I hope you enjoy some insights from my Come, Follow Me for Doctrine and Covenants 121-123. If you missed last week’s insight, for Doctrine and Covenants 115-120 click here for it. Please share this with your friends or use this picture to save this pin to read later:
Correcting in the Lord’s way.
“Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy;”
Doctrine and Covenants 121:43
God loves everyone. We are all His children. But many people want to take that fact and adulterate it into meaning God approves of all our actions. Whereas it is true that God does love the sinner, He does not love or tolerate the sin. Elder Holland recently taught, “Christ never once withheld His love from anyone, but He also never once said to anyone, ‘Because I love you, you are exempt from keeping my commandments.’ We are tasked with trying to strike that same sensitive, demanding balance in our lives.”
The Bible teaches us that “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth” (Heb 12:6). Therefore not only will God’s love not tolerate sin, but it also causes Him to reach out to correct the sin. These actions are actions of LOVE not of hate. We must be the same way. When we correct our correction must be out of love. Yes, we have commandments. Yes, we have standards. But never let those eclipse the love that we must show forth. Elder Marion D. Hanks taught, “We cannot, my dear brethren, condition our love … There have to be standards and they must be enforced, but our love must be unconditional.”
Jesus was tried, and so must we be.
“The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?”
Doctrine and Covenants 122:8
The pathway that Jesus Christ had to walk was a pathway of trials, hardships, and pain. Yet many Latter-day Saints believe that if we are righteous, then we will be insulated from trials and pain. But this is a lie planted by Satan. He knows that our pathway will always be thorny if we are following God. And if we buy into this lie it opens up a whole can of wyrms from not learning lessons we should from trials to the temptation to judge others. (For more on this topic and how we get trials wrong, see this article)
In Doctrine and Covenants 122, God is reminding Joseph Smith about this. God gives a bunch of hypothetical trials and hardships to Joseph and then tells him, EVEN IF you had to experience all these things, Jesus Christ, who was perfect, endured more. Therefore in our pursuit of discipleship and following Christ, not only would make sense that trials would follow, they should be expected. Not only should the be expected, but if we truly understood the nature of trials then we would understand that it is only in the fire of trials that the attributes of Godhood are forged.
Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught this when he said: “How can you and I really expect to glide naively through life, as if to say, ‘Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy joy!’”
Why the Lord can not stand the creeds of Christianity.
“… the creeds of the fathers, who have inherited lies, upon the hearts of the children, and filled the world with confusion, and has been growing stronger and stronger, and is now the very mainspring of all corruption, and the whole earth groans under the weight of its iniquity.”
Doctrine and Covenants 123:7
The Lord pulls no punches in Doctrine and Covenants 123 in attacking the creeds of Christianity. He blames the spirit of the creeds for basically everything wrong with Christianity, and the world. He declares in verse 8 “It [the creeds of Christianity] is an iron yoke, it is a strong band; they are the very handcuffs, and chains, and shackles, and fetters of hell.” (Doctrine and Covenants 123:8) And during the First Vision, He declared “their creeds are an abomination in my sight.” (See Joseph Smith History 1:19.)
Jesus Christ is NOT mincing words, “fetters of hell” “Iron yoke” “abomination” and “mainspring of all corruption” are all extremely strong and harsh condemnations. But why? Why does Jesus Christ so completely and forcefully denounce the creeds as an abomination? Why and what has Satan done here to evoke such harsh condemnation?
To understand this one must understand the status of Satan and the status of God. Because of rebellion, Satan was cast out of heaven. His punishment was that God denied him a body, and the ability to be a father. He is a spirit without body, parts, or passions. Or in other words, Satan coveted God’s status of a God, he rebelled and got permanently denied the essence of Godhood which is having a body and being an eternal Father/Mother.
When the creeds of Christendom were being written Satan influenced them. He tricked creedal Christianity to teach that we are actually not children of God and that we are merely adopted by Christ. Further, he convinced them that the most exalted form was a spirit without a body, parts, or passions. By doing this He stripped God of His fatherhood and His body thus effectively stripping Him of His Godhood.
Basically, Satan convinced Christians to reject God the Father much like he convinced the Jews to reject Christ. If you ask a Christian to describe God they will describe the damned status of Satan’s soul rather than the exalted status of God the Father.
The whole purpose of the Plan of Salvation is to exalt the sons and daughters of God, or in other words, to provide exalted bodies, and enable eternal fatherhood and motherhood. If Satan can destroy our understanding of what Godhood is, and what our relationship with God is, then he can claim more causalities in his ongoing war.
This is why our very first article of faith declares: “We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost” (Article of Faith 1:1). President Gordon B. Hinckley taught that “This first article of faith epitomizes our doctrine. We do not accept the Athanasian Creed. We do not accept the Nicene Creed, nor any other creed based on tradition and the conclusions of men.” For the most eloquent discourse on this topic I defer to Elder Holland: