Follow Him: A Come, Follow Me Podcast - 2 Corinthians 8-13 Part 2 • Dr. Joseph Spencer • Sept 18 - Sept 24

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Dr. Joseph Spencer continues to explore the themes of surrendering to grace, the need for broken hearts, and the power of covenants with Jesus Christ.Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/new-testament-episodes-31-40/YouTube: https://youtu.be/3JXuEQqy-sgFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15G9TTz8yLp0dQyEcBQ8BYPlease rate and review the podcast!00:00 Part II–Dr. Joseph Spencer00:07 Love is the law, not the reward00:38 Grace and “after all we can do”04:59 Deserving heaven06:42 The importance of works08:04 Our works show what we desire11:04 Jesus isn’t just in the gaps14:15 Brokenheartedness and motivations15:30 Dr. Spencer shares a story about his baby19:45 Surrendering to grace24:23 President Oaks and “The Challenge to Become”26:21 Covenants28:48 Paul’s series of promises31:12 How are we in the faith?33:55 Simplicity vs single-mindedness38:14 Elder Corbridge’s “Stand Forever”41:06 Alma commanding to teach nothing but faith and repentance43:18 Examine yourselves46:52 A spiritual midterm49:20 Dr. Spencer shares his testimony and personal journey57:03 End of Part II–Dr. Joseph SpencerThanks to the followHIM team:Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignAnnabelle Sorensen: Creative Project ManagerWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

Welcome to Part 2 with Dr. Joseph M. Spencer, 2 Corinthians chapters 8-13. Joe, a couple of weeks ago we had Dr. Adam Miller come on and talk to us about how we have the gospel kind of backwards, that love is the law, not the reward. I'm looking at some of these different translations of 2 Corinthians 12, verse 9, contemporary English version. My gift of undeserved grace is all you need. God's word translation, my kindness is all you need. Good news translation, my grace is all you need. I could keep going. How do I balance that with Nephi saying in second Nephi, it is by grace that we are saved after all that we can do,

that I need to earn my salvation, that somehow I need to earn celestial glory. How would you help our listeners balance that a little bit? So I think the key to this is that it's not a balance. We should be completely out of balance. It's way grace. But let me see if I can explain what Nephi's up to. Yeah, I think this is an absolutely essential thing

to get clear, because it does at first glance look. Like second Nephi 25, 23 says, you have to do all you can, and then grace kicks in and saves, right? Very first thing to notice is that we can only make it say that if we mangle the words a bit. It doesn't say it's by grace that we are saved after we do all we can. It's we're saved by grace after all we can do. Nephi doesn't actually refer at all to

us doing anything. He only refers to what we can do. And I think that's an important distinction. After anything I even could do. It's grace that saves. That feels to me like again, King Benjamin. King Benjamin says, imagine if you were to give all the thanks and praise, which your whole soul has power to possess to God. And then he says, and in fact, let's say you served him with all your whole soul. Perfection.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. If you did it right, he says, you would yet be unprofitable servants. And I think sometimes we can read that and be like, oh, I guess he just thinks we're pathetic. But no, he's telling you, if you did it right, right? Like if you did everything the way you were supposed to, you would still be unprofitable servants. So it's not that we're pathetic. It's that it's literally

impossible for us to do this, even if we could do all the things. It's grace that saves. So the simple way to, I think, just clarify the verses that way is just saying, no, what he's saying clearly is, look, after anything you even possibly could do, it's not you, it's grace. It's grace that saves. I think we can make it even clearer though. And that's by looking at what Jacob says a few chapters earlier. Nephi's actually kind of copying this this from his little brother. So, second Nephi 10, this is verse 24, so 15 chapters earlier, Jacob says this, and I think Nephi is just restating it, but not changing it. Jacob says, wherefore my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will of God, not to the will of the devil in the flesh, and remember,

after your reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that you are saved. So a couple of things are really clarifying right there. First of all, it is only in and through the grace of God that you are saved. That makes that perfectly clear. We've got no hope, no hope outside of grace. But too, notice he's got an after clause just like Nephi does. And what it's the after thing here is reconciled to God. Like, that's what the after is about, right? All we can do is be reconciled to God. That's it. And being reconciled to God isn't me doing much. It's me getting over myself, right? Reconciliation is what we need when there's something wrong in a relationship. And if there's

something wrong in the relationship between me and God, we can guess who the problem is. It's not God. So, if I have to be reconciled to God, it's because I have been running from him. And what Jacob seems to be saying now, taking all of that and backing up a step. So he says, remember after your reconciled unto God that it's only through the grace of God that you are saved. If he has to tell us to remember this, apparently we have a temptation to forget. So once we are reconciled to God, we start going, man, I'm awesome. Look at what I did. I stopped running from God, right? And he's like, no, no, second you have reconciled with God. Remember, don't you dare forget?

This was grace. Even your reconciliation was grace. And I think if we hear Jacob really clearly, then it's really easy to hear Nephi saying the same thing. He says, we labor diligently to write, persuade our children, and also our brethren to believe in Christ and to be reconciled to God, same language. We've got to be reconciled to God. Why? Because we know that it is by grace that we are saved. That's all we can do. I think it's exactly the same message. Be reconciled. All you could do is be reconciled. And the second you are, my heavens, don't you dare forget that it was grace, that did it. It's interesting to me that we focus in on that verse in the book of

Mormon when there's so many others that can help us understand. I remember once I was in a class with Stephen Robinson and he said, I think most Latter-day Saints feel like their works are going to save them. So he said, they feel like they deserve heaven. Let's go look up deserves. So we took us to the topical guide and we he said, let's look up deserve and it wasn't there. There is no deserve to the topical guide and we, he said, let's look up, deserve. And it wasn't there. There is no deserve in the topical guide. And he said, oh, I'm so sorry, I meant, earn. So let's go to earn in the topical guide

and we went there. And it wasn't there again. And he said, oh, that's, that's, that's, deserve an earn. Those probably aren't scriptural words. Let's go to merit. That sounds like a scriptural word. So we went to merit and it is there.

