Refuting the Claim Bruce McConkie Rejected Completely the Need for a Personal Relationship with Jesus

Many critics of the Church have claimed that Bruce McConkie rejected completely the need to have a personal relationship with Jesus in a BYU Devotional from 1982. You can read the talk online at:

Bruce R. McConkie, Our Relationship with the Lord (BYU Devotional, 2 March 1982)

Representative of such is from two former Latter-day Saints, Phillip and Cheryl Naugle:

I am now fully committed to helping members of the LDS Church answer questions they have regarding their faith and how they can establish a relationship with Jesus Christ. This relationship has been forbidden by LDS Church authority Bruce R. McConkie in an address to the BYU devotional audience in 1987, but this relationship with Jesus Christ is what Christianity is all about! (“The Testimony of Phillip and Cheryl Naugle” in Christina R. Darlington, Misguided by Mormonism But Redeemed by God’s Grace: Leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for Biblical Christianity [2d ed.; 2019], 168, emphasis in original)

Perhaps it should be enough for someone to read the entire talk that discusses the absolute centrality of the person of Jesus Christ in our salvation. Here are some representative statements from McConkie’s speech:

Now, it is no secret that many false and vain and foolish things are being taught in the sectarian world and even among us about our need to gain a special relationship with the Lord Jesus. I shall summarize the true doctrine in this field and invite erring teachers and beguiled students to repent and believe the accepted gospel verities as I shall set them forth.

There is no salvation in believing any false doctrine, particularly a false or unwise view about the Godhead or any of its members. Eternal life is reserved for those who know God and the One whom he sent to work out the infinite and eternal atonement . . .

2. We love and serve both the Father and the Son.

In the full, final, and ultimate sense of the word the divine decree is:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ thou shalt serve him. [D&C 59:5]

And Jesus also said:

If ye love me, keep my commandments. [John 14:15]

These, then, are the commandments of commandments. They tie the Father and the Son together, as one, so that both receive our love and service.. . .

7. The Father sent the Son to work out the infinite and eternal atonement.

As temporal and spiritual death came by the fall of Adam, so immortality and eternal life come by the atonement of Christ. Such was and is and ever shall be the plan of the Father. Adam was sent to earth to fall, and Christ came to ransom men from the fall.

Thus the Father sent forth this call in the councils of eternity: “Whom shall I send to be my Son, to ransom all people from temporal and spiritual death, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, to put into full operation all the terms and conditions of my eternal plan of redemption and salvation?”

Christ is the Redeemer of men and the Savior of the world because his Father sent him and gave him power to do the assigned work. He said he had power to lay down his life and to take it again because he had been so commanded by the Father. Lehi said he rose from the dead “by the power of the Spirit” (2 Nephi 2:8).

The great and eternal redemption, in all its phases, was wrought by Christ using the power of the Father . . .

10. Christ is the Mediator between God and man.

Because all people must be reconciled to God in order to be saved, he, in his goodness and grace, has provided a Mediator for them.

Paul told us:

There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;

Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. [1 Timothy 2:5–6]

To this we add: If there were no Mediator, we could never be reconciled to the Father, and hence there would be no salvation.

11. Christ is our Intercessor with the Father, our Advocate in the courts above.

In the process of mediating between us and our Maker, in the process of reconciling sin-ridden men with a sin-free God, Christ makes intercession for all who repent. He advocates the cause of those who believe in him. “Father,” he pleads,

spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have everlasting life. [D&C 45:5] . . .

15. Christ is the Way to the Father.

“I am the way,” he said. “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).

Who can doubt that Christ’s mission is to reveal the Father, to lead us to the Father, to teach us how to worship the Father, to reconciles us to the Father?

Fellow LDS apologist Jeff Lindsay, who himself was at the very devotional, when answering the charge that McConkie rejected any concept of a personal relationship with Jesus, wrote:

I was there at that sermon. He was correcting a minor heresy in which some BYU students felt that their relationship to Christ was so advanced that they could pray directly to Him, not following the Biblical command to pray to the Father in the name of Christ (see Colossians 3:17). Elder McConkie was clarifying that "to us there is but one God" whom we worship (see 1 Cor. 8:6), "and one Lord, Jesus Christ," our advocate with the Father. He emphasized that Christ brings us to the Father and that the Father is the ultimate object of all true worship. He was not demoting Christ from the Godhead or urging us not to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, whom we follow and adore, but he was reminding us of the preeminence of the Father, and that we are to pray to Him in the name of Christ. Depending on just what you mean by the word "worship," it can be correct to say that we properly worship the Father in the name of Christ or that we properly worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Elder McConkie's views on Christ are nicely conveyed in a very popular LDS hymn that he wrote. It's Hymn 134 in the LDS hymnbook and bears the title, "I Believe in Christ." Here are some verses:

I believe in Christ; he is my King!
With all my heart to him I'll sing;
I'll raise my voice in praise and joy,
In grand amens my tongue employ.

