← Previous: Mosiah 29–Alma 4 — The Choice Is Yours | Next: Alma 8–12 — The Greater Portion of the Word →
Alma 5–7 — “The Mighty Change of Heart”
Key Verse
“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
Why This Block Matters
This is Alma’s great pastoral masterwork. Having given up the judgment seat, he goes on what Dr. Frantz Belot calls “a spiritual house call tour” — visiting Zarahemla, then Gideon, then heading next to Melek and Ammonihah. Chapters 5–7 are the Zarahemla and Gideon portions of that tour, and they are as different from each other as a difficult conversation between friends and a warm reunion with family.
Chapter 5 is an intervention. It opens with a long recitation of God’s past deliverances — Alma is forcing Zarahemla to remember who they are and what God has done for them. Then come the forty questions, which read less like a sermon and more like a spiritual diagnostic: not “do you believe the right things?” but “have you actually experienced anything?” The criterion throughout is experiential. Alma is asking whether the people have tasted the thing, not just learned about it.
Chapter 7 addresses Gideon, a righteous city, in a completely different register — warm, affirming, doctrinally dense in the best way. Here appears Alma 7:11–13, one of the most important atonement passages in the Book of Mormon: the Savior suffered not just our sins but our pains, afflictions, sicknesses, and infirmities — so that he would know exactly how to succor us.
Historical and Literary Context
Alma arrives in Zarahemla to find a church divided by wealth and hardened by prosperity — the same problem documented at the end of Alma 4. He does not preach to them as a judge but as their high priest, “according to the holy order of God” (Alma 5:3). His authority here is spiritual, not political.
His opening move is historical: he rehearses the captivity and deliverance of their fathers under Alma the Elder and the kings (Alma 5:4–13). This is a rhetorical strategy but also a theological one. The ancestors experienced a mighty change — their “bands of death” were loosed, their chains of hell were broken. The question Alma is pressing is: And you? What happened to you? The implication is that this inheritance is not automatically transmitted. Each person must encounter God for themselves.
Gideon, named for the man killed by Nehor in Alma 1, is evidently a more faithful community. Alma’s tone shifts from diagnostic to celebratory — he tells them they are “in the path which leads to the kingdom of God” (Alma 7:9) and then delivers the Alma 7:11–13 passage on the scope of the Atonement.
Major Themes
1. The Forty Questions: Experiential Faith, Not Just Propositional Belief
Alma 5 contains somewhere between forty and fifty rhetorical questions — scholars debate the count. What is clear is what kind of questions they are. Alma is not asking, “Do you know the doctrines?” He is asking:
- “Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?” (Alma 5:14)
- “Have ye felt to sing the song of redeeming love?” (Alma 5:26)
- “If ye have experienced a change of heart…can ye feel so now?” (Alma 5:26)
The criterion is affective and experiential throughout. Dr. Frantz Belot (followHIM) observes that Alma is functioning as a physician — and a physician’s diagnostic questions are about symptoms, not theory. “Does it hurt here?” not “Can you diagram the skeletal system?” This is a crucial pastoral distinction: Alma is more interested in the condition of your soul than your ability to articulate correct doctrine about it.1
The questions also escalate in challenge. Moving from simple awakening questions to probing deeper ones, Alma eventually arrives at: “Can you look up to God at this day with a pure heart and clean hands?” (Alma 5:19). This is not condemnation — it is an invitation to honest self-examination before a merciful God.
2. The Song of Redeeming Love: What Is It?
Alma 5:26 asks whether the people “can feel so now” — specifically whether they can “feel to sing the song of redeeming love.” This phrase appears three times in Alma 5 (vv. 26, 26, 26 — once explicitly, twice as “that song”). But the song is never printed. There are no lyrics.
Belot’s insight is that this is deliberate. The “song of redeeming love” is not a text to be memorized or recited — it is an experience of joy that arises from being truly forgiven, from having walked through spiritual darkness and been delivered. It is what the ancient Christians called charitas or what mystics describe as the peace that passes understanding. You do not learn the song; you feel it when you have experienced redemption.1
The follow-up question — “can ye feel so now?” — is thus a serious pastoral probe. It is possible to have had an experience of God’s grace and then to have drifted far enough back into spiritual numbness that the song has gone quiet. Alma is asking whether Zarahemla still has that resonance or whether prosperity has muffled it.