And then he had us read the four references that are in merit and it says, here's the four references, second if I too, verse eight, no flesh can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits of the Holy Messiah. Alma 22, 14, man could not merit anything of himself. Alma 24 10, God will take away the guilt from

our hearts through the merits of his son, and then Maron I 6 4, we rely alone upon the merits of Christ. The message of the Book of Mormon is grace, say, Joe, I love what you've taught us here. I can hear some listeners at home, not that I can actually hear them. That would be pretty incredible. But I can hear maybe some of those listening at home saying, well, don't my works matter? Doesn't what I do matter to my salvation?

What would you say to them? Yeah. I mean, there's a bunch to say. But maybe the first place to start here is we have a temptation to think, I've got to earn my salvation by my works. But of course, I'm never quite good enough. And so Grace kicks in and then like makes up the rest. We often talk that way.

I think if you could take that picture, that picture we sometimes have in our heads and make a slogan out of it, it would be something like, I'm saved by my works, but I'm judged in grace. Right? Yeah. The irony about that, of course, is that's literally the opposite of what Scripture says over and over and over again. Every time it talks about salvation, literally every time Scripture talks about salvation, it says we're saved by grace. And literally every time it talks about judgment, it says we're judged by our works. So we tend to flip those around. So our works doing something in this picture, yeah, we got to figure that out, but it's not

salvation that the works are key for. That's, I think, the key thing. So how do we understand what it means to say we're saved by grace and yet judged by our works? Well, two options. Like one, one we might just go, well, if we're judged by our works, then our works are somehow going to like, yeah, we're saved from sin or something like that

by salvation, but then works are like, they decide just how high we go or something like that. That would be one way we might understand that. But I think a far better way, and I think this is what section 137 of the doctrine and Covenants points to, it would be to say, it's grace that saves us. What our works show God, what it means for him to judge our works, is that our works show God what our relationship to grace looks like. He can read our works, so to speak, and then say, oh, I see how much you've resisted, so to speak, or how much you've given in to the grace that there is. And that's

what I hear in section 137 that will be judged by our works and the desires of our hearts, our works reveal the desires of our hearts. And I think we sometimes do that is, we'll be judged in terms of our works. Did you do enough? And your desires, I wish I could have done more. And I think we sometimes do that as, we'll be judged in terms of our works, did you do enough and your desires? I wish I could have done more. But I think if the better way to hear it is, our very works show what our desires actually look like. So let me see if I can't spell that out a little more. So far as I can tell, there are maybe three ways

we could respond to grace. Our natural temptation, this is what Benjamin calls the natural man, Paul also uses that phrase, the natural man in first Corinthians, in fact. But our natural temptation is of course to resist. Everything in us wants to be fully good completely on our own terms. I want to have been good. I want to have been sufficient, not God. So we can resist, but resistance can look like two very different things. The kind of obvious form of resistance is to say, I do what I want, I run in the opposite direction.

So God gives me a grace and I just reject it. But the other form of resistance is actually to try to prove that I am good enough in myself. So another way of resisting God's goodness toward me is to try to prove to him that I am good enough in myself. So another way of resisting God's goodness toward me is to try to prove to him that I am good. I don't just reject all goodness and run in the other direction. I try to prove that I didn't need him to be good toward me in the first place. And then a third option, of course, is just to give in, to yield to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, that's King Benjamin again, to yield to what God

gives in grace. So if there are three ways of responding to grace, then it might be that we need say three degrees of glory, that we in fact might think of the version in which I run from God in every way, and I just say, I don't want to have anything to do with you. Call that to Lestial. But there's a version in which I try to be good on my own. This is not about Jesus making things possible and me working with him. This is about me trying to show that I'm good enough. So I do good things in the world, but I haven't quite ever sort of valiantly grabbed hold

of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Call that to rest real. And then there's a version in which I let the grace of God overwhelm me and make possible every good work he's trying to do and then through me. Call that celestial. I think that's one way of thinking about what's at stake there. It's not that if I do X number of works, I get celestial glory. And if I do Y number of works, I get to restrile and Z number of works, I get celestial, but instead in my very actions, the things I do, God can say, I see whether you ran from me in the other direction, whether you tried to

somehow prove that you were inherently lovable and that I didn't need to help you, or whether your work show that you gave in and we did this work together. That was just wonderful. I mentioned, I think, on a a previous podcast a time when I sat by evangelical minister on a plane and he said, you guys believe in the Jesus of the gaps and that you'll do all this and then God will make up the gap in the end, which is kind of what you had addressed there. And I did my own thing and Hank, I found seven. I found seven in the index, not the topical guide

in the index under merits and went through all of those. And I mean, I did later, I wish I'd had them on the tip of my tongue when I was sitting next to this man. But that was really helpful to me. But one of the things I think our listeners might bring up and we're not there yet is what about this phrase in Philippians? Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. It's one of those verses where you have to read the next verse where that's Philippians 2.12 at the end of it, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,

and then Philippians 213, for it is God which worketh in you. Both to will, he's going to change our hearts and our desires and to do of his good pleasure. And when I think of that phrase after all we can do, I sometimes love to go to the book of John where Jesus said, I'm the vine in you, the branches, and without me you can do how much can we do? Nothing. And there's no gap. There's from the very beginning it's all about Christ.

