Joseph and Repentance

Today is the 195^th anniversary of the first visit of the angel Moroni to the prophet Joseph.  Joseph recorded this reason for petitioning the Lord that night: “I betook myself to prayer and supplication to Almighty God for forgiveness of all my sins and follies, and also for a manifestation to me, that I might know of my state and standing before him” (JSH 1:29).  In other words, Joseph was repenting and seeking a forgiveness of his sons.  Joseph had sought the same thing when he first went into the grove of trees to pray in 1820.  Though he was seeking revelation on which church to join, he was also searching for forgiveness of his sins that day: “He asked for mercy and forgiveness,” the Saints book records, and when the vision came, the Savior said to him, “Joseph, thy sins are forgiven.”  These two marvelous manifestations came to Joseph at least in part because he had humbled himself before the Lord in repentance, and the Lord referenced both of them in the revelation that accompanied the organization of the Church: “After it was truly manifested unto this first elder that he had received a remission of his sins, he was entangled again in the vanities of the world; but after repenting, and humbling himself sincerely, through faith, God ministered unto him” (Doctrine and Covenants 20:5-6) . 

               The need for repentance is a theme we see in the records about Joseph’s life.  Just because he was called of God, the Lord did not spare him chastisement or overlook his failings.  The first time Joseph tried to get the plates, he couldn’t. “Because you have not kept the commandments of the Lord” he was told by Moroni, and he was instructed to purify himself.  In 1826 when he tried to get the plates he was similarly told to change his actions and repent: “Quit the company of the money diggers” Moroni told him, and he had “one more year to align his will with God’s.”  After he received the plates and the 116 pages were lost in 1828, Joseph was again called to repent: “Behold, how oft you have transgressed the commandments and the laws of God, and have gone on in the persuasions of men…. Repent of that which thou hast done which is contrary to the commandment which I gave you” (Doctrine and Covenants 3:6, 10).  The next year the Lord again called him to repentance: “And now I command you, my servant Joseph, to repent and walk more uprightly before me, and to yield to the persuasions of men no more” (Doctrine and Covenants 5:21).  Joseph was the Lord’s chosen servant, but he was not perfect and was repeatedly called by the Lord to repent so he could perform the Lord’s work.  

               Other events in his life similarly show the need Joseph, like all of us, had to repent.  When Joseph returned from Independence in 1831 with a group of Elders there were a lot of hard feelings between some of the brethren and Joseph and Oliver so that “the quarrel lasted long into the night.”  Eventually “Joseph and most of the elders traveling with him had humbled themselves, confessed their sins, and sought forgiveness.”  In response to this the Lord commented, “Inasmuch as you have humbled yourselves before me, the blessings of the kingdom are yours” (Doctrine and Covenants 61:37).  Later in another revelation in 1833 the Lord told Joseph again to repent, saying, “And now, verily I say unto Joseph Smith, Jun.—You have not kept the commandments, and must needs stand rebuked before the Lord” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:47).  Joseph, and presumably others, was chastised by the Lord in another 1833 revelation: “Ye must needs be chastened and stand rebuked before my face; For ye have sinned against me a very grievous sin, in that ye have not considered the great commandment in all things, that I have given unto you concerning the building of mine house” (Doctrine and Covenants 95:2-3).  He and the saints did of course accomplish this command as they completed the Kirtland Temple at great sacrifice. 

            These and other examples show that even the prophet needed repenting and refining by the Lord, and we need not suppose that he was perfect. Rather, if the Lord chastened him, how much more need have we to be chastened in our own sins and failings!