The Doctrine of Christ, Part 3: Baptism

Covenants play an important role in our progression in the Gospel. I think most of us know the definition for a covenant: a two-way promise between us an God in which we are promised blessings in return for our obedience. Covenants are often received through ordinances, such as  baptism or temple ordinances. These covenants allow us to further our relationship to God and progress as His children. In the Bible Dictionary it says: "The gospel is so arranged that principles and ordinances are received by covenant placing the recipient under strong obligation and responsibility to honor the commitment." We must fulfill our part of the promise to receive the promised blessings. The Lord says in D&C 82:10, "I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise." The Lord will bless us if we obey Him. There is no condition other than that.

Baptism is the first of these covenants that we make in our lives. In this covenant we promise a few things, that we will take upon ourselves the name of Christ, that we will always remember him, and that we will keep his commandments. In return we are promised a remission of our sins and the Gift of the Holy Ghost. (see sacrament prayers in D&C 20: 77, 79) Baptism is also the way by which we enter the Church. When we covenant to take upon ourselves the name of Christ, we take weighty responsibility with that. The Lord has commanded "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." (Deut. 5: 11) This not only applies to vain or casual use of the name of deity but also in the sense that we take His name through baptism. In doing so we make ourselves representatives of the Savior. To do so in vain would be to dishonor the Covenant. As a missionary I have the name of the Lord upon me in a very literal sense. The name badge we wear bears the name of Christ just under our own name. This means that every action I make, people see the name of the Savior on me as I do it. Likewise, all of us, after baptism, are representatives of Christ in the same way. By keeping the Commandments and always remembering Him, the other two parts of our promise, we also wear the name of the Lord well.

Through Baptism we are promised great blessings. The promise of Eternal Life is ours if we remain faithful and receive all the covenants of the Gospel. We are asked to give a small thing in comparison to what we receive. As in all aspects of our lives, we are indebted to God for his gifts to us. Christ himself was baptized, though not for a remission of sins, as that was unnecessary, but to "Fulfill all Righteousness." (Matt. 3:16) All of us need to make this important step in our progression and remain faithful to those promises which we made, so that all the promised blessings may be ours.

The Doctrine of Christ, Part 2: Repentance

One of the great things about the gospel is that it is simple enough for a spiritual infant to grasp, yet complex enough to keep the worlds best scholars busy for their whole lives. Books upon books have been written about some of the simplest truths that we know. It is the same with any aspect of the gospel, including the Doctrine of Christ. I love the simplicity of how each part builds on itself and starts over and keeps building. The first building block is faith. Next comes repentance. We can't skip over steps in our progression. We see quite often people who want to be baptized without true repentance, thinking that the baptism itself will satisfy that requirement. This doesn't quite work. Just as we can't truly repent until we have faith, we shouldn't be baptized before we are prepared. But there is so much more to repentance than getting us to baptism. All of us have "sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23) and we therefore have great need of the Atonement of Christ, that makes repentance possible for us. Since our Heavenly Father is a God of both justice and mercy, His plan included a way for both to be satisfied. With The Savior's selfless sacrifice for us satisfied the demand for justice while mercifully allowing us a way to overcome our sin. (More in 2 Nephi 2:6-8) Without The Atonement, all of us would inevitably face justice for all our sins. Through Christ we have a way to escape our own transgressions and guilt and become pure again. Many of us see repentance as a difficult process that  we would rather avoid. It is difficult, but the alternative is so much worse. In the First Epistle of John it says, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." The gift of the Atonement and the Sacrifice of His Son is the greatest gift that Heavenly Father could have given us. If we delude ourselves into thinking that we don't need to repent, we are saying that we don't want that gift. At this point I'm afraid that the tone of this post is a little too negative for my liking, but the overall message I want to convey is one of hope. Without Christ we would have none, but thankfully that is not the case. That is the message that we want to bring to the world, that a loving Father has provided a way for all of us to return to Him, and that way is trough His Son. We can all find happiness through faith and repentance on the name of Christ.

