He is a Jew Which is One Inwardly

When Aaron started preaching among the Lamanites, he “took his journey towards the land which was called by the Lamanites, Jerusalem.”  There were Lamanites, Amulonites, and Amalekites there, and they did “wax strong in wickedness and their abominations.”  When he entered into one of their synagogues one of the Amalekites started to content with him.  Part of his argument against Aaron was that the Nephite missionary couldn’t know that they were a wicked people, and then in an effort to prove their righteousness, he said, “How knowest thou that we are not a righteous people? Behold, we have built sanctuaries, and we do assemble ourselves together to worship God. We do believe that God will save all men.”  His chief piece of evidence that they were righteous was the fact that they had synagogues and that they assembled there to worship God.  Like the Zoramites, he focused on the outward sign of physical buildings and worship.  It may be as well that the reason they called their city Jerusalem was to prove in some manner that they were just as good spiritually as their fathers who had come from Jerusalem.  They perhaps wanted to make a statement to the Nephites, from whom they had dissented, that they were a people who had an elite status before God as evidenced by a city named Jerusalem and fancy synagogues and a people who got together to worship (Alma 21:1-6).  But clearly their rejection of the humble words of Aaron proved otherwise about their real level of faithfulness to God. 

            I think it is instructive what Aaron first said to these Amalekites when they touted their supposed righteousness before him.  His first point of measuring their spirituality and their righteousness was this question: “Believest thou that the Son of God shall come to redeem mankind from their sins?”  That is the heart of the gospel and without faith in Christ and His redemption there is no righteousness.  When the people responded that they didn’t believe in Christ, he immediately started to teach them what they needed to know: “Now Aaron began to open the scriptures unto them concerning the coming of Christ, and also concerning the resurrection of the dead, and that there could be no redemption for mankind save it were through the death and sufferings of Christ, and the atonement of his blood” (Alma 21:7-9).  Ultimately they rejected him and he moved on from Jerusalem to other cities, but the lesson for us is clear: our church attendance and many buildings is not a sign of our righteousness.  What matters most is our belief in the Son of God and His “redemption for mankind” that will save those who come unto Him.  We have to be careful not to define our spirituality by outward symbols of clothing or buildings or meeting attendance; for the faith and repentance, the broken heart and the contrite spirit, the internal devotion that matters most, are not as easily measured as we might hope they could be.  I love the way that Paul described it: “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God” (Romans 2:28-29).  We might then say in our day, “He is not a Latter-day Saint, which is one outwardly. He is a Latter-day Saint which is one inwardly; and our covenants our of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter.”  What counts most for us is what is in our inwards parts, the faith in Jesus Christ that fills our hearts.