"Keep the Commandments" - Here's How

The admonitions of prophets and the dictoms of Holy Writ to "keep the commandments" are legion in number. This simple declaration on its face seems easy enough, but then we think upon the lists of all those things we are admonished to do (or not do), and it seems the task becomes more daunting than we originally thought.

When one ponders the Christian way of life, and seeks to emulate Jesus in all He taught in His gospel, one can easily become overwhelmed with what seems to be the magnitude of the task to "keep the commandments". I remember well an encounter with a person not of our faith many years ago who "came close" to joining the Mormon church, he said, but "I just couldn't follow all the rules - there were too many," and he elected to remain as he was without the church.

Even people who do come into the Church often find kinship with my friend's observations. They flourish for a season, then fall by the wayside for a host of reasons. I've known too many returned missionaries who find it difficult to do the things they taught their investigators to do when they were teaching them the principles of the gospel. They suffer with living what I once called an "impossible gospel" of perfect compliance with a seemingly endless list of commandments.

President Harold B. Lee

It is hard to find a more iconic statement than the one offered by President Harold B. Lee in 1972, at his inaugural press conference after being named the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We even have a Primary song with the title to memorialize his statement. When asked what message he would give to the then-3 million members of the Church, he responded, "The greatest message that one in this position could give to the membership of the Church is to keep the commandments of God, for therein lies the safety of the Church and the safety of the individual. Keep the commandments. There could be nothing that I could say that would be a more powerful or important message today." (Teachings of Harold B. Lee, 85).

In the Bible, we read about a remarkable doctrine of being "born again". It comes in the story of a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, who came to Jesus by night so he would not be detected as a secret admirer of the Savior. He declares his testimony of the Savior's identity, when he said:

Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.
Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man he born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?
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.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

Then the Savior added a final meaningful observation: "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." (John 3:2-8).

There are many commentaries that have been offered on those verses, but perhaps the thoughts I offer here will be sufficient. We must be born again to even see the kingdom of God. This is often the experience of new converts as they describe what first attracted them to the Church. Without the benefit of all the commandments, or as we might say, "the law", they are spiritually attracted to the teachings of the Savior. They become spiritually "born again" before they are shown the long lists of commandments. It suggests that to become truly converted, one has to have some spiritual change in order to know the gospel or to first see the Church. There must be some kind of spiritual experience.

And then subsequent to that spiritual enlightening, to enter into the kingdom of God — to become a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — there has to be a new birth "of water" and "of the Spirit" after they become more familiar with the commandments the Lord has given us. This entrance into the kingdom, of course, is baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and the laying on of the hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

The final observation I would offer is that how this spiritual rebirth takes place is just as impossible to explain as to explain where the wind comes from or where it goes. It is a spiritual reality that is as mysterious in its definition and as varied in its manifestations. It may be as elusive as a moonbeam, just as the origins and direction of the wind. And notwithstanding its elusive nature, it is precisely what makes our ability to keep the commandments possible.

I would suggest that being born again spiritually is the vital key to keeping all the commandments. Think of it this way: You do not know all the civil laws on the books in your city, state and nation, because mastering such a task would be nearly impossible. Lawyers go to school to learn those laws and how they are applied, but no one can attempt to master them all. However, if you as a citizen are determined to "be a good boy" and follow the light of your conscience within your heart, you will seldom run afoul of all those laws of which you have no knowledge.

I have known many, many Latter-day Saints who could not possibly come close to being or ever becoming gospel scholars capable of learning all God's laws. But they know and recognize the powerful influence of the Holy Ghost in their lives, and they live the commandments to the best of their ability without even knowing them in fine. The law was never written for "born-again" saints who know and recognize the Spirit in their lives and give heed to its promptings. Living in the Spirit assures compliance with "the law", whether it be God's law or civil law.

Elder Orson F. Whitney

Elder Orson F. Whitney expanded on the magnitude of the scope of the commandments we have been given in these words: "The principles which compose the gospel — and not merely the first principles, but all that have been or will ever be revealed — are self-existent and everlasting in their nature. They have existed from all eternity, and will endure through all eternities to come, for they are absolute, essential, uncreated truths, without beginning of day or end of years, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Concerning the time, place, and method of their compilation it is not man's present province to enquire." (Elder's Journal 4:26.)

We live in a day when the words of Nephi are truer than ever: "Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do. Wherefore, now after I have spoken these words, if ye cannot understand them it will be because ye ask not, neither do ye knock; wherefore, ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark. For behold, again I say unto you that if ye will enter in by the way [get baptized], and receive the Holy Ghost, it will show unto you all things what ye should do." (2 Nephi 32:2-4, emphasis mine).

