Yes, we agree to work in the sacrament covenant. But even that gets a boost from the Lord. Chewing bread is a delicious activity, but it requires work. Drinking grape juice or water afterward makes dry, hard bread easier to work on. The prayer on the bread says eating it shows God our willingness to 1. Take His Son's name upon us, 2. Always remember Him, and 3. Keep His commandments. If we do 1, 2, and 3, we ALWAYS have His Spirit to be with us. If we have trouble with the work of 1 and 3, at least we can do as the prayer on the water says, number 2, "always remember Him." Then we can "have (minus "always") His Spirit to be with [us]." Water makes bread easier to swallow; grace makes works possible for us.
When Jesus chose to announce publicly that He was the Messiah, He read Isaiah 61:1-2 in the synagogue: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18-19). The people stared in anticipation as He sat down—why read this to them? He interpreted the scripture: "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears" (verse 21). "...he hath anointed me..." the word Messiah means Anointed One—Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah. So the people got mad and tried to murder Him by throwing Him off a cliff, and Jesus barely escaped.
The verses He read amount to a job description of the Messiah. There is a sermon buried in each phrase, but for now I want to focus on the first part: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me..." One of the privileges of being the Messiah was a greatly increased portion of the Spirit. Receiving the Holy Ghost is not an all-or-nothing proposition; the Spirit is given by degrees, or "portions" as the scriptures say. The greater the portion of the Spirit, the greater the power. That is the general idea of the ordinance of anointing; oil is poured on a person, and the Spirit falls on that person to a greater degree, which empowers him or her to accomplish a specific mission. For instance, Aaron, a High Priest in the Tabernacle (a portable Temple), and David, a King, were both anointed before they began serving in those offices. It signified their entry into their respective offices, and was the symbol that God had empowered them to fulfill their distinct roles.
Jesus had a fulness of the Holy Ghost, and it was always with Him (I will discuss the momentous exception He endured in a second). We do not fully take His name upon ourselves when we partake of the sacrament; that happens more fully in the Temple. But we assert and confirm our willingness to take His name upon ourselves by partaking of the sacrament. It is a public declaration to God that, yes, we are willing to do everything in our power to repent and progress and obey Him. Jesus earned the privilege of always having the Spirit with Him because He always did exactly what His Father asked. Perfect obedience is one way to always have the companionship of the Holy Ghost. (Being unaccountable for our sins through ignorance may be another way; even that requires divine intervention.) But what about us imperfect people?
Instead of earning the privilege, we are given a deal, grace: we can always have His Spirit (we are borrowing this from Jesus) in exchange for our willingness—willingness to try. Attempts technically fall short, but we are given the Spirit anyway, just because of the condition of our heart ("willing" in the sacrament prayers only describes the condition of our hearts. It says nothing about whether or not we actually succeed at obeying, just that we desire to obey.) This is a generous extension of mercy to us. The Spirit brings many things to us; it gives us a taste of the joy of being in God's presence. It activates our innate spiritual gifts. It empowers priesthood authority.
Perhaps the most overlooked function of the Holy Spirit among Church members is that it delivers the effects of the Atonement of Jesus Christ to our hearts and minds. It sanctifies us; when we give our hearts completely to Jesus Christ, he installs His heart, instills His nature, in us. This is an extremely generous deal for us. We get to enjoy the benefits of being Jesus when we assume His identity.
It is a lot like a teenager who owns a bike, but gets to borrow his parents' car (provided he earns his driver's license and keeps other rules, traffic rules, house rules, etc.). Keeping the rules and borrowing the car are not the same thing as buying the car or owning the car; it is loaned to him out of the generosity of Mom's and Dad's hearts. Fulfilling the conditions and obligations to borrow the car are just the parents' way of keeping their kid from getting spoiled. But the car itself empowers him to travel further, faster, and carry more passengers and cargo. Dating (at least the shame-free variety) becomes a reality for him. The car can even make him more useful to his parents, enabling him to go shopping, pick up siblings, deliver goods, and run other errands.
