God’s commandments are not a static and synthetic list of rules that take the place of actual holiness. They aren’t what we do to avoid being punished for being unlike God. God’s commandments are successive descriptions of his character that show us how and why to live more like he is.
God’s commandments are a way to learn more about and become more like Jesus, not a substitute for doing neither. God’s Commandments are not some alternative means to receive more of his blessings without becoming more like him. God’s commandments are not a way to curry arbitrary favor with God, but a pathway to become more like him. The defining characteristic of heathen religions is their belief that divine favor can be curried through arbitrary sacrifices meant to bribe the fickle favor of selfish deities. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does not benefit from our sacrifices,1 but we do. God’s commandments are not designed for what he gets out of them, but for what we become through them. His benefit from us is limited to how much we become like him.
God’s commandments are instructions that help you better understand how God would live in your place and why.2 To keep God’s commandments is to follow his example as far as you understand it. God’s commandments are given to teach us more about him, prepare to learn more about him, and increase in the desire we have to do so.
Footnotes
- 1. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High: And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. (Psalm 50:12-15) ↩
- 2. “...all things which have been given of God from the beginning of the world, unto man, are the typifying of him.” (2 Nephi 11:4) ↩