If you are currently a member of the Church, care-worn and still suffering under the illusion you can and should be toiling harder and harder to keep all the commandments of God perfectly before you will be an acceptable candidate for eternal life, think deeply on this message of liberation. You are like one of His lost little lambs. Embrace the Spirit instead and begin feasting upon the words of Christ. Accept the embrace of His loving arms around you. If you do, you are promised you will know the truth of all things and you will in process of time be keeping all of God's commandments without the stress that now accompanies your efforts under the law that is impossible to keep perfectly. Rely instead upon the perfection of the Savior to deliver you from the demands of justice. He is your Redeemer.

If you are one who became weary and lost your way in paths that now seem twisted, corrupted and confusing, turn around and come back home. He welcomes and searches for all His lost lambs in whatever paths they may have wandered. The path back into His warm embrace is the same for you. Become "born again" by feasting on the words of Christ, seeking for the spiritual experiences you have been lacking, and come back into the light of the Holy Ghost. You will find your mind embracing and eagerly welcoming the principles that comprise the gospel. These truths in the words of Elder Whitney that are "absolute, essential, uncreated truths, without beginning of day or end of years, the same yesterday, today, and forever" will begin to cast aside the scales of darkness that have shrouded your view until now. You will be "born again" and that rebirth will be glorious beyond description.

Eight Steps to Perfection

Sermon on the Mount

I've stood on the sloping hills surrounding the Sea of Galilee and imagined what it might have been like to be in that audience.  The Sermon on the Mount continues to be one of the most quoted pieces of scripture in the Christian tradition.  More than a theological essay on what constitutes "blessedness," the Savior offered an eight-step process leading to the fulfillment and universal happiness everyone seeks.  We call them the "The Beatitudes," but I have come to believe they are an outline for living designed to procure the perfect life. 

This topic of perfection is interesting.  Go back twenty or thirty years and you find Apostles preaching it is achievable, a goal to be sought, and a destination within our grasp if not in this life then the next.  More recently, scholars have suggested "perfection" isn't really that at all -- it's more a matter of being "complete," or "finished" in our faith in Christ's perfection.  I favor the latter interpretation, only because it seems to reflect more accurately on my belief in Christ as the Deliverer, the Savior and Redeemer.  (See Moroni 10:32-33).  I can "strive" for perfection in this life, perhaps one thing, one attribute, one principle and one commandment at a time, but in the end I must still rely totally and completely on the merits of Christ's perfection and perfect my faith in Him to be "finished" and "complete" in my faith.  Despite my best efforts at perfection without Jesus Christ, I remain a fallen mortal, weak and unfit for the Kingdom.

I've done perfect work with the Word of Wisdom, Sabbath day observance, with tithing, with Church attendance, with a host of other "achievables," but perfect in everything?  Uh, no, not even close.  But in my hope of Christ's perfect atonement for me, I have come close to perfection as I come to view myself as fallen and weak. 

I believe the Beatitudes offer a way of life worth pursuing.  Four of the eight have to do with our individual souls, the living and sanctifying of our personal lives.

1.  Blessed are the poor in spirit.

2.  Blessed are they that mourn.

3.  Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.

4.  Blessed are the pure in heart.

"To be poor in spirit"


Goates cousins


I see myself as spiritually needy.  I have been poor in spirit when I lack faith, and the older I grow the more aware I am of my dependency upon the Lord for everything -- breath, clothes, warmth, transportation, food, health and life.  When I witness the births of these little grandchildren I realize now more than I ever did as a young father how precious, how fragile, and what a miracle birth really is.  I now never let a day pass without acknowledging fervently my gratitude for guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit.  When I have been poor in spirit and acknowledged it, I have been made rich almost in the moment I have asked for a greater endowment.  There have been times when I needed to be filled, to be rich in spirit -- times when I was a father and my best efforts fell short, times as a bishop when there were no easy answers to perplexing problems I had never considered until they were presented to me by struggling souls.  I had to be rich to fill those who were poor in spirit.  And now looking back, I realize I have been nothing more than a conduit for the Spirit.  Needing forgiveness myself, it has been easier to forgive, and realizing how patient God has been with me, it has been easier to value patience as a virtue in my interactions with others.  I hasten to add "easier," but still working at it.  Thus I have been made rich in spirit.  Each day presents a new day for expanding need to have more spirit within me.  Each day together and individually we plead for the guidance of the Spirit -- to be made rich in spirit.  All the wealth and learning or worldly position cannot displace the need for the Spirit in our lives.  To have the Spirit is the polar opposite of pride or self-conceit.  I have never known a person filled with pride who had the Spirit.  Job reminds us, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."  When we sense our need for the Spirit, we are ready for adoption into the "church of the Firstborn, and to become the elect of God."  (See D&C 76:50-70).

