Lantibiotics are a family of antibacterial peptide natural products characterized by the posttranslational installation of the thioether-containing amino acids lanthionine and methyllanthionine. Until recently, only a single stereochemical configuration for each of these crosslinks was known in Nature. The discovery of lantibiotics with alternative lanthionine and methyllanthionine stereochemistry has prompted an investigation of its importance to biological activity. Here, solid-supported chemical synthesis enabled the total synthesis of the lantibiotic lacticin 481 and analogues containing crosslinks with non-native stereochemical configuration. Biological evaluation revealed that these alterations abolished antibacterial activity in all analogues, revealing the critical importance of the enzymatically-installed stereochemistry for the biological activity of lacticin 481.