The Lord Jesus Christ, in the nineteenth century, sought to establish with his people a new and everlasting covenant, the same that was from the beginning, one in which the Lord would replace our impenetrable heart of stone with a heart of flesh that could receive all the good feelings that come from his name, finally inscribing his holy law on the tablet of our hearts.
With these new hearts full of mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, and every good fruit to rise to the stature of the fullness of Christ, the express image of the Father, we as his people become a light to our fellow man with the same love God has for us all.
This covenant, beginning with the preparatory gospel of repentance, starts with the good feelings contained in the willingness to keep all God’s commandments and fulfill his will on earth, including to mourn with those that mourn, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, even to impart of our substance of our own free will and good desires toward God to every needy, naked soul, according to what we have, in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally, according to their wants.
The lofty, divine sentiments coming from God inspire us to tear down the barriers that separate us from each other, to build a new society where brother watches brother and there is equality among the church of Christ in a perfect union.
The commandment to esteem our brother as ourself is demonstrated when, through the pure love of Christ, we consecrate of our properties, which we have to impart, for the support of our brothers, with whom we are joint partakers of the heavenly gift and all the abundance God has placed on the earth for his children together. We do so with an everlasting love in a covenant and deed which cannot be broken. If then we provide for our fellow sojourners in life with the same impartial consideration that God has for us, we make earth like heaven.
This same Jesus has been seeking to establish this condition among man for all time, where he would have a kingdom of priests and a holy nation as his special property, where brother watches brother until there are no poor among us. He failed to find such a people driven by a love for God and their fellow men in the days of Moses, and again among the saints in the 19th century, but he promised to continue working toward this end until at last there would be those ready to receive him as king in the last days.
Thus, the process which would begin with repentance and result in a new man, clothed with the fullness of the attributes of Christ, abounding in the fruits and gifts of his Spirit, crowned with the pure love of Christ, would bring about a heavenly society as a witness to all the world that His ways were the only ways of salvation.
This month’s Herald features articles that remind us of how our covenant with God includes the obligation we have to our fellow man, and of the Lord’s blessings when we act in faith to fulfill his will. May we be the people whom the Lord seeks, who will fulfill his law and inherit his promised blessings. Please consider the bearing on your soul that these articles bring, so you may be counted as one who loves their neighbor as themselves, and who walks by faith in the commandments of God.
Jesus is still waiting, and our strides must be long for the journey. The Lord has promised to be with us and labor with us if we keep his commandments in all things. We can trust in his promises. The Lord will show us the steps of love that lie before us so we can walk in them and finally fulfill the desire of his heart, to have that longed for people who embrace his truth and look upward all the way in our return to him.