"To mourn"

I have routinely mourned as I have come to understand my feet are firmly planted in clay.  While I long to surmount and triumph over ALL my sins, I am routinely mourning continually over a few I keep repeating.  I know what it is to experience "godly sorrow that worketh repentance."  The magnitude of my sins may not be as noticeable as others', but the awareness of the incremental need to improve is escalating daily.  I don't let my mourning for my weakness consume me, however, because my faith in Christ accelerates through my new found awareness and hope displaces the sorrow for self.  My tendencies are slipping away.  Old age has something to do with it, I suppose, but choosing consciously to avoid sin wipes away the mourning.  Losing the desire to sin while younger is more imporant than losing the ability to sin when older.  I love the way the Apostle Paul said it, as he found "glory in tribulations knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope."  (Romans 5:3-4).  The formula is offered in the true definition of what membership in the Church involves:  You must be willing "to bear one another's burdens, that they may be light."  You must be willing to mourn with those that mourn, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.  (Mosiah 18:8-9).  I never understood that passage until I was a bishop -- the mourning has more to do with the old man of sin dying than an actual funeral.  I had a perpetual stock of Kleenex on my bishop's desk.  Never before or since have I witnessed such sorrow.  In a word, we mourn first for our own sins until we develop faith in Christ, then we succor and comfort others in their mourning over theirs.  As we lift and bless others, all the boats in the harbor rise including our own.

"To hunger and thirst after righteousness"

I once heard someone explain fasting this way:  "To fast without a purpose is merely to starve."  Have you noticed how precious water is after twenty-four hours of abstinence?  Have you savored the taste of food when you have gone without for a day or so?  Was that hunger and thirst coupled with a spiritual purpose?  Has desiring a spiritual gift or seeking a worthwhile purpose enhanced your lack of temporal comfort for a period?  When we experience that hungering and thirsting, we begin to understand what the Savior must have had in mind when He said we must hunger and thirst after righteousness with as much fervor as quelling our physical hunger and thirst when it seems so urgent.  It's that hungering and thirsting that leads those who come camping in Woodland and other holiday weekends to come seeking fellowship with the saints in our three-hour block of meetings, even when the seating is hard to come by.  It's that hungering that drives us into the scriptures to feast at the doctrinal banquet table, and steers our course to temple altars where the water of eternal life is dispensed without restriction.  Those who keep the Sabbath day holy experience that hunger and thirst instead of snowmobiling, four-wheeling, hunting and boating on the Lord's day.  When our children were younger and we passed many of the them headed for the hills while we were headed to Church, I often remarked to lighten their mood, "They aren't really having fun.  We're going to have a lot more fun in three hours of meetings."  The most familiar motto of Mormonism may be this one:  If you ask with "a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest . . . truth . . . unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost," and by its power you "may know the truth of all things."  (Moroni 10:4-5).  When we seek to know the truth of all things, we are then seeking righteousness with all our hearts.  Then "your whole bodies shall be filled with light and there shall be no darkness in you."  (D&C 88:67).

"The pure in heart"

President Harold B. Lee

Only the pure see God.  Harold B. Lee used to tell the story from Jewish writings of a man who saw an object in the distance, an object he thought was a beast.  As it drew nearer he could perceive it was a man and as it came still closer he saw it was his friend.  You can see only that which you have eyes to see.  Think about what it must have been like to live in Galilee in the time of Jesus.  You may have known and recognized Jesus only as a son of Joseph the carpenter.  His critics called him a "winebibber" (drunkard) because his teachings were so counterculture to the corrupt Jewish Pharisees.  Others thought he was possessed of devils.  If you were there, how would you have seen Him?  Would you have known the Son of God when you met Him?  Even two of his disciples did not know him on the road to Emmaus until "their eyes were opened."  (Luke 24:13-27).  Only the righteous saw him as the Son of God.  Even now, only if you are pure in heart will you be able to "see God."  There are many among us today who cannot see God in His leaders, the living prophets He has sent to guide us.  Those who find fault speak from an impure heart.

Entrance into the Kingdom

It is not enough to "be good."  We must be "good for something" to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  We must actually do something in our relationships with others to be acceptable candidates for membership.

