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.