That helps me too. But what a wonderful discussion. When we hear that phrase, work out your own salvation, but it's God that's working, God that's working in us. And thank you for saying that. We think we're saved by our works and judged by grace when it's literally the opposite. I feel like, and help me with this. I feel like, and maybe I've oversimplified it, but works are not a formula for salvation, but are more kind of a fruit of salvation. They're exactly a result of the way you said it is the way that we relate to grace. The works kind of flow naturally, and I don't ever want to discount the idea of striving, but I think striving to get our hearts right with God

Then the works just kind of flow and it's more natural now You know what you guys sometimes I'm not there if I wanted to say I'm gonna wait until my motives are perfect before I do this good work. I might never do anything, right? I do this good work. I might never do anything, right? Yeah. Right. So I don't want people to think, well, as soon as my motives are perfect, then I'll give a fast offering or something. We can't stagnate. So I think there's something to be said for trying and asking God to help us have the best, purest motives for things. But some of us aren't there yet. I'm one of them.

Yeah. I have a bunch of thought in response to what you were saying, John, I love it. I'll respond to the last thing you were saying there first. I'll talk to my students, so I teach it to be why you, right? And I'll say to my students, as we talk through grace, once we get clear what's actually at stake here, there's some sense in which this picture is actually in a lot of ways harder, right? Because it's not like, oh, I mean, if I just had a list, here are the things I have to do. Okay, great.

Like, even if it's really long or really hard and so on, I'm good at getting things done. But it's not that what I have to do is get over myself. And that is so much harder. Like I genuinely have to get out of the way for God to do His work and that I have to break my heart again and again and again. So there's some sense in which the picture here is actually way harder. Salvation is not harder because that's God's work. He does that, right? But getting over myself and giving myself to Him, like, yeah, my motivations are not always pure. They're constantly off. And I have to come back be reconciled to God again and again and again. The other thought that I thought I'd share here is, yeah, Philippians 2, 12 and 13 is really nice in it. I think one way to hear Paul's language of fear and trembling is something like this. So when we had our fourth child, she came very fast, scary fast.

We'd gone into the hospital and my wife wasn't progressing. They sent us home. We'd been home 20 minutes in my wife's like, we're going now. Okay. Right. So we're in the car and she's like climbing up the seat in pain and we're racing to the hospital. We get there one step out of the elevator in her water breaks.

They put us in a triage room and the baby was born seven minutes later. I mean it was like Okay, so Everything was fine, right? Yeah, so as soon as it's all over and they're like weighing the baby and so on I suddenly have this wave hit me of I could have delivered this child in the car Yeah, right and I started to pass out and they're like, Oh, do you not do well with births? I'm like, no, that's not it. It's right. I can do births. It's that I might have been the doctor. So they had to get me, Apple juice. But that moment is really kind of a striking one. Like,

it was a moment of fear and trembling, but not because I had to do the thing. It was because I realized what it would have been like if I had. I was delivered purely in grace from having to deliver my daughter, right? But in the moment there with real fear and real trembling, I saw retroactively what it would have been if it hadn't been God's work that got it done. And I think that's the kind of thing Paul's got in mind here. With fear and trembling, you realize what it would look like if it weren't God doing His will and His good pleasure in us. Fear and trembling here doesn't mean I have got to fear and tremble about whether I'm good enough

to do the work I've got to do to earn my salvation. No, it's that I fear and tremble because my heavens look at what God has made possible. I cannot recreate myself and that's why I love that Paul uses the idea of a new creature. He is the creator and he can work in us and make us a new creature. And I feel like we've come to Christ and now we're trying to become light Christ because he asked us to, but that's, I'm not gonna make it. I'm not gonna make it without him.

But he asked me what men or men and women ought to be and that's a really tall order. Yeah. Really, really appreciate what you were saying about striving because yeah, when we start talking about grace, it can start to feel like, oh, well, great. I could just coast for a bit or something, right? But no, striving, I think is exactly it.

The trick is that I'm not striving for my salvation. I'm striving because Christ saves me. I'm thinking here, King Benjamin, it's just running through everything we're talking about, right? But I'm thinking here again of King Benjamin, the people have fallen on the ground, they've cried out for mercy and Christ has given it to them. And then Benjamin says,

okay, we got more to talk about. And you almost want to say like, well, no, we're done, aren't we? Like, they cried out, they got grace, we're done. But then he goes on to say, now can we do this every day? And if you do, here's what this is going to look like. And he ends that chapter in Mosiah 4 by saying, now everything's got to be done and was the menorder.

But you've also got to run earnestly fast to win the prize. He describes striving, but the striving here comes after the experience of grace. It's not what gets us the experience of grace. So once grace overwhelms me, he says, now, now you can see how big the problem in the world is. You can see the suffering that we were talking about in chapters eight and nine.

You can see how much poverty there is, you can see how much hurt and sorrow there is, you can see where people are struggling spiritually. So now the work finally begins. So now you strive like mad, but you're not doing it. So for selfish purposes, I've got to somehow deliver myself. You've been delivered. You've been delivered. Now we strive because so many people hurt, so many people need. We've got work to do. That was great. That helps a lot. I felt like that was maybe the missing piece is so there's no striving anymore, but I love the way you just put it. This striving is about doing what Jesus would do because look at the problems we're surrounded by. Thank you. You brought it right back to Corinthians 2. do because look at the problems were surrounded by. Thank you.

You brought it right back to Corinthians too. Joe, I would like to hear a little bit more about this idea of surrendering to grace. I love it. It rings true to my soul. I don't know how to do it. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard. I think it's hard to know exactly how to concretize it.

So when Benjamin, he's quoting the angel here, very famously, the passage people know very well, the natural man is an enemy to God. It has been from the fall of Adam, will be forever and ever, unless he yields. Yields. So I think if you take the image of enemy to God and yield together, that's very strong, almost harsh imagery. He almost gives you a picture where you've got your sword at God's throat. And then what you finally do is you put your sword down. You yield. You give up. You go from being an enemy to surrendering. And so that's a weird image to think about as putting a sword up to God's throat or something obviously. But that's the kind of image that the angel is using there. And I wonder if that's a way of thinking about it. We are just so on our guard. We're so defensive. We're so sure that if God takes over, if we give ourselves over to

God, we're going to lose something essential to us. We're going to lose something of our identity or something of our interests or something of our hopes. Obviously, one can think here of that wonderful passage by C.S. Lewis about God coming in and starting to redesign the house and knocking out walls here and putting out a wing there because he wants to turn you into a palace that he can come and dwell in. And it hurts abominably.

We don't want that. We wanted to be a cozy little cottage. So we're on our guard. And I think surrendering is just finally giving in, just finally putting our weapons down, putting down our resistances, letting our defenses go, and seeing what God wants to do. So maybe a couple of ways we could make that concrete.

I mean, sometimes that really is just like, we stop resisting a commandment, a commandment to grace. That's a gift. God didn't have to give us good guidance and how to live well. And we put up a resistance. Like, you can't tell me what to do. You can't tell me that as if I didn't know how to live well myself or whatever and Surrendering there just looks like humbling yourself enough to go

What if maybe God all knowing Is all knowing right and actually as a sense of what I ought to do here Sometimes it might look like getting over ourselves enough that we can be weak and humble Around others instead of saying I'm fine on Sunday, as you're saying. We come together to lie to each other. Instead of lying, I'm humble enough to say, yeah, life is really tough right now, and I have no idea what to do. That's, I think, a way of giving in so that God's work can get going. It could be as simple as finally listening to others instead of just making sure everyone's hearing what I have to say or think or whatever. In a lot of ways, it's always just a getting over

of the self. The problem is always the ego. The problem is always that we are sure we've got it and We've got it. And my heavens, in an age of social media and smartphones, that disease is rampant, just rampant. It's so easy to get trapped in our self-perception and to think that our opinions can't be questioned and that if anyone even questions them, we're being somehow traumatized and so on. But God is bigger than our self-perception. He's bigger than our ego. A phrase that has helped me is that before the Savior even appears in person, this voice to the righteous in the New World says, no more animal sacrifice. The to-do list. I want you to bring a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And when you think of a broken heart as a teenager, that's all those songs on the radio.

Yeah, that's a broken heart is a romantic thing. Don't go break in my heart, it's all that. But somebody explained it once that I thought, oh, okay, a broken heart, if you're taking a horse out of the wild and taming that horse, they call it breaking the horse. A broken heart is a heart that's submissive to its master. Maybe that's the way to look at the surrender.

So a broken heart is, as you said, I'm submissive to the master. I can't do this myself. I know I can't do this myself. I need the savior. I need his atonement. I need his grace. I'm a broken heart and a

contrite spirit helps me to kind of, how do I do that? What did you call it? Surrender thing. My heart is broken and I realize I'm just as needy as everybody else with his grace. Sometimes we just overwhelmed and we go, well, just tell me what I need to do. Show me the checklist. and we go, well, just tell me what I need to do. Show me that checklist. President Oaks' talk, the challenge to become. It's not even about what you're doing. What kind of person are you becoming? What are you letting God remake you into? Are you letting him make you a new creature? Harder to quantify. When do I check the box of being a good husband? Am I ever done or being a good father? Maybe that's why it's easier to go to. We'll show me the list. I'm so glad though, Joe, that you've brought up. How do you read

King Benjamin and not get that we're all beggars? It's really believed that. King Benjamin's so good at that. And then he says, you'll not have mind to injure one another. He's not giving a lesson on be kind. He's saying, no, after you are saved, the rest of this stuff will come naturally. You won't have that same mind anymore of them. And we should be kind, but that's not the order of events here. Elder Maxwell says, this is a gospel of grand expectations. And it is. One reason why members are so hard on themselves is because they have such high expectations of themselves. The first thing to be said about this feeling of inadequacies is that it is normal. There is no way the church can honestly

describe where we must go and what we must yet do without creating a sense of immense distance. Following celestial road signs while in celestial traffic, jams is not easy, especially when we are not just moving next door or even across town. So Joe, another clarifying question would be, where do commandments, and you've hit on this already, but where do commandments, ordinances, covenants, obedience, like you said, when you're in the mission field, where does that fit in with grace? John sometimes refers to, we don't want to embrace some sort of cheap grace because that diminishes what the Savior wants to make of us.

So how would you answer that question? Where do all these things come in? Maybe it's worth focusing on covenants in particular because it can start to sound when we talk about grace this way. It can start to sound like, well, then I don't even have to get baptized. Right. It's covenants, right? And I think that may be one that if we clarify a lot, a lot gets clearer.

So I'm going to lean on King Benjamin one more time here. I think Paul would endorse King Benjamin pretty, pretty straightforward. So the order of King Benjamin's discourse, the whole experience, I think is actually really quite significant and easy to miss because we tend to sort of be focused locally, a verse at a time. So he begins by laying out our indebtedness to God. He created you, he blesses you, all of this indebtes you to God. That's in chapter 2. Then in chapter 3, he lays out the Christian atonement. He lays out Christ's coming and blood and how it atones and so forth and talks

to the natural man being an enemy to God and so on. So he's now God, look, you're completely indebted to God, but boy, you've got a temptation to do something awful, to run in the other direction from God, but Christ is coming. There's atonement, there's reconciliation and so on. The beginning of chapter four is where the people are all now on the ground, and they cry out for mercy, and the spirit comes on them, and they feel cleansed, and then Benjamin, surprisingly, we mentioned this earlier, Benjamin,

surprisingly says there's more. There's a remainder to talk about. And what he says there, those next handful of verses are absolutely crucial. Versus 11 and 12 maybe do it clearest. He says, again, I say unto you, as I have said before, that as he have come to the knowledge of the glory of God, or if you have known of his goodness

and have tasted of his love and have received the remission of your sins, which causes such exceedingly great joy in your souls, this is what they just experienced, right? They were just on the ground crying out to God. And he says, okay, so if you've done that, even so I would that you should remember and always retain in remembrance the greatness of God and your own nothingness and his goodness and long suffering toward you on worthy creatures and

humble yourselves even in the depths of humility calling on the name of the Lord daily and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come, which was spoken by the mouth of the angel. So he says, okay, you just did this. What I want to know is can you do it tomorrow and can you do it the next day and can you do it the next day? Can you remember God's greatness and your dependence on Him? Can you call on His name daily, not just this one time? Can you stand steadfastly in the faith of what's coming?

Not just believe in the angels words now. And then he makes a series of promises starting in verse 12, which we've been talking about. If you do this, you'll always rejoice. You'll be filled with the love of God. You'll retain a remission of your sins. You'll grow in the knowledge of God and so on. You'll take care of your families. You'll watch out for the beggar and so on. He talks all the way through chapter four, making promises. Chapter five, the people respond to this injunction, right? He says, I want you to do this daily.

In chapter five, this is their response. They say a couple of words about, no, we believe what you've been saying and so on, but then in verse five, they say this, this is mosaic five, but chapter five, verse five. And we are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do as well, and to be obedient to his commandments

and all things that he shall command us, all the remainder of our days. The placement of covenant in this, I think, is really crucial. So Benjamin says, look, it's grace. You're created in grace. Every blessing is a grace. Every commandment is a grace. But man, you run in the other direction. But Christ, Christ the tones, reconcile yourself, come back, and they all do it.

And he's like, good, now can we do that whole thing tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day and the next day. What President Nelson keeps calling daily continual repentance, right? Can you do this over and over and over again? And the people go, ah, covenant, their way of committing themselves to the daily task of coming back is covenant. So I think the picture we're getting from King Benjamin's speech is not one where I make a covenant and then Grace kicks in because I've got a covenant, nor is it a picture in which I have grace so I don't need a covenant. It's a picture in which as soon as Grace overwhelms me and I get it and I feel I want to make

that my daily life. I want that to be the shape of my existence. Covenant is the way I bind myself to that task. So I understand Benjamin would be saying something like what we're doing in baptism or any covenant we make is we are committing ourselves to reconciling ourselves to God again and again and again. I have publicly bound myself to the task of coming back to grace to stop running from God again and to stop again and to stop again and to get back into this right position so that God can propel me into his work so that I won't turn away the beggar so that I'll be filled with the love of God and I'll retain a remission of my sins and so on rather than this just being a one-time shot.

Joe, thank you for that incredible discussion on grace. There's a part of the manual that brings up a new topic. It's under the heading, examine yourselves whether you be in the faith. Let me read what the manual has to say. Today, as in Paul's day, there are those who seek to lead us away from the simplicity that is in Christ. For that reason, it's crucial to do what Paul suggested. Examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith.

You could start this process by thinking about what it means to be in the faith. How do you know if you are in the faith? Look for opportunities to examine yourself. And then the manual brings up another quote from Paul. As part of your examination, you might also ponder the phrase, the simplicity that is in Christ. And then a couple of questions. How have you found simplicity in Christ in his gospel? How might your mind be corrupted from that simplicity? And then a quote from President Uttar. If you ever think that the gospel isn't working so well for you, I invite you to step back.

Look at your life from a higher plane. I don't think he means plane on this one, but I'm glad he got that in there. Which he has literally done. He has literally done. He's looked at the whole earth from a higher plane. A very high plane. And simplify your approach to discipleship. Focus on the basic doctrines, principles, and applications of the gospel. I promise, says Elder Rukdorf, that God will guide and

bless you on your path to fulfilling life, and the gospel will definitely work better for you. Yeah, simplicity is a good thing to pause over here because I mean anyone who is a convert can tell you that There's very little that simple 10 million callings and one is general conference and the meetings People and this many scriptures and if we were to take all of our scriptures seriously everything from Ezekiel to I mean This is not simple in a lot of ways, right? But also in the midst of all of that are these simple things. So I think we have to be a little careful because we can sometimes just be like, look, the gospel is super simple and if we beat

someone over the head with that, they can just feel lost. Yeah, like, it doesn't look simple to me. What am I doing wrong? Exactly. And we can oversimplify. There are times where we need to make sure we're clear about the simplicity of the gospel. But if we oversimplify, we can actually make things really disastrous. I think in a lot of ways oversimplification looks like that crowd that Lehigh describes that tries to obtain the path, but they have nothing to do with the rod. They're like, look, it's a simple road. That's all it is. And as soon as it's dark and obscure, they wander off. We can oversimplify in a way that we actually underrepresent the gospel. So I think we have to, we've got to get the right balance here. A couple of things might help us there, I think. So first of all, when Paul says this in chapter 11, verse three, the Greek word he uses that's translated as simplicity is maybe helpful.

It's a version of the Greek word hopluss. So that's translated simplicity, which straightforward translation in a certain way. Hopluss literally means without fold. So that at the beginning of it is a privitive Alpha they call it, which means it's like a negation and then pluses like our word ply, which means to fold right? So multiply many fold or whatever, right? So literally the word translated simplicity here means without fold. It's not folded, it's not complex in that sense that there are multiple layers and so on and so forth.

It's the same word that is translated as single when Jesus talks in Matthew 6 about your eye. You have to have an eye single. It has to be unfolded. It has to be without fold, without complexity. And in fact, translations will often render this not simplicity, but single-mindedness. The kind of thing that Paul is calling for here, sometimes we think of simplicity, and we just think, I just need four basics. But simplicity here actually means like a kind of singular focus, a recognition of what matters most, so that my eye isn't unhealthy. The kind of thing I can look straight forward from, because this gives me the right vantage point, which is the kind of image that Elder Rookdorf was using. So I think simplicity, we can, we can miss here. If we think it just means that I ought to be able to build

a very straightforward system out of the gospel. What it actually means is, can I get the position from which I can stand and see perfectly clearly? Can I have an eye single? That, I think, is a nice way of talking about the simplicity of the gospel. What is the core, and I think is what Elder Dorkdorf is trying to talk about when he says, come back to some basics. If I can say, okay, there are a lot of complexities, fine, fine, fine, but here's where I know I stand. This is my faith in Christ, or this is the kernel of repentance I need to do, or this is the covenant I've made. It's not that I'm denying that there are all kinds of complexities in the gospel. It's I'm regaining my orientation, regaining stability, and saying, here are the things I'm clear and sure about. Now I can see clearly again. And with my eye single, I can start to look at those things that are darker, complex, more

difficult, or whatever it is. It's a passage we can misuse, and I think we want to be careful about that, but it's also really crucial kind of recommendation. If we can, man, if we can just get our orientation clear, we can start to sort out the rest. I was thinking about first principles of the gospel, because sometimes if everything seems so complex out there, you just want to go, well, what are the first principles then? And then you've got faith in Christ and repentance. But I'm not sure that sounds like a list too. So I'm not sure if I'm on the right track here. I like that explanation of simplicity.

Well, I think those first principles, that's precisely the kind of idea that we come back to those precisely because, boom, I can get my bearings again. Okay, okay, okay. This is the covenant I've made at baptism. That's where I stand. I can take my next steps again. It can feel kind of like, earlier, John, you mentioned this,

like sometimes I would think of all the things I've got to do, but the real question is, what do I do next? What's the very next thing to do? I think of this as something like breathing. If you think of all the breaths you've got to take in your life and try to take them all now, right? One, it would kill you and two, right? Like, it wouldn't allow you to go on living.

Like, the breath that has to be taken now is this one. And then after that, there's another one. And after that, there's another one. Simplicity looks something like that. I mean, there's a reason that we talk about counting your breaths and meditation when you're trying to simplify. Come back to, okay, I'm a body, I'm breathing, everything else here I can work through, right? I have to kind of get back to square one. Where do I stand? What am I?

Okay, and I can take my next steps. The complexity of the gospel is seldom because it's this big massive complicated system. I've got to get my head around. It's that I can start to lose sight of where I'm standing. I'm trying to take on everything. I'm trying to take on the whole picture and make sure I understand everything and I've done all the things instead of What's next? What's needful? What right now? Perhaps this is what Elder Lawrence Courage was after in the BYU speech he gave Stan forever. Yeah, Stan forever. If any of our listeners haven't gave. Stand forever. Yeah, stand forever. If any of our listeners haven't listened to that talk, I hope you will. And Joe, maybe you can comment on this and how it might fit. Elder

Courberidge says that when you feel a little lost in all of the complexity on all there is to know, it's just an ending, things that we'd like to know. He says, begin by answering the primary questions. There are primary questions, and there are secondary questions. Answer the primary questions first. Are almost like an interview saying, Joe, come back to the primary questions. Not all questions are equal, and not all truths are equal. The primary questions are the most important. Everything else is subordinate. There are only a few primary questions are the most important. Everything else is subordinate. There are only a few primary questions I will mention four of them. I don't think he's giving an exhaustive list here. I think he's saying here's four primary questions that

can help you get your perspective back. Is there a God who is our Father? Is Jesus Christ the Son of God the Savior of the world, was Joseph Smith a prophet, is the Church of Jesus Christ a body of saints, the Kingdom of God on the earth. By contrast, the secondary questions are unending. And he goes through a list of secondary questions that I'm sure we can make pages and pages of secondary questions. But he says, if you answer the primary questions, the secondary questions can get answered to or they pale in significance and you can deal with things you understand and things you don't and things you agree with and things you don't without jumping ship all together.

Is that sort of this idea of coming back to your center, coming back to your core so you can see everything else in perspective. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. I'm struck that his list of four questions there sound like a slightly expanded version of what J. Ruben Clark called the latitude and longitude of education in the church, right? They're really just two things, right? Jesus is the Christ, Joseph is a prophet. And he says, come back to that. And if you know where you're at,

latitude and le and longitude and leap, you know where you're at on the globe. That seems very right. The rest of it, yeah, we can work that out. We can work that out. I'm a philosopher by training, which means I like things to be ridiculously complex. I enjoy it.

