Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence

I watched a YouTube video this morning that brought me a lot of joy for a lot of reasons! One reason was that it reminded me of an analogy I have used before in teaching people, but hadn't thought to include in this post about Hebrews 10:35-36. You don't need to watch the video as a prerequisite to reading this post, but I highly recommend you do, because it presents such great ideas about the ways in which people don't live the gospel, how others think they are living the gospel, and how God intends for us to live his gospel. Here's the link. You should really check it out.

For many years, my children took lessons to play various musical instruments. Primarily, they took violin lessons, but they also took lessons to learn how to play the piano and drums, and they learned, on their own, how to play many more.

The instructor who taught my kids how to play the violin is AMAZING at what she does! As you can imagine, she wasn't hired as an instructor just so my kids could watch her play and praise her for how good she was. She loves the art, and she teaches her students well by laying down and building upon good foundations. She genuinely loves to share everything she knows with her students so that they can become as good as or better than she is. She loves to teach students who are desirous to learn everything they can from her, and she will drop students who consistently demonstrate they aren't, in favor of those who are.

My kids were always eager to start taking lessons from her. They were confident in her ability to teach them. She is an incredible violinist herself, and she had proven to be an exceptional teacher with previous students (some of them siblings). With every investment they made into diligently following her instructions, my kids made progress. There were, however, times when my kids were far less than as diligent as they should have been.

It was always a sad day when lesson day rolled around and one of my kids hadn't practiced what they should have. Apparently, a failure to practice musical instruments affects one's immune system, because, invariably, the kid that didn't practice would come down with some kind of physical issue that they would try to convince me prevented them from taking a lesson that day. Funny how that works. 😂 

It's not like their instructor gave them anything they weren't capable of doing. In fact, she would make sure that the kids knew they were capable of doing exactly what was asked of them by running through it with them a few times during their lesson. She even made allowances for other things that came up in life that were out of their control or that temporarily had to take an agreed-upon higher priority, so when there weren’t any circumstances that contributed to their inability to practice, they knew they had to own it. They knew that the guilt and shame (and whatever actual stomach ache) they felt at the idea of facing their instructor was simply (and only) the consequence of their own choices.

Whatever she asked them to practice was always the very next thing they needed in order to become a more proficient musician. And while it's true that she could give them another week to work on that thing, their progress was completely halted in the meantime.

In any field of discipline, there isn't a way for a student to truly be a disciple without exerting the effort to become as the instructor. This is especially true within the context of becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. True and honest discipleship begins with sincere repentance—the decision to, at that moment and in every moment thereafter, believe that God has nothing but your greatest joy in mind and to align everything you increasingly understand about yourself with everything you increasingly understand about him through his Son, Jesus Christ. The natural consequence of sincere repentance is a forgiveness of sin––a state of sinlessness––and an outpouring of God’s spirit. This forgiveness and outpouring is tangible to one’s body and spirit and, therefore, undeniable evidence, internal to the individual, of God’s reality, faithfulness, mercy, justice, and love.

35 Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. 

36 For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. (Hebrews 10)

After being endowed with that increased awareness of and confidence in God’s character and in his ability to effect a state of sinlessness in you, what would you have to do to “cast it away?”

(This is the part that none but the truly honest in heart want to hear.)

The only thing you would have to do is sin again.

The point of my last post was to convey the idea that, though entirely possible, “casting down the accuser” is a harrowing experience. It requires a level of honesty that very few people obtain because most “Christians” are, foundationally, content to believe that, as long as they mentally or verbally call Christ their Lord, they can continue to choose to sin (which is to do less than what you are capable of imagining God would do in your place) and he will “save” them from the consequences of their own decisions. The Jews’ and Romans’ mocking of Christ at his crucifixion was not nearly as cruel, and they will, one day, realize that that belief is completely false. It's like believing that you can become a great musician by saying that you have a great teacher and by praising his/her talent, without following the instructions the teacher gives you to become what you are intended to become. Not only is that completely absurd, it's a mockery of his/her efforts made on your behalf.

Jesus calls us to follow him—to learn to think, feel, and live as he would—and to become more like him in the process. He maintained a state of sinlessness his entire life, and he “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” (Luke 2:52) In calling us to follow him, he calls us to attain a state of sinlessness through repentance and then to maintain the same through faithful obedience to the instructions he gives us through our individual conscience from that point on. As verse 36 states, our patience is exercised while doing the will of God. If you don't do his will, you cannot have confidence in his presence. The truthfulness of the accusations against you and your own guilty conscience will not allow it. And if you don’t have confidence in his presence, will you want to be in his presence? Nope. You won’t, any more than my kids wanted to have the next lesson with their violin teacher.