The Doctrine of Christ, Part 1: Faith

In the MTC we are drilled pretty ruthlessly to remember one thing. that thing is found on page one of Preach My Gospel. The Missionary purpose. It's something we have to memorize and recite at every district meeting, zone conference, ect. it is as follows: "My purpose as a missionary is to invite others to come unto Christ, by helping them receive the Restored Gospel, through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. Those five things, faith, repentance, baptism, the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end, make up what is known as the Doctrine of Christ. This doctrine is outlined pretty extensively in Second Nephi 31 and Third Nephi 11. Since this is our purpose out here as missionaries, I thought I'd do  a little miniseries, writing a little about each step, Which brings us to the topic at hand, Faith.

 We are given the definition of faith in Hebrews 1:11- "Now faith  is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." and again in Alma 32:21 "And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true." This seems to me to be a slightly different definition of what we usually consider to be faith. For example, I don't ever recall anyone standing up in testimony meeting and saying "I hope the Book of Mormon is true, I hope Joseph smith was a Prophet," and so on. we like to equate faith with knowledge, and yet this is different than what the scriptures teach. We are never commanded to have a perfect knowledge in the scriptures, but rather to have faith. Paul says "for we walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Cor. 5:7) and in Alma 32 it says "Yea, there are many who do say: If thou wilt show unto us a sign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe.

Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it." (Alma 32:17,18) So obviously there is a difference between faith and knowledge. I think this difference is shown pretty clearly in the story of the Brother of Jared. This was a man of great faith, and in fact his faith was so great that the veil was taken from him and he saw the Lord. after this, Moroni says, "And because of the knowledge of this man he could not be kept from beholding within the veil; and he saw the finger of Jesus, which, when he saw, he fell with fear; for he knew that it was the finger of the Lord; and he had faith no longer, for he knew, nothing doubting." This experience made it impossible for him to have faith, it had been replaced with knowledge. So then we know what faith is not. What faith is, however, is what is important to us. Faith is a principle of action and power, as defined in the Bible Dictionary. In James 2:17 it reads, "Even so, faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." It is no passive thing. Faith is not a simple declaration of belief that we do once and forget about it. Faith is something that when we are given it, drives us to do Gods will. this is the reason it is the first principle of the gospel, because no one will truly repent or be baptized without faith. Faith leads us to righteous action, and through continued application of faith, along with the rest of the gospel, we can live up to our divine potential. As we act on our faith, it grows, leading us to more action. Faith is a gift from God and it is our duty to do all we can with it. I've now run out of both time at the library and things to say, so hopefully though the time crunch I was able to say at least something that made sense to someone. Thanks for listening. 

Service

So I've been straining to think of what to write for my first *real* mission blog post, and whether that's because I had too many ideas flying around my head or none at all I'll let you decide. I finally decided to write a little on service, since that is the real thrust of everything we do as missionaries. There are a few reasons that we give service, some better than others. One easy reason is that it makes us feel good and we are generally inclined to repeat behaviors that make us feel good. Another, better reason is to follow the example of the Savior, who said: "For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10 :45.) He spent his entire life wholly devoted to the service and salvation of others. As our example he showed us the way to live our lives. Another reason we give service is to fulfill commandment. When some of the Pharisees came to Christ and asked what was the great commandment in the law, He responded, "Thou shalt love  the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22: 36-40) On this hangs all the law and the prophets. Everything we do in the Church, from the Word of Wisdom to Tithing to Family History stems from a love of God and a love of all mankind. And as we learn from King Benjamin, "When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God." (Mosiah 2:17) So these two scriptures, taken together show that service fulfills both of the great commandments. As we serve others we show our love to them and by extension to God. Obviously there are other things that we do in order to show obedience to the commandments, but service is a great way to demonstrate our love. When we are lost in the service of others blessings will always come. My mission has already been a huge blessing in my life in the short eight months I've spent here. I know that selfless service can bless the lives of those who give it, sometimes even more than those who receive it.

Here goes nothing

Ok so I finally decided to get my blog up and running. My goal in writing this blog is to provide my own shallow insights to the gospel and to hopefully bring others closer to the Savior. Hopefully I can produce at least a few semi-coherent posts from time to time, although not today. I've been fighting a losing battle with the computer to get to this point and I think I'll wait to actually write something good until next time. Let history mark the day, March 8, 2011, that Elder Decker officially hits the internet, for better or worse. Here goes nothing!