They're ridiculously complex. But also the best philosophy, even there, right? The best philosophy is work that says, and part of the reason everyone hates philosophy, is because it tends to take things that are very, very foundational and say, do we really understand even that? So you want nice complexity and so on, but you also want to come back to really hard-curnal foundational things. I'm thinking here as we're talking about Mosiah 18. Alma the Elder is launching the Nephite Christian Church, organizing it under these priests and so on and so forth. And when he gives instructions to the priests, he tells them to preach nothing but faith and repentance. And I think if you told a word, all of the talks are going to be about faith and repentance,

people would stop coming after three or four weeks. Like the same topic we heard that last time, right? But I think what Alma has got to mean is that no matter what the topic, no matter where a thing goes, it gets re-grounded in those two things, comes back to the simplicity. Does the thing that's being taught or the thing that's being talked about increase the faith of those there, do they believe more, and does it drive them to reconcile themselves to God again? And that might be a talk about colub, and it might be a talk about something as simple as the definition of faith.

But the complexity rooted in simplicity is probably the way to think about it. I'll touch on another verse here. This is back in chapter 10, but it might be a way of thinking about all of this. Here's how it's rendered in the King James version. He's talking about the weapons of their warfare, and he says, we use them to cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself

against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. That last line is what draws my attention. We take every thought to the obedience of Christ. That last line is what draws my attention. We take every thought prisoner, is how in T right, renders it. We take every thought prisoner and make it obey the Messiah.

And it feels to me like that's something like the simplicity we're talking about. No matter what the thing is, no matter where the complexity is and so on, I can bring it back under this one overarching point of faith. I can see it from that vantage. And then it'll be all right. Everything has to be consecrated. So that one true God. And then all the complexity can be worked out.

I was looking for a quote from other Oaks. He just said, he loves hearing a talk when a speaker can take an old topic and make it new. Yeah, that's good. Sounds like a philosopher, right? Yeah. Joe, this is fantastic. And I feel like I could keep you here all day.

And just keep talking about this. Let's get towards the end of second Corinthians here. What does Paul wrap up with? Yeah, one of the verses in the last chapter here is one that you mentioned earlier, quoting from the manual, what the manual recommends is think about this question of simplicity as you're trying to do what chapter 13 verse 5 talks about. So that might be a good thing to settle in here for a moment. Paul says this, examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith,

prove your own selves, know you not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except you be reprobates. And he goes on to the next verse to say, I trust you're not. Here's NT writes, sort of more fluid translation in modern language. Test yourselves to see if you really are in the faith, put yourselves through the examination, or don't you realize that Jesus, the Messiah, is in you, unless that is you failed the test. I hope you will discover that we didn't fail the test. That examination is nice after all of this, right?

This is what simplicity might help us to grasp. Exam in yourself, do you stand right? Do you stand in the faith? Is that the point of orientation you've got? Test yourself to see. I mean, this is him coming right up to the end. He's going to finish just versus on, but this is where he wants to make sure all he's been through with the current the NSA. It's my heavens, right? The several visits, the lots of letters, the painful experiences, the factions and so on, everything he's tried to do, but this is a kind of, it feels a little like Jacob's obi wise, what more can I say?

And like, test yourselves. Be self-critical. The person you should be the most skeptical of in the whole world is probably yourself. Right. If you're pretty sure you've got it all right, boy, you should maybe wonder. Yeah. Test yourself. So, you're really there.

Prove yourselves. I think it's a beautiful recommendation on his part. We've got to be careful because some of us have a tendency, of course, to try to prove ourselves in bad ways or to test ourselves and think we fail when we're doing okay. So this language can be dangerous if used badly, but he's asking for honesty. I think it's the best way to put it. Sometimes honesty will reveal, no, I'm doing all right. And sometimes honesty will reveal, no, I'm not doing so hot.

Honesty is a vanishing virtue in the modern world and I'm glad Paul's calling us back to it here. Maybe there's something about check to see if you've deceived yourself. This is from Elder Oaks. The Apostle Paul challenged the Corinthians to examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith. All of us should answer these challenges for ourselves. Where is our ultimate loyalty? Are we like the Christians and Elder Maxwell's memorable description who have moved their residents to Zion, but try to keep a second residence like a vacation home in Babylon. Maybe we've convinced ourselves, I know I do this.

I've convinced myself that I am doing the right things, that my loyalty is there. And then something happens. A talk is given. I hear a podcast episode, one of our guests says something, and I'll sit and I examine my own life and go, wow, I was much further off than I thought I was. I need to have that course correction, not necessarily shameful, I'm bad, I'm awful, I'm the worst.

It's what Elder Uktor would say, John, just adjusting a few degrees to make sure I'm heading in the right direction. For that verse, 2 Corinthians 13, 5, kind of sounds like, Alma 5, right? I've heard that called a spiritual midterm. He's just kind of like, where are you at? There was a time when you felt to sing the song of redeeming love. Can you feel that way now? what are you? What's happened? Those are good questions to ask ourselves. It keeps us humble if we do.

Like you said, Hanky, here's something. And you think, oh, I'm a slacker. Yeah. I mean, I think we have those wretched man that I am moments, you know, and I suppose that's probably a good thing when we have those moments. Yeah. But then we gotta go to, but I know in whom I have trusted. Exactly, right? Yeah. In fact, the way Paul ends the whole letter. I mean, it's a beautiful final formula in the very

last verse, verse 14. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the community of the Holy Spirit be with you all, includes with the name men. It's a beautiful little formula. It borrows from the baptismal formula is very clear evidence that all through early Christianity from the very beginning, they're being baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Ghost. Jesus, of course, tells them to do that in Matthew.

