I thought I'd share a talk given in church earlier this year. On a Sunday when members were asked to bring investigators, they asked me to condense a talk on forgiveness I'd given a couple years ago from 28 minutes to 7 or 8 minutes. I tried, and found it impossible to do, so I wrote another talk to fit the time allotted. I believe it turned out very well.
WASHED IN THE BLOOD
The other day while driving home from work, I was listening to the radio when the words of a new country song struck me and caused me to reflect. The singer tells in the song of the girl a few houses down the road, with whom he fell in love and asked to marry, and of the response of the girl’s mother to this proposition. “Her momma wants to know if I’m washed in the blood, or just in the water?” (Down the Road, Kenny Chesney) I paused to reflect upon the deeper meaning within this simple verse.
I then thought about something in a book I recently read, where the author related an experience he had teaching the Gospel Doctrine class in his ward. One Sunday, he asked his students, “What does it mean to be a good Mormon?” The answers to this question were typical of what you might expect in such a class – attend church, pay tithing, attend the temple, read scriptures, hold family home evening, do your home and visiting teaching – all the right Sunday School answers. He then asked a second question, “What does it mean to be a good Christian?” The answers received were quite different – love others, care for the poor, give service, treat your family members kindly. He was struck by the fact that the answers were different, for shouldn’t they be the same? (The Cost of Winning: Coming in First Across the Wrong Finish Line, Dean Hughes) And in this story I found what I would define as the difference between being washed in the blood or just in the water.
We can keep the commandment to be baptized, can be washed in the water as it were, but until we are truly changed in our hearts and have no more desire to sin, have we really been washed in His blood? Is it possible to pay our tithing and still be covetous of the things of the world? To read the scriptures every day and not have the word of God written in our hearts? To pray morning and night and not be guided by the voice of the Spirit in our lives? To hold family home evening every week and yet treat each other with harshness in our home? Can we be washed in the water, keeping the outward commandments, without it reaching our inward parts and changing our hearts? (See Jeremiah 31:33)
Let us not misunderstand that keeping His commandments is not important; rather, it is essential – in that the scriptures are abundantly clear. However, the end must not simply be compliance with commands, but becoming more like Christ. Elder Dallin H. Oaks has said,
“The Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts – what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughts – what we have become. It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions. The commandments, ordinances, and covenants of the gospel are not a list of deposits required to be made in some heavenly account. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become.” (“The Challenge to Become”, Ensign, November 2000, 32)
What does our Father want us to become? We are familiar with the scripture in the Sermon on the Mount, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect…” (Matt 5:48) and so we might go about trying hard to make all the right deposits in our heavenly account, to perfectly keep every commandment. But take a moment and look at this verse in the context of the verses around it, rather than just alone. It is the concluding verse in a section commanding us to love and do good to everyone, even our enemies, that we may become the children of our Father in Heaven. Perhaps we should consider in this verse the command to love completely, even as our Father in Heaven loves each of His children.
This love is something that must enter into every aspect of our lives, in ways we perhaps don’t often think of. Have you ever noticed in General Conference, at the conclusion of the session, the prophet often gives the admonition to be careful and courteous as we are driving home? We might often think of this as a trite phrase like the “bless us to travel home safely” common in our closing prayers at church, but could there be more to it than that? Might we consider that there actually is a way the Lord would want us to drive? As we stand in the shopping line with our one item in a hurry to get wherever we are going and the old lady in front of us fumbles with her checkbook, searches in her purse for a pen, and steals precious minutes from our life, are our thoughts loving and Christ like? As our young child spills her milk over the table and the floor for the third night in a row, do we wipe away the tears with Kleenex or sandpaper? In our homes, with our children, in our simple day to day interactions with everyone around us, do we allow His love to permeate our lives, to fill our hearts?
In the first part of the fourth chapter of Mosiah, King Benjamin teaches his people how to receive salvation – through faith, repentance, obedience to the commandments, continuing faithful to the end – all the things we are so familiar with. What applies to our discussion here is found as he continues his discourse in the second half of this chapter, where he describes the characteristics of those who have been saved. They will not have a mind to injure one another and will live peaceably with each other. They will care for their children and teach them to walk in the truth and to love one another. They will take care of others, administering to their relief, both temporally and spiritually. They will not judge those less fortunate, but will impart of their substance freely. King Benjamin does not characterize those who are saved by how they are with themselves, but by how they are with others.