5.  Blessed are the meek.

6.  Blessed are the merciful.

7.  Blessed are the peacemakers.

8.  Blessed are they which are persecuted.

"The meek"

Elder Neal A. Maxwell

Elder Neal A. Maxwell wrote the book on meek.  Said he:  "Meekness ranks so low on the mortal scale of things, yet so high on God's: 'For none is acceptable before God, save the meek and lowly in heart' (Moroni 7:44).  The rigorous requirements of Christian discipleship cannot be met without the tutoring facilitated by meekness:  'Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly' (Matthew 11:29).  Jesus, the carpenter, 'undoubtedly had experience making yokes' with Joseph (Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 4 [New York: Abingdon Press, 1962], 925), and thus the Savior gave us that marvelous metaphor (see Matthew 11:20).  Unlike servitude to sin, by wearing his yoke we truly learn of the Yoke Master in what is an education for eternity as well as for mortality.  Meekness is needed, therefore, in order for us to be spiritually successful -- whether in matters of the intellect, in the management of power, in the dissolution of personal pride, or in coping with the challenges and routine of life.  With meekness, living in 'thanksgiving daily' is actually possible even in life's stern seasons (Alma 34:38)."  ("Meek and Lowly," BYU Devotional, October 21, 1986).  "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty." (Proverbs 16:32).  One who is meek is teachable and a natural leader, though often overlooked.  Though he may be trampled on earth during mortality, he is the "salt" of the earth and will one day inherit it.

"To be merciful"

President Gordon B. Hinckley

To receive the mercy we for which we hope and desperately need from our Savior, we must extend it to others first.  In the laboratory of family life we often exchange unkind and cruel words, we render harsh judgments, and we criticize unfairly.  Those whom we are closest to often receive the worst of us.  Years go by without the needed salve of forgiveness.  Regardless of the details (even if we are justified in our anger toward the acts of others or their misjudgment of us) we are nevertheless required to forgive ALL men.  (D&C 64:8-11).  President Gordon B. Hinckley wrote a definitive article on this topic in one of his First Presidency Messages.  It's one thing to say we love each other, then quite another to take their names in our lips and openly criticize, judge, or reject them for whatever wrong they have perpetrated against us.  Who are we to complain about being misjudged or treated unfairly by our fellowmen, when our complaint is directed toward the Savior?  Did He descend below it all or not?  Can we teach Him anything about irony or being unjustly persecuted?  Our willing suffering is often a needed witness against greed, evil and despotism.

"Peacemakers, the children of God"

These are rare human beings in my experience.  Peacemakers shall one day be called the children of God. Trouble-makers in our modern world, however, are easy to discern.  They are everywhere.  "World peace," that long-sought goal, can only be accomplished one heart at a time.  James Ferrell offered a blockbuster book a few years ago, The Peacegiver: How Christ Offers to Heal Hearts and Homes.  If we could all learn to put away all the metaphorical swords we use against family, neighbors, work associates, political opponents, obnoxious drivers, lousy customer service personnel, etc. (it's a long list, isn't it?) we would live in a more peaceful world.  And the world of peace can begin only in our hearts.  Perhaps this is the ultimate answer to world peace.  Could it be that simple?  How ironic the heralded hymn at His birth was "Peace on earth, goodwill to men."  Since that day, however, the world has known little of peace.  Someone did a study about war since the Restoration in 1830, and discovered the world has not had a day of peace since.  That's an irony that will one day be overturned.  One day the Prince of Peace will finally introduce peace to this world, but only after we have filled up the dregs of war to overlowing and exhausted ourselves.  To be a peacegiver and a peacemaker in the midst of darkness is as "otherworldly" as one could be.

"The persecuted"

"Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet the scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own."

There is a price to be paid for discipleship.  None will pay the uttermost farthing for Christ without suffering persecution for the truth's sake.  The history of the world is replete with stories of the martyrs in the cause.  Tyndale and other great reformers, pilgrims, prophets, pioneers and prophets have been sacrificed and slain in the fray.  While the persecution may be more subtle in these last days, the minions of the abyss are raging against the light as never before.  Darkness is everywhere, but so is the warmth of the light from the "Son."  Those who do not "see" God nor His servants may temporarily deter others in their quest for truth, but someday those forces will be overcome and the Messiah will come.  Those who have been persecuted will be recompensed for their losses.  The scales will tilt again to adjust for those who seek God's righteousness.  As long as this earth stands there will be evil, those who love and make a lie, in opposition to an almost universal quest for that which is right.  Whether we find it in direct opposition to the Church or in our political discourse, most oppose that which they do not comprehend.  Like the World War II bomber pilots, always remember if you aren't drawing some flak from below you probably aren't over your target.  The Savior taught, "Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets."  (Luke 6:26).

Some would call the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes "simplistic" today.  However, as it was timely counsel then, it remains timeless instruction leading toward perfection and exaltation today.

If we would truly be "blessed," here are the eight steps toward realizing "blessedness" and perfection.