The Essence of the Gospel

Today I watched BYUtv’s new movie Winter Thaw based on Leo Tolstoy’s short story Martin the Cobbler.  The familiar story shows how Martin was promised to see the Savior one day, and during the day he managed to help an old soldier, a woman with her young child, and a young boy who was caught stealing.  At the end of the day he realized that though he hadn’t seen the Savior with his eyes, he really had been with the Savior: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:40).  The point is that if we truly love and serve those around us, we will have indeed been with God because we will have seen the divine in them.  Victor Hugo apparently put it this way: “To love another person is to see the face of God.”  Mormon gave us a similar teaching when he taught that if we were “filled with this love” then we would one day be like Him and “see him as he is” (Moroni 7:48).  This teaching I think gives us the insight that to love helps us to see God partly because we will be more like Him; we will see His divine nature not only in others but also in ourselves as we serve. 

                As I look through the list of 25 ways to follow the Savior this Christmas season in the Church’s Light the World initiative, it’s impressive to note how many of them involve doing something for others.   Some of the list are things related to our personal worship—such as reading the scriptures, praying, using music, developing humility, and honoring the Sabbath—and those are surely essential for the life of a Christian.  But we can’t only do those things if we want to be a true disciple; as Amulek put it, “I say unto you, do not suppose that this is all; for after ye have done all these things, if ye turn away the needy, and the naked, and visit not the sick and afflicted, and impart of your substance, if ye have, to those who stand in need—I say unto you, if ye do not any of these things, behold, your prayer is vain, and availeth you nothing.”  Simply put, if we don’t help those around us then we are “as hypocrites who do deny the faith” (Alma 34:28).  It was this hypocrisy that Jesus condemned so adamantly in some of the Jews of His days.  They were meticulous about following the law and yet had no love for their fellow man: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith” (Matt. 23:23).  It gives me pause to wonder if I don’t fall under that same condemnation sometimes as I focus more on things to do than on people to show mercy to and love.  John summed it up simply this way: “For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” (1 John 3:11).  It was the message of God from the beginning of the world and will always be our divine directive: we “should love one another” (Moses 7:33).  Love is, as President Monson taught us, “the essence of the gospel.”