Each week we come to church, partake of the sacrament, and listening to the prayer make the covenant that we are willing to take upon us the name of His Son. What more is it to take His name upon us than simply to act as he would act, do as he would do, love as he would love? As our lives become, albeit on a small and imperfect scale, a mirror of His, as we work, not just to keep the commandments, but to let them work in us to change our hearts, we will know the joy of His love as we are washed clean in His blood. May we so do, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Rick Merrill
Meadow Springs Ward
March 15, 2009
WASHED IN THE BLOOD
The other day while driving home from work, I was listening to the radio when the words of a new country song struck me and caused me to reflect. The singer tells in the song of the girl a few houses down the road, with whom he fell in love and asked to marry, and of the response of the girl’s mother to this proposition. “Her momma wants to know if I’m washed in the blood, or just in the water?” (Down the Road, Kenny Chesney) I paused to reflect upon the deeper meaning within this simple verse.
I then thought about something in a book I recently read, where the author related an experience he had teaching the Gospel Doctrine class in his ward. One Sunday, he asked his students, “What does it mean to be a good Mormon?” The answers to this question were typical of what you might expect in such a class – attend church, pay tithing, attend the temple, read scriptures, hold family home evening, do your home and visiting teaching – all the right Sunday School answers. He then asked a second question, “What does it mean to be a good Christian?” The answers received were quite different – love others, care for the poor, give service, treat your family members kindly. He was struck by the fact that the answers were different, for shouldn’t they be the same? (The Cost of Winning: Coming in First Across the Wrong Finish Line, Dean Hughes) And in this story I found what I would define as the difference between being washed in the blood or just in the water.
We can keep the commandment to be baptized, can be washed in the water as it were, but until we are truly changed in our hearts and have no more desire to sin, have we really been washed in His blood? Is it possible to pay our tithing and still be covetous of the things of the world? To read the scriptures every day and not have the word of God written in our hearts? To pray morning and night and not be guided by the voice of the Spirit in our lives? To hold family home evening every week and yet treat each other with harshness in our home? Can we be washed in the water, keeping the outward commandments, without it reaching our inward parts and changing our hearts? (See Jeremiah 31:33)
Let us not misunderstand that keeping His commandments is not important; rather, it is essential – in that the scriptures are abundantly clear. However, the end must not simply be compliance with commands, but becoming more like Christ. Elder Dallin H. Oaks has said,
“The Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts – what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughts – what we have become. It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions. The commandments, ordinances, and covenants of the gospel are not a list of deposits required to be made in some heavenly account. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become.” (“The Challenge to Become”, Ensign, November 2000, 32)
What does our Father want us to become? We are familiar with the scripture in the Sermon on the Mount, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect…” (Matt 5:48) and so we might go about trying hard to make all the right deposits in our heavenly account, to perfectly keep every commandment. But take a moment and look at this verse in the context of the verses around it, rather than just alone. It is the concluding verse in a section commanding us to love and do good to everyone, even our enemies, that we may become the children of our Father in Heaven. Perhaps we should consider in this verse the command to love completely, even as our Father in Heaven loves each of His children.
This love is something that must enter into every aspect of our lives, in ways we perhaps don’t often think of. Have you ever noticed in General Conference, at the conclusion of the session, the prophet often gives the admonition to be careful and courteous as we are driving home? We might often think of this as a trite phrase like the “bless us to travel home safely” common in our closing prayers at church, but could there be more to it than that? Might we consider that there actually is a way the Lord would want us to drive? As we stand in the shopping line with our one item in a hurry to get wherever we are going and the old lady in front of us fumbles with her checkbook, searches in her purse for a pen, and steals precious minutes from our life, are our thoughts loving and Christ like? As our young child spills her milk over the table and the floor for the third night in a row, do we wipe away the tears with Kleenex or sandpaper? In our homes, with our children, in our simple day to day interactions with everyone around us, do we allow His love to permeate our lives, to fill our hearts?
In the first part of the fourth chapter of Mosiah, King Benjamin teaches his people how to receive salvation – through faith, repentance, obedience to the commandments, continuing faithful to the end – all the things we are so familiar with. What applies to our discussion here is found as he continues his discourse in the second half of this chapter, where he describes the characteristics of those who have been saved. They will not have a mind to injure one another and will live peaceably with each other. They will care for their children and teach them to walk in the truth and to love one another. They will take care of others, administering to their relief, both temporally and spiritually. They will not judge those less fortunate, but will impart of their substance freely. King Benjamin does not characterize those who are saved by how they are with themselves, but by how they are with others.
Each week we come to church, partake of the sacrament, and listening to the prayer make the covenant that we are willing to take upon us the name of His Son. What more is it to take His name upon us than simply to act as he would act, do as he would do, love as he would love? As our lives become, albeit on a small and imperfect scale, a mirror of His, as we work, not just to keep the commandments, but to let them work in us to change our hearts, we will know the joy of His love as we are washed clean in His blood. May we so do, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Rick Merrill
Meadow Springs Ward
March 15, 2009
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