And, of course, famously, at the baptismal scene, the Father's voice is heard, the Spirit comes down as a dove, and there is Christ in the water. There's something about baptism that is just tied up with the Godhead, and here Paul ends with a kind of reminder of their baptismal covenant then, and for any early Christian to hear anything that says, Father, Son, Holy Ghost would be like, remember, remember your covenant, remember baptism. So for him to end there and what he associates with each member of the Godhead, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God,

the Father, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, wrap yourself up in the Godhead, the spirit is trying to talk to you, God loves you, and Christ is just offering so much grace. So examine yourself, but recognize, man, God is reaching out in every way he can here. examine yourself, but recognize man God is reaching out in every way he can here. Beautiful. Joe, this has been a great day. Absolutely. Lots of notes. I feel like I understand.

After these last five lessons we've had in Corinthians, I see Paul taking a very difficult situation with the Corinthians kind of going off the rails and he's he's going to help them get back on track but not just get back on track you guys but what do I need to teach you what do you need to understand in order to get back on track and hopefully stay there so it's been fascinating to watch these two letters and obviously there was a third that we don't have. So thank you, Joe, for helping us understand the second half of this last one, such compelling ways.

I think our listeners would be interested, Joe, in just your own journey. Here you are, a scholar, a philosopher, PhD, and a believing letter, a saint. What's that journey been like for you? Yeah, actually it's kind of easy to explain my journey in some of Paul's own language. We read that passage where Paul says, we take every thought prisoner and submit it to Christ. We bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. I came to conviction pretty early, found a testimony and just a deep spiritual conviction that not only that God was real and that Christ saves, but that all

of this had something to do with the restoration. And so for me, from the very beginning, my academic pursuits were a way of trying to build out what I had found spiritually. It was a kind of take every thought and bring it into the subjection to Christ. So I went into philosophy originally in the hopes of learning to read better. That may sound like a strange thing, but it's the closest thing you can get to getting a PhD in reading, I think.

But I was deeply interested when I got my very first tastes of philosophy in just how incredibly gifted philosophers were at taking a text and taking it apart and showing how its pieces work and how arguments unfolds or how one part gets to another and so on. And in a way that just, it looked to me like a really obvious tool for trying to understand scripture better. That's why I studied philosophy. I wasn't planning to be a scholar when I went on and did a PhD. It was the same kind of thing for me. Everything I was trying

to find in philosophy was something I could put in the service of the kingdom. That said, I mean, it's not like it wasn't without challenges. When I was in graduate school, I was the only person in the philosophy department faculty or student among the grad students at least who had any kind of religious belief or commitment. People were very respectful, mind you, it wasn't like I was under attack all the time or something like that, but it wasn't exactly a faith promoting atmosphere in that sense. And I had to read all the things, right? I had to read quite widely things, right? I had to read quite widely, then and still do now, and yet my faith in terms of simplicity, right? That's the place I was

standing, and then I can look at all of these other questions from that position. So how do I make sense of Freud if I'm standing here with Christ? And the answer is not always simply like, oh, well, then Freud was wrong, because Christ, right? Sometimes it's like, oh, there are interesting things going on in Freud that might actually help me make sense of Roman seven or something. And there are other parts of Freud that I kind of go, all right, whatever, right? And here I'm looking at Plato and there are parts of it that,

wow, okay, you can do some interesting things there. And there are other things where you're like, okay, yeah. That's not so useful. So part of it for me is just that. I can come at these things that way. But I also, I mean, I try to be, it's part of what it is to be a scholar, it's to be so completely honest with what's in front of you, which means you do come up against challenges to your faith.

But my experience has been 10 million times over that really serious honesty always leaves space open for the restoration. Every dismissal I've heard, every criticism I've heard, there are things there that can give you pause, but it's not a fully honest picture. Hugh Nibbley is my intellectual hero. What I love about Nibbley, I think he's often misread. We often treat Hugh Nibbley as if he were just piling up evidences for the claims of the restoration. But I don't think that's actually the best way to understand what he was up to.

I think the best way to understand what he was doing was he was trying to point out over and over again that when someone's trying to tell you that the restoration can't hold up intellectually, they're trying to sell you something. That's what nibbly was showing over and over again. He would take an argument against some aspect of the book of Mormon or whatever it was and show that if you're fully honest with all the sources, they're still room. They're still room. They're still room. And I think he's absolutely right about that. And if someone says all the evidence makes perfectly clear the bubble nonsense. That's a dishonest. So that's at least what it's looked like for me.

Over and over and over again, I find that there's always space. There's always space and that I have been standing in a place that's secure. And as a result, I feel rooted and I can keep looking at whatever there is in front of me in the world without fear or a spirit of fear. Beautiful. John, you mentioned a couple of books that Joe has written. I want to highlight two of them. One is First Nephi, a brief theological introduction.

And then another one is called The Vision of All, 25 lectures on Isaiah in Nephi's record. Really bless your life in understanding the Book of Mormon, first E5 of course, and Isaiah in the book of Mormon, which Joe is an expert. John, what a great day we have had today. So glad I was here. Thank you so much, Joe. Thank you, seriously. I have to pinch myself often that this is really happening, that I get to spend time with these incredible minds. And I'm grateful that I've had this incredible mind, Joe, in my life and now finally on the show. He also loves a good dad joke, by the way. John, I do. He and I share dad jokes often.

We want to thank Dr. Joseph Spencer for being with us today. Joe, it's been a treat. Thank you. Yeah, happy to do it. We want to thank our executive producer, Shannon Swanson. We couldn't do it without her. We're grateful and want to thank our sponsors, David and Verla Swanson, and we always remember our founder, Steve Swanson. We hope you'll join us next week. We're heading into Galatians on Follow Him. Today's transcripts, show notes, and additional references are available on our website,

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