The Ordinances of the Gospel
The sacred, authorized acts through which we make covenants with God and the power of godliness is made manifest in our lives.
An ordinance is not a human invention or a quaint religious custom. It is a sacred, authorized act, performed by the proper authority, by which a person enters into covenant with God. In the ordinances of the gospel something real is transacted: heaven and earth meet, promises are exchanged, and divine power is conveyed. The Lord did not leave the means of our salvation to private feeling or personal preference. He appointed specific acts — baptism, the laying on of hands, ordination, the endowment, the sealing — and declared that through them, and only through them, the fulness of His power flows to His children.
This truth is stated nowhere more plainly than in the revelation on the two priesthoods. There the Lord ties the very purpose of His priesthood to the ordinances it administers, and He stakes upon them nothing less than the privilege of seeing His face and living.
In the Ordinances the Power of Godliness Is Manifest
The Doctrine and Covenants teaches that the greater priesthood holds the key to the knowledge of God, and that this knowledge is not communicated by ritual emptied of power, but by ordinances in which the very power of godliness is revealed.
“And this greater priesthood administereth the gospel and holdeth the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God. Therefore, in the ordinances thereof, the power of godliness is manifest. And without the ordinances thereof, and the authority of the priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh; for without this no man can see the face of God, even the Father, and live.”
Read that warning carefully. Without the ordinances, the power of godliness is not manifest; and without that power, no man can see the face of God and live. The ordinances are therefore not optional decorations upon a life of faith — they are the divinely appointed channel through which the power that makes godliness possible is poured out. To despise them is to cut oneself off from the very thing one claims to seek.
No Man Taketh This Honor Unto Himself
Because an ordinance binds God Himself to His promises, it cannot be performed by self-appointment. The authority to act in God’s name must be given by God. Paul makes this the governing rule of all sacred ministry:
“And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.”
The Savior taught the same principle to His Apostles, reminding them that the call ran from heaven to earth, not the reverse: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you” (John 15:16). The pattern is unbroken: God calls, God ordains, and only then may a man act with authority that heaven will honor.
This is why the Latter-day Saints confess as a matter of doctrine that a man must be authorized: “We believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof” (Articles of Faith 1:5). Without that authority, the form of an ordinance may be imitated, but its power cannot be borrowed.
The Gateway: Born of Water and of the Spirit
The first of the saving ordinances is baptism, and it is the doorway through which all others are reached. To Nicodemus, a ruler who already believed, the Savior set this requirement plainly and without exception:
“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
Two births are named here, and both are ordinances: the birth of water in baptism, and the birth of the Spirit in the gift of the Holy Ghost. The Saints accordingly hold that “the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Articles of Faith 1:4). Faith and repentance prepare the heart; the ordinances open the gate.
The Saving Ordinances Enumerated
From this gateway the Lord has appointed a sequence of ordinances by which the disciple is progressively bound to Him and prepared to dwell in His presence. Each rests upon the word of God, and each carries its own covenant and promise.
The Saving Ordinances
- Baptism — “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38).
- Confirmation & the Gift of the Holy Ghost — “Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost” (Acts 8:17).
- Ordination to the Priesthood — “Whoso is faithful unto the obtaining these two priesthoods… and the magnifying their calling, are sanctified by the Spirit unto the renewing of their bodies” (D&C 84:33).
- The Temple Endowment — “That they may be prepared in all things… that I may… endow those whom I have chosen with power from on high” (D&C 105:12).
- The Sealing (Eternal Marriage) — a covenant “sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise… it shall be done unto them in all things… and shall be of full force when they are out of the world” (D&C 132:19).
Notice how the ordinances build upon one another. Baptism washes and admits; confirmation bestows the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost; ordination authorizes a man to act in God’s name and to administer to others; the endowment clothes the disciple with power and knowledge from on high; and the sealing binds husband, wife, and family into an eternal unit that death cannot dissolve. Each is a step nearer the presence of God, and each is a covenant in which God binds Himself to the faithful.
In the sealing the Lord goes furthest of all, promising that those who keep the covenant “shall pass by the angels, and the gods… to their exaltation and glory in all things” (D&C 132:19). This is the crowning ordinance, the one toward which all the others point.
Ordinances for the Dead
If baptism is required to enter the kingdom of God, what of the countless millions who lived and died without ever hearing the gospel? A just God would not condemn them for a privilege they never received. The answer is that the saving ordinances may be performed by the living on behalf of the dead. Paul appeals to this very practice as an argument for the resurrection:
“Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?”
In the latter days this ancient practice has been restored, and the Lord has declared that the salvation of the dead and the living are bound together — neither can be made perfect without the other:
“For we without them cannot be made perfect; neither can they without us be made perfect. Neither can they nor we be made perfect without those who have died in the gospel also.”
Thus the ordinances reach backward across every generation and forward to every soul who will receive them. The temples of the Lord stand as the houses in which this work is done, knitting together the whole human family in one great chain of covenant from the fathers to the children.
Not Ritual, but the Channel of Power
It is easy to misjudge the ordinances as empty ceremony — outward motions of water and hands and words. But the scriptures will not allow such a reading. The ordinances are the very places where, the Lord says, “the power of godliness is manifest” (D&C 84:20). They are the appointed channels through which covenant, authority, and divine power flow into a human life.
Consider what the ordinances together accomplish. They convey covenant — in each one God binds Himself by promise to those who keep their part. They require authority — performed only by those whom God has called and ordained, so that heaven ratifies what earth performs. And they manifest power — the power of godliness, without which no man can see God and live. Strip any one of these away and the act becomes hollow; hold them together and the ordinance becomes a doorway into the presence of God.
This is why the Lord has commanded His people to seek the ordinances, to honor the authority by which they are administered, and to extend them to the living and the dead alike. They are not a ladder we climb by our own merit, but a covenant path the Savior has laid down, every step of which is sealed by His authority and made effectual by His grace.
To receive the ordinances of the gospel, then, is to take Christ’s name upon us, to be washed and confirmed and endowed and sealed, and at last to be bound to God by covenants that neither death nor time can break. They are the appointed channels of covenant, authority, and power that bind us to God — and through them, in the words of the revelation, “the power of godliness is manifest” unto all who will come and partake.