...
I believe in Christ - my Lord, my God!
My feet he plants on gospel sod,
I'll worship him with all my might;
He is the source of truth and light.

I believe in Christ; he ransoms me.
From Satan's grasp he sets me free,
And I shall live with joy and love
In his eternal courts above.

By the way, a lot of anti-Mormons seem to have never attended an LDS sacrament meeting and listened to the hymns we sing. If they did, they would immediately know that we are Christians. And they might even be inspired to join. After all, some of the most beautiful hymns you'll ever hear about Christ are sung in Latter-day Saint meetings. Give it a try! (source)

There is much evidence that McConkie’s Christology was far from low and, moreover, he had a strong and deep personal devotion to Jesus. This comes out explicitly in his final talk before his death in 1985, The Purifying Power of Gethsemane. As he was in the late stages of cancer at the time, he knew he would die shortly afterwards. With that in mind, here are the concluding statements (though one should read the entire talk to put the lie to the claim he rejected a personal relationship with Christ):

And now, as pertaining to this perfect atonement, wrought by the shedding of the blood of God—I testify that it took place in Gethsemane and at Golgotha, and as pertaining to Jesus Christ, I testify that he is the Son of the Living God and was crucified for the sins of the world. He is our Lord, our God, and our King. This I know of myself independent of any other person.

I am one of his witnesses, and in a coming day I shall feel the nail marks in his hands and in his feet and shall wet his feet with my tears.

But I shall not know any better then than I know now that he is God’s Almighty Son, that he is our Savior and Redeemer, and that salvation comes in and through his atoning blood and in no other way.

God grant that all of us may walk in the light as God our Father is in the light so that, according to the promises, the blood of Jesus Christ his Son will cleanse us from all sin.

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

James E. Faust, in the October 1976 General Conference, spoke on the topic of “A Personal Relationship with the Savior” that emphasised the need for a true and proper personal relationship with Jesus Christ. While the entire talk should be read, here is one important section:

There is a great humility and timidity in my soul as I presume to speak about coming to a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world and the Son of God.

Recently in South America, a seasoned group of outstanding missionaries was asked, “What is the greatest need in the world?” One wisely responded: “Is not the greatest need in all of the world for every person to have a personal, ongoing, daily, continuing relationship with the Savior?” Having such a relationship can unchain the divinity within us, and nothing can make a greater difference in our lives as we come to know and understand our divine relationship with God.

We should earnestly seek not just to know about the Master, but to strive, as He invited, to be one with Him (see John 17:21), to “be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man” (Eph. 3:16). We may not feel a closeness with Him because we think of Him as being far away, or our relationship may not be sanctifying because we do not think of Him as a real person.

Clearly, a true and proper, reverent “personal relationship with Jesus” is clearly taught in Latter-day Saint theology, and, when read in its historical context (various heresies among LDS in BYU), McConkie’s talk in no way discounts any personal relationship with Christ (and one only need to read his 6-volume series on Christ to know that the opposite is in view!)

As for Latter-day Saint Christology itself, unlike the false and damnable theology that the Naugles, unfortunately, embraced, LDS Christology is completely biblical. For a full discussion, see:

Latter-day Saints have Chosen the True, Biblical Jesus

Incidentally, McConkie, in his 1982 talk, touches upon the "oneness" of God succinctly in the following paragraph:

Thus there are, in the Eternal Godhead, three persons—God the first, the Creator; God the second, the Redeemer; and God the third, the Testator. These three are one—one God if you will—in purposes, in powers, and in perfections. But each has his own severable work to perform, and mankind has a defined and known and specific relationship to each one of them. It is of these relationships that we shall now speak.

 For more articles refuting Darlington's book, see:

Listing of Responses to Christina R. Darlington's "Misguided by Mormonism"