes the unrepentant state as a deep sleep — the Hebrew tardemah of Genesis 2:21 and 15:12, a sleep so deep that the soul cannot wake itself. The Lord changes the heart, the soul awakens, the everlasting word illuminates the darkness. Paul would later make the same call: awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light (Eph. 5:14); Isaiah, the same: arise, shine; for thy light is come (Isa. 60:1). The Nephite version sits exactly in this tradition.

The phrase the bands of death, and the chains of hell names the two instruments of the fallen state — the body bound to mortality (bands of death), and the soul bound to the adversary (chains of hell). The Psalter and the New Testament make the same pairing. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me (Ps. 116:3); chains of darkness (2 Pet. 2:4); everlasting chains under darkness (Jude 1:6). The phrase will become one of the Book of Mormon's standing images for the captivity from which only the Atonement can deliver.

But behold, my brethren, were they destroyed? Behold, I say unto you, Nay, they were not. And again I ask, were the bands of death broken, and the chains of hell which encircled them about, were they loosed? I say unto you, Yea, they were loosed, and their souls did expand, and they did sing redeeming love. — Alma 5:9

The arresting phrase is their souls did expand. Sin contracts the soul; redemption expands it. Isaiah commands it directly — enlarge the place of thy tent (Isa. 54:2); Paul attests it of his own ministry — our heart is enlarged (2 Cor. 6:11); the Psalmist names the means — when thou shalt enlarge my heart (Ps. 119:32). Alma's image is one of the gentlest descriptions in scripture of what conversion actually feels like from the inside.

The image-of-God examination (verses 14–19)

And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts? — Alma 5:14

The chapter's most-cited verse, and the verse that has shaped the Latter-day Saint tradition's whole vocabulary of conversion. Three questions, each addressing a different layer of the same reality:

• Spiritually been born of God — the new birth of John 3:3–7 (except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God), of 1 Peter 1:23 (being born again, not of corruptible seed), of 1 John 5:1 (whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God).
• Received his image in your countenances — the tselem restored, the divine likeness lost at the Fall now visibly imprinted on the face.
• Mighty change in your hearts — the inner transformation of Ezekiel 36:26 (a new heart also will I give you), made into the chapter's signature phrase.

This is the foundational text for what Latter-day Saint teaching calls the mighty change of heart. Conversion, in Alma's account, is not merely doctrinal assent; it is a birth, an image-bearing, a transformation of the inner life — and Alma will test his hearers against all three layers.

Do ye exercise faith in the redemption of him who created you? Do you look forward with an eye of faith, and view this mortal body raised in immortality, and this corruption raised in incorruption, to stand before God to be judged according to the deeds which have been done in the mortal body? — Alma 5:15

Alma's examination expands to the resurrection. The phrasing — this corruption raised in incorruption — is almost word-for-word Paul's: this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Cor. 15:53). The two prophets, separated by a century and an ocean, speak the same vocabulary of the raised body. The faculty Alma names is the eye of faith — the inner sight by which the future state is seen and made present to the soul.

I say unto you, can ye look up to God at that day with a pure heart and clean hands? I say unto you, can ye look up, having the image of God engraven upon your countenances? — Alma 5:19

The verb engraven matters. The image of God is not painted on (the Nehor pattern — surface religion, easy faith), but cut into the substance of the person. Jeremiah and Paul use the same vocabulary: I will write it in their hearts (Jer. 31:33); written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart (2 Cor. 3:3).

The pairing a pure heart and clean hands is straight from the temple Psalm — who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart (Ps. 24:3–4). Alma is applying the ancient temple-entry criterion to the inner spiritual state of every member of the Church. The question is whether one could stand in the holy place. The answer is meant to bring the hearer to honest self-examination.

The cleansed-garments examination (verses 20–25)

I say unto you, can ye think of being saved when you have yielded yourselves to become subjects to the devil? — Alma 5:20

Alma's vocabulary is exact: yielded yourselves. Paul will use the same word — to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are (Rom. 6:16). Allegiance is not a passive condition; it is an act of yielding. The question is whom one has yielded to.

I say unto you, ye will know at that day that ye cannot be saved; for there can no man be saved except his garments are washed white; yea, his garments must be purified until they are cleansed from all stain, through the blood of him of whom it has been spoken by our fathers, who should come to redeem his people from their sins. — Alma 5:21

One of the Book of Mormon's foundational texts on the cleansed garments. The image is the same image John will see at Patmos: they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 7:14). The chapter is one of the clearest pre-Christian articulations of the doctrine that the blood of Christ cleanses the garments of the soul, and that no soul stands clean before God by any other means. Isaiah anticipates the imagery exactly — though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow (Isa. 1:18) — and the Latter-day Saint tradition draws its whole sacramental and temple vocabulary of cleansing from this stream.

