The Holy Spirit of Promise
An ordinance performed on earth still has to be ratified in heaven. The Holy Ghost is the one who does the ratifying, and Paul named Him doing it long before the Restoration explained how.
Most Christians have been taught that a promise from God is either given or it is not. You are sealed, or you are not. Saved, or not. The idea that an ordinance could be genuinely performed and still be waiting on something sounds like a church hedging its bets — or worse, like a God who moves the goalposts.
A covenant made in this life is made by people. Someone speaks the words, someone else agrees to them, a record is kept. But a covenant meant to hold after death needs more than a signature and a witness. It needs God’s own approval, given to a particular person about a particular promise. That approval has a name, and Paul is the one who named it.
Paul Named It First
This is not a Restoration coinage. The phrase is in the New Testament, used exactly as we use it.
“In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.”
Read the order Paul gives. They heard. They believed. Then they were SEALED with that holy Spirit of promise. The sealing is a distinct act that follows belief rather than replacing it.
And what does he call it? An earnest — a deposit, a down payment, money laid down now to guarantee that the rest is coming. God gives a portion of the inheritance in advance so a person can know the whole is promised.
What the Restoration Adds
Paul names the sealing. The revelations explain what it governs, and the answer is: everything meant to last.
“All covenants, contracts, bonds, obligations, oaths, vows, performances, connections, associations, or expectations, that are not made and entered into and sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise… are of no efficacy, virtue, or force in and after the resurrection from the dead; for all contracts that are not made unto this end have an end when men are dead.”
That is a sweeping list, and it is meant to be. EVERY arrangement human beings make ends at the grave unless God Himself has ratified it. Marriage included. Every promise not sealed by Him is a contract with an expiry date written into it.
So who does the sealing? The Holy Ghost, acting for the Father. And who is authorised to perform the ordinance He then ratifies? One man on the earth at a time holds those keys, and delegates them — which is why the sealing power is not something a person can claim for himself.
Two Steps, Not One
Here is where the doctrine becomes practical. A temple sealing is performed by a man with authority, and it is valid — the ordinance is real the moment it is done. But it is performed on condition.
How an Ordinance Becomes Permanent
- Performed — by one holding the proper priesthood keys, in the Lord’s house, by the words He appointed.
- Ratified — sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, which the Father sheds forth “upon all those who are just and true” (D&C 76:53).
The second step is not automatic, and that is the whole point of the doctrine rather than a loophole inside it. If ratification followed performance automatically, then a covenant would bind God Himself to honour promises made by a person who walked away from every one of them the following week.
Section 76 puts the two steps in sequence and names the condition between them: keeping the commandments, being washed and cleansed, overcoming by faith, and then being sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise (D&C 76:52–53). Just and true. NOT perfect — just and true.
“Then You Can Never Know You Are Saved”
This is the objection, and it is the strongest one available. If the ratifying happens later and depends on what I become, then assurance is impossible. I am left guessing, and a gospel that leaves a person guessing is no good news at all.
The concern is fair, and Paul answers it in the very same breath where he raises the sealing. He calls it an earnest — a deposit paid in advance, money laid down to guarantee that the rest is coming. An earnest is not a promise that something might arrive one day. It is a portion of the thing itself, handed over now so that the person holding it can stop wondering whether the rest is real. God gives assurance by giving a piece of the inheritance early.
So the Latter-day Saint answer is not “you cannot know.” It is that knowing comes the way Paul said it comes: by the Spirit, felt and recognised, growing as a person keeps going rather than issued once at a doorway.
And consider what the alternative actually promises. A guarantee issued at the moment of belief, regardless of everything afterward, gives certainty about a transaction. It cannot give certainty about a relationship, because relationships are not settled in advance by anybody. What God offers is the second kind, which is harder to hold and worth incomparably more.
Why This Is Mercy, Not Threat
This doctrine can be read as a warning that nothing is ever safe. Read it the other way round and it is one of the kindest things God has told us.
Think for a moment what the alternative would actually mean in practice. If an ordinance bound eternity the instant the words were pronounced over it, regardless of anything either person did in the fifty years afterward, then a soul could be locked permanently into a covenant he came to hate — married for eternity to someone who abandoned him, sealed to a life he never grew into and never wanted. God does not work that way. He waits, He watches what we become, and He ratifies what turned out to be real.
It also means that nobody can be cheated out of blessings by somebody else’s failure. A faithful woman whose husband abandons his covenants has not thereby lost her own. The Holy Spirit of promise ratifies according to what each person actually IS, and a just God will not hold one soul hostage to another soul’s choices, however closely their lives were bound together here.
What It Asks of Us
Not anxiety. The doctrine is not an invitation to lie awake wondering whether the seal has been granted yet.
What it asks is steadiness. Make the covenant, then keep it, and let God do the ratifying on His timetable rather than demanding a receipt. The earnest Paul described is often felt rather than announced — a quiet assurance that grows as a person keeps going.
And if you have broken covenants, this doctrine is the reason repentance still matters. Nothing was sealed against you either. The ratifying happens at the end of the road, not the beginning, which means the road is still open.
See also The Sealing Power, Who Is the Holy Ghost?, and Temples.