Do not give in to the temptation to believe that God will think you are ready to be his disciple and forgive you of your sins if you are unwilling to commit to complete obedience in keeping his commandments to you. Don't give in to the temptation to believe that, once you are forgiven of your sins, all you really have to do is praise him and that he will turn a blind eye to you anytime you do less than what you imagine he would do in your place. He didn’t die on the cross so that you can praise him for allowing you to remain in your unrealized potential. Confidence in his presence can only come as your potential to become like him is realized through your obedience to him, so don’t cast it away.

Casting Down the Accuser

This post has been in my drafts for quite some time. I didn’t intend to spend any time on it today, but I think it’s pretty appropriate since it’s Yom Kippur today, and I also think I can more effectively say what I would like to say about another scripture in Hebrews by expounding upon Revelation 12:10-11 first.

10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven,  Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. 

11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. (Revelation 12)

When God gives us direction, he is giving us the means to encounter the best possible outcomes. That inherently means that he is also giving us the means to avoid all outcomes that are less-than-best. How sincerely we align ourselves to our current and increasing understanding of the existence and value of those outcomes, of the reasons why we value them, and of the importance of honestly basing our decisions upon those reasons determines the quantity and quality of peace and joy we will experience here and hereafter.

This is because God’s just. There is an “accuser,” and there is also this thing called accountability. In affording us agency, God also grants us responsibility for the choices we make, with all of the consequences that come with them, whether positive or negative. He’s not in the business of waiving negative consequences away when we find ourselves in a tight spot after we have made a decision that we know is not best, anymore than he is in the business of arbitrarily withholding just rewards when we have made decisions that are the best.¹

Ultimately, this leaves us to ourselves in the Day of Judgment. Having provided a means of escape from the negative consequences of decisions made in ignorance, God grants us the ability to stand on the merit of our alignment to him or to fall on the basis of our own willful disobedience.

Joseph Smith said:

A man is his own tormentor, and his own condemner; hence the saying, they shall go into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. The torment of disappointment in the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone— I say so is the torment of man. (History of the Church, Vol. E-1, pg. 1976)

The lake of fire and brimstone is regret. Joseph Smith was not the least bit inaccurate in the above quote. God sets a standard of righteousness. Our understanding of that standard sets the bar for what we must choose in every decision we make. Any decision to choose anything less makes us unable to quench the “fiery darts of the adversary.” Those “fiery darts” are not just temptations. They are accusations. How do you expect to stand against “the accuser” when you absolutely know in your heart that you made decisions that were less than the best God made available to you through your conscience? You can’t. You cannot lie to God. You will not be able to believe the lies you presently believe when you enter his presence. You will shrink. Your own beliefs, desires, and decisions—your character—will stand as a witness against you. It will torment and condemn you, and there will be nothing, on your own, that you can do about it. (see Alma 5:14-25)

Even those who repent and then constantly do what they believe to be best and who, therefore, maintain a state of sinlessness will, at some point, be brought to stand before God, and they will be subjected to the same accusations of wrong-doing. I cannot accurately describe what this is like. The description of those accusations being made “day and night” is spot on. They are unrelenting. They are, in function and form, an attack on and rejection of the truth, and the pain that accompanies that is like having whips laid across your back or having your heart pierced with a blade. What you experience in coming up against them is gaslighting that is orders of magnitude more intense than one could possibly imagine without experiencing it. It is being subjected to so many lies that the only truth that remains is the peace of conscience that comes from knowing you have made every decision in accordance with your best understanding of God’s character. And this is precisely why it is SO important to intentionally discover and live according to what you understand about God and his purposes.

Because we do not yet understand everything about God, the accuser will use this to his advantage and accuse you of not doing things that you could have, and there are only two honest defenses against that—your own ignorance in not knowing what would have been better or the honest reasons you had to believe that what you did was best. Being diligent in your pursuit of a better understanding of God’s character gradually eliminates the ignorance, and intentional living supplies all of the reasons required to defend your decisions. This is the only way you can grow to become surrounded in the everlasting burnings of reality and remain unscathed.

How is the accuser cast down? He is cast down when one quenches his fiery darts through sincere repentance (“the blood of the Lamb”) and through one’s diligence in following Jesus Christ (“the word of their testimony”). He is cast down when his darts have no ability to overcome because “they loved not their lives unto the death.” He is cast down as one lives in complete accordance to his understanding of God in all things. He is cast down when he shrinks, and not you.

When does this happen? Has it happened already? What happens when it does? Has it happened in your life? Can it? What effect would you expect it to have in your life and in the last days, in general?

Good questions, all.

1.  See Psalm 62:12, Proverbs 24:12, Matthew 16:27, 2 Corinthians 11:15, Revelation 20:12-13, 2 Nephi 29:11, Mosiah 3:24, Mosiah 16:10-12; Alma 33:22, Alma 41:3, Helaman 12:23-24; D&C 19:3, D&C 137:9, and others that clearly state that God judges us according to our works.