Spiritual rebirth amounts to borrowing Jesus' identity. We get to enjoy the consequences of His obedience, or in other words, we "rely" on His "merits," what He earned (2Ne. 31:19).
Jesus also took our identities, and their negative consequences, onto Himself in the Garden of Gethsemane and upon the Cross. He assumed the burdens we would have had to bear if justice had been administered without His intercession. He pushes us out of the way and absorbs the impact of justice for us. He served our prison sentence for us, and we enjoy His freedom. This is a paradox; we guilty people are set free while the only innocent Person is punished.
Isaiah 53 explains how the trading of identities plays out: "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" (verses 4-6). He took the hit for us, He paid the bill we incurred through disobedience, and He offers us the clean slate He earned through perfect obedience. He is wounded; we are healed. He dies; we live. This is an extremely generous tradeoff.
In D&C 19, Jesus explains the naked mechanics of His indescribable misery and agony during the process of the Atonement: "Which suffering
caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of
pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit...Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men. Wherefore, I command you again to repent...lest you suffer these punishments of which I have spoken, of which in the smallest, yea, even in the least degree you have tasted at the time I withdrew my Spirit" (verses 18-20; my emphasis). Hell is not inferno; it is literally outer darkness, the complete withdrawal, the absence of the light of the Spirit emanating from God's presence (see D&C 88:11-24). (Our bodies give us extra power because they increase the portion of this Spirit we are able to receive; see D&C 93:19-36. This means an added portion of the sanctifying grace and power of the Atonement, too. This may explain why it is easier to overcome addictions in mortality).
The ministry and teachings of Jesus place enormous emphasis on modifying our behavior. If our "righteous acts are like filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6), if He paid the price of our entry into heaven, if it is too late after we commit the tiniest infraction of the law (see James 2:10) to earn our way, then what is the point of His demanding our work, work, work?
"If ye love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15). We are not showing by our ardent, avid attempts at obedience that we are good in and of ourselves; rather, we are demonstrating that we actually belong to Jesus, that we are His, because His commands cause us to move. (Brigham Young taught that in heaven, we do not own anything unless and until it obeys us; see Abr. 4:18.)
Jesus merited something else: His "rights of mercy." He was innocent, yet He suffered more than anyone. This creates an imbalance in justice, a vacuum of debt owed to Him, and it is inside that empty space that we must hide. He has racked up a debt, a super-abundance of credit is on His tab. We deserve death and hell without His interference on our behalf. But if we repent and have faith in Christ, and love for Him, and even try our hardest to show that love by obeying Him, and if we are bound to Him through covenants and priesthood ordinances (baptism, etc.), then we belong to Him. It is an official adoption. We become His, and He is privileged to take us to heaven with Him (provided we wipe our feet, bathe, and get clean clothes from Him before we enter; there is plenty of refinement work for all of us. He speeds that up, too.). The main thing is that justice cannot touch us as long as we have shed enough pride and sin and dirt that we fit inside His protective shadow. We never get rid of all of it, but even our sorrow for sin, our humility, shrinks us just enough that we are completely shielded by His grace.
"...Christ hath ascended into heaven, and hath sat down on the right hand of God, to claim of the Father his rights of mercy which he hath upon the children of men..." (Moroni 7:27). "Listen to him who is the advocate with the Father, who is pleading your cause before him—Saying: Father, behold the sufferings and death of him who did no sin, in whom thou wast well pleased; behold the blood of thy Son which was shed, the blood of him whom thou gavest that thyself might be glorified; Wherefore, Father, spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have everlasting life. Hearken, O ye people of my church, and ye elders listen together, and hear my voice while it is called today, and harden not your hearts..." (D&C 45:3-6). Jesus drank a bitter cup so that we could take a sweet drink of peace, the wine (now water) of the sacrament.
Becoming miniature versions of the Savior is the ultimate goal of the gospel, and the sacrament is an emblematic part of that happy transformation. When we receive the Spirit, we get to experience the joy the Savior had in life: "...I will impart unto you of my Spirit, which shall enlighten your mind, which shall fill your soul with joy..." And He offers us the opportunity to always have the Spirit, His Spirit, to be with us.
