12/25/2017 - Section 74:1-7

December 25, 2017

Section 74:1-7

Demands of Life, To-Do Lists, Priorities, Mistakes, Leaders Mistakes Of, Atonement,

In this section, Joseph has re-commenced his revision of the Bible. The student manual says that Joseph was told to begin this project as early as March 7, 1831. When I look at my life, I often feel I have too many things that I must be doing. One of those things was the demands of a full time job, but I’m retired now. My ‘demands’ now are 1) church callings; 2) home projects that I feel I must complete and not leave to my children (photo albums completed, Waits lifetime correspondence scanned and saved; 3) going on missions which I feel compelled to do, but I know that compelling desire comes from inside me and not from outside pressure and since completing our Japan mission it comes because I now know how much growth and satisfaction and simple joy come from serving a mission; 4) friendships—(something we pretty well neglected in our child rearing days and during our non-child raising times when we were both working) Friendships take time, they take planning, they take doing, they take reinforcing—but they are SO valuable; 5) leisure—that’s something we have spend little time exploring, and something I want to learn more about now; 6) hobbies—we should be doing something that brings us pleasure and causes us to stretch ourselves; 7) health—that is something that we can no longer assume is always there. We must now actively work on diet, on exercise, on sleeping (who would ever have thought that it would be so hard to get adequate sleep once the kids were out of the house? 8) Then there are the very basic things that take more & more time for us to do the older we get: house cleaning and personal caretaking which bathing, dressing, cooking and administering all the things that prevent, postpone or alleviate heath problems.

Well, the point I’m trying to make is that we all have so many things that need to be done. And the many things that Joseph Smith had on his to-do list deeply affected his life and the way he lived AND it affected the lives of other AND it affected the world! No wonder he was tutored so carefully as we went about trying to accomplish all the tasks he had been given. When he had a worry, a question, a concern for himself, or for others, he went to the Lord with the how’s and why’s of his concerns. I need to better follow his example.

But that is not really what this section is about. It’s about the apostle Paul and how he worked to solve dilemmas that faced the new members of Christ’s church after His crucifixion. During Paul’s time, in a marriage when one of the partners joined the Church of Christ, and the other did not, thus the still Jewish partner continuing following the all Jewish laws –including that of circumcision that was given to Abraham  & his posterity as a token of their covenant with God. (JST, Genesis 17:3-7, 11) But the partner who had accepted the Gospel knew with the successful completion of Christ’s mission on earth, that he had fulfilled the Law of Moses AND had given a new and higher law. Paul taught the people of that time about Christ’s atonement-- that little children are sanctified through the Atonement of Christ. I believe that very few of us every make full use of Christ’s gift of the atonement and all its aspects. Hopefully, as we go through life, making our petitions to the Lord, we will gain more knowledge that will lead us to a deeper understanding which will affect our future behaviors in bringing us closer to the Lord and to those ultimate goals we had when we made the choice to come to this earth-life.

There is wording in v 5 that is very interesting to me: “Wherefore, for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord but of himself, that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever; except the law of Moses should be done away among them.” Today so many people are going through Church history from the time of the restoration right up to today. They are finding situations where leaders of the Church have done things that have not seemed correct. Does v 5 tell us that the Lord lets us learn by doing, and that sometimes we—and that includes the leaders of our church, make mistakes---that is simply part of the learning process, which is simply part of our growth and development. I believe that if these mistakes are such that they would affect our eternal lives negatively, that the Lord would intervene. He has told us he will not allow that our prophets to do anything that would lead us away from eternal life. Those mistakes may affect this earthly life somewhat—but will not affect our eternal lives.

7/1/2021 – D&C 74

Joseph is going through the New Testament in what he refers to as his ‘translation of the New Testament’. He did not translate the Bible from one language to another—instead, under divine direction, Joseph gave commentary, answered questions, and presented clearer meanings of the verses found in the King James Bible.  His work was to discover the original intention of the Bible’s original writers. Joseph tells us: “During this period I also received the following as an explanation of 2 Corinthians 7:14.” This part of the New Testament was written by Paul. It was Paul’s counsel to the Saints in Corinth-- where there were some marriages in which the wives had been converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ, but their husbands still practiced the law of Moses. This created conflicts in their marriages, especially at the birth of a child when the husbands wanted to have their male children circumcised according to the law of Moses. But the believing wives knew Jesus had explained that his coming, and His atonement, had fulfilled the law of Moses, and that’s why His teachings were a higher law. But now, many of these children who were circumcised, and then came of age under the Jewish laws, giving “heed to the traditions of their fathers and believed not the gospel of Christ.” (v 4) Paul spoke to these women, counseling the Saints who were already married to unbelievers not to divorce their spouses but to remain married and live faithfully—that perhaps the spouses could have a sanctifying influence on their families. This is what Paul taught them: “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband…” (v 1). Paul went further to counsel the women who were not yet married, to not marry unbelievers unless the spouses agreed that the law of Moses “be done away among them.” (v 5)

Joseph’s translation of Paul’s v 14 gives further clarity in D&C 74:7-- “But little children are holy, being sanctified through the atonement of Jesus Christ; and this is what the scripture means.” This verse brings truth and comfort to so many parents. 

I also love the very first verse which tells us that husbands and wives can work together in a loving partnership, and help to sanctify (that means to make holy) one another. Marriage is a wonderful partnership where each partner needs to be just as concerned with the spiritual progress of his or her spouse, as they are with their own spiritual progress. Marriage IS an amazing partnership---especially when the partners are working hand in hand—in love, compassion, and friendship.  The Quakers had this part right: “Thee lift me and I’ll lift thee, and we’ll ascend together.”