And now I ask of you, my brethren, how will any of you feel, if ye shall stand before the bar of God, having your garments stained with blood and all manner of filthiness? Behold, what will these things testify against you? — Alma 5:22

The chapter's first deployment of the bar of God — the image of the judgment-seat to which every soul must come, where the garments themselves bear witness. The image will recur throughout Alma's preaching (Alma 11:44; 12:12; 33:22; 41:3), and this is its founding instance. The garments testify; the soul cannot dissemble at the bar.

The song-of-redeeming-love examination (verses 26–35)

And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now? — Alma 5:26

The chapter's sharpest temporal question: can ye feel so now? Past conversion is not enough. Alma is asking whether the affective witness — the felt joy that follows a real change of heart — is still present in this moment. The chapter teaches that conversion is not an event one can keep in the past tense; it is a state that must be continually renewed. The song of redeeming love stands in the great tradition of the song of Moses (Ex. 15), the new song of the Psalter (he hath put a new song in my mouth, Ps. 40:3), the new song of the Revelation (Rev. 5:9; 14:3). The question is not whether one once sang, but whether one still sings.

Have ye walked, keeping yourselves blameless before God? Could ye say, if ye were called to die at this time, within yourselves, that ye have been sufficiently humble? That your garments have been cleansed and made white through the blood of Christ, who will come to redeem his people from their sins? — Alma 5:27

The discipline behind the question is the old memento mori — examine yourself as if you were called to die today. The Psalmist asks the Lord to teach the same discipline: so teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom (Ps. 90:12). Christ uses the same edge: thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee (Lk. 12:20). James echoes it: what is your life? It is even a vapour (Jas. 4:14). The examination presses readiness against urgency, and the urgency is real.

Behold, I say, is there one among you who is not stripped of envy? I say unto you that such an one is not prepared; and I would that he should prepare quickly, for the hour is close at hand, and he knoweth not when the time shall come. — Alma 5:29

The chapter clusters three demands together — stripped of pride (v. 28), stripped of envy (v. 29), stripped of mockery (v. 30) — as a three-fold discipline of the prepared soul. Paul speaks of the same posture: let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us (Heb. 12:1); put off concerning the former conversation the old man (Eph. 4:22); now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice (Col. 3:8). Alma uses the same image. The soul that will not strip off envy is not yet ready, and the hour is close at hand.

The good-shepherd-and-the-voice examination (verses 36–42)

Behold, I say unto you, that the good shepherd doth call you; yea, and in his own name he doth call you, which is the name of Christ; and if ye will not hearken unto the voice of the good shepherd, to the name by which ye are called, behold, ye are not the sheep of the good shepherd. — Alma 5:38

One of the Book of Mormon's clearest pre-Johannine articulations of the good shepherd. John 10 will say it in nearly identical language — the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name (Jn. 10:3); there shall be one fold, and one shepherd (Jn. 10:16). The whole prophetic tradition runs through the same image: the Lord is my shepherd (Ps. 23:1); he shall feed his flock like a shepherd (Isa. 40:11); I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out (Ezek. 34:11).

The Nephite element is the explicit naming. The sheep are called in his own name… which is the name of Christ — the same baptismal covenant King Benjamin established (Mosiah 5:7–12), in which the covenanted person takes upon them the name of Christ. To hear the shepherd's voice and to bear the shepherd's name are bound together: a sheep that will not hear the voice has not, in fact, taken the name.

Therefore, if a man bringeth forth good works he hearkeneth unto the voice of the good shepherd, and he doth follow him; but whosoever bringeth forth evil works, the same becometh a child of the devil, for he hearkeneth unto his voice, and doth follow him. — Alma 5:41

A sober doctrine: paternity is determined by the voice one listens to. Christ would say the same: ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do (Jn. 8:44); John would echo it: he that committeth sin is of the devil (1 Jn. 3:8); the parable of the wheat and tares draws the same line — the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one (Mt. 13:38). Alma's articulation is the earliest in this stream: the listener becomes a child of the voice he follows.

The call to repentance and the true shepherd (verses 43–55)

And now my beloved brethren, I say unto you, can ye withstand these sayings; yea, can ye lay aside these things, and trample the Holy One under your feet; yea, can ye be puffed up in the pride of your hearts; yea, will ye still persist in the wearing of costly apparel and setting your hearts upon the vain things of the world, upon your riches? — Alma 5:53

The most arresting image in the call: trample the Holy One under your feet. Hebrews uses the same image to describe apostasy of the worst kind — who hath trodden under foot the Son of God (Heb. 10:29). Alma applies it to the Zarahemla saints who, in the comfort of their costly apparel, are doing in practice what no enemy could do by force.