3. Change of Heart: Grace, Not Willpower
One of Belot’s most important contributions is his reframe of the “mighty change of heart” (Alma 5:12–14). In the modern therapeutic and motivational landscape, we hear “change your heart” as an act of will — if you want it badly enough, if you try hard enough, you can become a better person. Alma’s language resists this reading entirely.
The heart is changed by God, not by the person who possesses it. The passive construction throughout (“was born of God,” “were changed,” “were awakened”) is not accidental — it reflects a theological conviction that deep character transformation is God’s work, not ours. We cooperate with it; we do not produce it. We can turn toward God or away, but the actual surgery of a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26) is divine work.
This is why Belot argues that Alma’s forty questions are not a guilt-induction exercise but a diagnostic — the goal is to help people locate themselves honestly so that God can work with them where they actually are. The change of heart is not earned; it is received by those who are humble enough to want it.1
4. Repentance Reframed: Turning, Not Punishment
A consistent theme across followHIM’s treatment of this block is a reframe of what repentance actually is. The English word carries associations of pain, punishment, and groveling. The Hebrew teshuvah and Greek metanoia both mean simply turning — a change of direction, a reorientation of the self toward God.
Alma’s language in chapter 5 bears this out. Repentance is described in terms of awakening (Alma 5:7), of having “bonds loosed” (Alma 5:9), of being “washed” (Alma 5:21). These are images of liberation and cleansing, not punishment. The person who repents is not enduring a penalty — they are coming home.1
Belot notes that this reframe matters practically: people who see repentance as punishment tend to postpone it, or to approach God only when their guilt becomes unbearable. People who see it as turning — as simply changing direction — can do it immediately and repeatedly. The access point to God is always just one step away.
5. Alma 7:11–13 — The Fullest Description of What the Atonement Covers
“And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people… that he might know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their weaknesses.” — Alma 7:11–12
This passage is not in the Sermon on the Mount, not in John, not in Paul — it is uniquely Nephite, and it extends the scope of the Atonement far beyond what most Christians articulate. Jesus did not only pay for sins. He experienced:
- Pains — physical suffering
- Afflictions — difficult circumstances beyond one’s control
- Temptations of every kind — the full range of human moral struggle
- Sicknesses of his people — illness, grief, loss
- Infirmities — weakness, disability, limitation
The stated reason is crucial: “that he might know according to the flesh how to succor his people.” The Atonement is not just forensic (clearing a legal debt) — it is empathetic. The Savior became the perfect Comforter by having lived through everything he is now comforting us in.
Belot observes that this radically expands the situations in which we can ask for the Savior’s help. You do not have to have sinned to need the Atonement. If you are sick, grieving, lonely, afraid, or simply exhausted — that is covered. He knows what that is like from the inside.1
Connections and Cross-References
- Mosiah 5:2 — the people of King Benjamin describe their hearts as being changed: “we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually.” Same doctrine, same experiential language.
- Alma 36 — Alma’s personal account of his conversion experience, which underlies the authority behind his preaching in Alma 5.
- D&C 6:36 — “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.” The reframe of repentance as turning rather than fearing resonates here.
- Romans 8:26–27 — the Spirit intercedes when we do not know how to pray; the Atonement’s reach into our weakness, not just our sin.
Questions for Study and Reflection
- Which of Alma’s forty questions is most challenging to you right now — and why?
- When have you “felt to sing the song of redeeming love”? What were the circumstances that made that feeling possible?
- Do you think of repentance primarily as painful/punishing or as turning/liberating? What would change in your spiritual life if the second frame took hold?
- Alma 7:11–13 says Christ took on our pains and afflictions, not only our sins. What specific thing in your life right now does that mean he has experienced from the inside?
Sources
- followHIM BM-24 — Dr. Frantz Belot, “Alma 5–7: The Mighty Change of Heart”1
- Don’t Miss This — David Butler & Emily Freeman, Come Follow Me Alma 5–7 (June 1–7)2
- Unshaken — Come Follow Me: Alma 5–7 — The Mighty Change of Heart3
- Gospel Talktrine — S03E22, Alma 5–74