After many years of teaching in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and at Brigham Young University I have sometimes lamented that the best kept secret in the Church is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I say this with sorrow out of the many conversations with members of the Church focusing on two issues: 1. What is faith in Jesus Christ? 2. What is repentance?
When I ask members what their concept of faith in Jesus Christ is, I often have them quote to me the scripture: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) Then I say, “What does that mean?” and they usually admit that they do not know. And they usually do not recognize that that quotation from Paul is a description of faith, telling us something about it rather than being a definition of what faith is.
Or I might turn to the dictionary found in our standard LDS edition Bibles. Under the heading of “Faith” is the following: “Faith is to hope for things which are not seen, but which are true (Heb. 11:1, Alma 32:21), and must be centered in Jesus Christ in order to produce salvation. To have faith is to have confidence in something or someone.” I submit that one can have full confidence in Christ until the day they die and still not have an ounce of faith in Christ. If I am wrong, please labor with me and set me straight.
To me the burden of the Holy Scriptures is this: Faith in Jesus Christ is willing and immediate obedience to some message I have received from Jesus Christ. The message may come through another person, from the scriptures, from my conscience, as well as from our Savior Himself. What all these messages will have in common is that they will be given to me by the power of the Holy Ghost. I must obey, for faith is to do something, and that something almost always will involve doing some act which helps another person to fill some need they have. Faith without such works is dead. (James 2:17) It must be willing obedience, not as the devils who must obey. It must be immediate, the more immediate the better, for to delay is to try to find a substitute for faith in Christ. To have true faith in Christ one must have learned about our Savior from some source, like what he is learning, be instructed to do something, and respond with an action doing that something as directed by the Holy Spirit.
I recognize that a person may exercise faith in Christ without being able to define what that faith is. But would it not be better to have a firm mental hold on what faith in Christ is and be fully conscious of exercising it? Faith in Christ is something one deliberately does, not something one sort of has.
When I ask members of the Church to tell me what repentance is, they often will quote to me the four R’s: Recognition, Remorse, etc. What they do not recognize is that one can do the R’s without one ounce of faith in Jesus Christ. Doing the four R’s may be a good thing to do, but I think that is surely not what our Savior intended when He told us to repent.
Again we may look to the dictionary entry for “Repentance” found in our standard LDS Bible. There we read: “The Greek word of which this is the translation denotes a change of mind, i.e., a fresh view about God, about oneself, and about the world. Since we are born into conditions of mortality, repentance comes to mean a turning of the heart and will to God, and a renunciation of sin to which we are naturally inclined.” I submit that one can change his or her mind and turn his or her heart to God and disapprove of sinning without performing a shred of repentance.
To me, the burden of the Holy Scriptures on repentance is this: Replace every act of your life which is not an act of faith in Jesus Christ with an act of faith in Jesus Christ. To replace one act is to begin to repent. But one has not repented until one has replaced every act, or, in the Savior’s words, one has become completely faithful to Christ (3 Nephi 12:48, Moroni 10:32).
I see people who have committed serious sins and then they receive a temple recommend. That may be a beginning of repentance, but is of itself not full repentance. I see people who try to keep the standards of the Church unto repentance, but I see almost no recognition of that if we have not repented of all our sins, we are not yet fully on the strait and narrow path.
There surely is a lot of repenting going on among members of the Church. But I personally perceive very little understanding of what repentance is and the necessity of completing it. Would it not be better for members of the Church if they had a true and correct and full understanding of what repentance is supposed to be in the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
Is it possible that the clear and precise concepts of faith in Christ and repentance in Christ are withheld because the way is so strait and so narrow, out of fear that members of the Church would become discouraged and fall away into lax ways and more sinning? I submit that regardless of what is taught, many members will find the way too strait and too narrow and will fall away.
But the purpose of the Church as I understand it is to establish Zion. Zion cannot and will not be established with watered down definitions of faith and repentance. They are the crux of living the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I hope that my lament will be answered somehow with clearer understanding of what true faith in Jesus Christ and repentance in Jesus Christ are on the part of those who care about the cause of Christ in the earth.