The come-out-from-the-wicked closing (verses 56–62)

And now I say unto you, all you that are desirous to follow the voice of the good shepherd, come ye out from the wicked, and be ye separate, and touch not their unclean things; and behold, their names shall be blotted out, that the names of the wicked shall not be numbered among the names of the righteous, that the word of God may be fulfilled, which saith: The names of the wicked shall not be mingled with the names of my people. — Alma 5:57

Paul's come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing (2 Cor. 6:17) is the same call, but in compressed form. Alma gives the call in its fuller Nephite shape: come out, be separate, touch not the unclean, and the names of the wicked will not be mingled with the names of the Lord's people. Isaiah anticipates the imagery — depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing (Isa. 52:11); Revelation echoes it — come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins (Rev. 18:4).

The closing phrase — their names shall be blotted out — invokes the Book of Life tradition that runs from Exodus through the Apocalypse. Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book (Ex. 32:33). Let them be blotted out of the book of the living (Ps. 69:28). He that overcometh… I will not blot out his name out of the book of life (Rev. 3:5). The two books — the names of the righteous and the names of the wicked — are an old image. Alma is preaching the same image to people whose names are presently in the right book but whose lives are quietly drifting toward the other.

For the names of the righteous shall be written in the book of life, and unto them will I grant an inheritance at my right hand. And now, my brethren, what have ye to say against this? I say unto you, if ye speak against it, it matters not, for the word of God must be fulfilled. — Alma 5:58

An inheritance at my right hand anticipates the Olivet judgment scene: then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you (Mt. 25:34). The Nephite text and the Matthean text use the same vocabulary of the right hand and the inheritance.

And now I, Alma, do command you in the language of him who hath commanded me, that ye observe to do the words which I have spoken unto you. I speak by way of command unto you that belong to the church; and unto those who do not belong to the church I speak by way of invitation, saying: Come and be baptized unto repentance, that ye also may be partakers of the fruit of the tree of life. — Alma 5:61–62

The chapter ends with a careful pastoral distinction. To members of the Church, Alma speaks by way of command — because they are under covenant. To those outside, he speaks by way of invitation — because they are not yet. The same words land differently on each ear. The closing image of the tree of life gathers the chapter back to Lehi's vision (1 Ne. 8 and 11) and beyond it to Eden (Gen. 2:9) and to John's Apocalypse (Rev. 22:14). Baptismal repentance is the path; the tree of life is the end.

The chapter's architecture

The chapter has seven panels. Verses 1–13 introduce the sermon and recall the deliverance of Alma the Elder's people. Verses 14–19 give the image-of-God examination. Verses 20–25 give the cleansed-garments examination. Verses 26–35 give the song-of-redeeming-love examination. Verses 36–42 give the good-shepherd examination. Verses 43–55 deliver the direct call to repentance. Verses 56–62 close with the call to come out from the wicked and the distinction between command and invitation.

The theological center of the chapter sits in v. 14's triple question: have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts? Everything before that verse prepares the ground for it; everything after it elaborates what it implies. It is the master text of the Latter-day Saint doctrine of spiritual self-examination.

Three things make the chapter the load-bearing text it is.

First, it is the master text of Latter-day Saint spiritual self-examination. The forty-plus questions Alma asks compose the most systematic examination of the inner life anywhere in the canon. The chapter takes the bare Pauline command examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves (2 Cor. 13:5) and unfolds it into a full pastoral discipline.

Second, it is the foundational text on the mighty change of heart. The phrase appears in verses 12, 14, and 26 — a deliberate triple — and from it the whole Latter-day Saint vocabulary of conversion as heart-transformation descends. Conversion, in Alma's account, is not assent to a proposition; it is a remade interior life, visible in the countenance and audible in the song.

Third, it is the foundational text on the image of God in the countenance. The doctrine is anthropological: the divine image, lost at the Fall, is restored by the Atonement, and the restoration shows in the face. The doctrine is not metaphorical. Alma assumes that a person whose inner life has been remade will look different — that the engraved image is a real, visible mark.

Finally, the chapter is the template for the missionary journey that occupies Alma 5–16. Alma will repeat at Gideon (Alma 7), Melek (Alma 8), Ammonihah (Alma 8–14), and Sidom (Alma 15) the same four-part pattern he establishes here: pure testimony, examination questions, call to repentance, and invitation to baptism. Zarahemla is the first stop because Zarahemla needs it first. Everything that follows takes its shape from this opening sermon.