Over the last couple of months I have received messages from two friends. Both have them have asked me very similar questions. Essentially, the question is “We have a loving Heavenly Father, why would he insist that we participate in ordinances and engage in covenants? Surely, his love is enough to save us without the covenant path, and obedience to the covenants that we have made.” I must explain that the two friends who asked me this question are faithful disciples of Christ, and they are striving to understand the fate of people whom they love dearly who are not on the covenant path, rather than trying to find a workaround so they don’t have to live up to their covenants.

Indeed, we may look around and see people not of our faith who seem to be “better” than we are, and perhaps without knowing it better examples of the Saviour Jesus Christ. I get that. But there must be a reason why covenants are an important part of the Gospel plan. In understanding covenants we know that in the Abrahamic covenant there are two parts- in Hebrew the words are brit and chesed. Exploring the meaning of ‘brit’ it suggests the conditional part of the covenant- if you do this, then… Whereas chesed is that aspect of the covenant that shows love. In essence if we give too much emphasis to one rather than the other then ourunderstanding of the Lord becomes skewed. If we focus solely on brit, the Lord becomes a lawgiver who is focussed on us only as far as we are obedient. Whereas if we focus on chesed, he excuses any of our sins or transgressions, and we know from the Book of Mormon, that if he were to do that he would cease to be God. So, there is a balance, and we recognise that we must make covenants, and that at every stage the Lord loves us whether we fall short or not. This, then helps us realise that as we keep covenants they must be more than a compliance check, they are expressions of his love. As we know, our journey on the covenant path is about becoming, and therefore the covenants help us become more than we can be without them. Elder Christofferson spoke about five promises and blessings that we receive as we take out our covenants.

First is the nature of our obedience to God. More than simply having good intentions, we solemnly commit to live by every word that proceeds forth from the mouth of God. We are choosing to be disciples of Jesus Christ and to follow his example, and live his commandments. We have drawn a line in the sand and made a public declaration that we want to live after the manner of happiness. Just as marriage is more than a piece of paper, our making of covenants expressed by the ordinances of salvation show our commitment to the Saviour and His Gospel.

A second unique aspect of the covenant path is our relationship with Deity. The covenants God offers to His children do more than guide us. They bind us to Him, and, bound to Him, we can overcome all things. We read in the scriptures that we take upon us the Saviour’s yoke. As such we walk step by step with the Lord. We are able to say with the Psalmist that “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4). If we feel as though we do not have the Lord to be with us, we realise as King Benjamin suggests that we “ye do withdraw yourselves from the Spirit of the Lord, that it may have no place in you to guide you in wisdom’s paths that ye may be blessed, prospered, and preserved” (Mosiah 2:36). If we want the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost we must be bound to the Lord through covenant. Russell M. Nelson explains that:

Making a covenant with God changes our relationship with Him forever. It blesses us with an extra measure of love and mercy. It affects who we are and how God will help us become what we can become.” Because of God’s lovingkindness for those who have covenanted with Him, “He will love them. He will continue to work with them and offer them opportunities to change. He will forgive them when they repent. And should they stray, He will help them find their way back to Him” (“The Everlasting Covenant, Liahona, October 2022).

This leads us to consideration of a third special blessing of the covenant path. God provides an almost incomprehensible gift to help covenant-makers be covenant-keepers: the gift of the Holy Ghost. This gift is the right to the constant companionship, protection, and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Who would not what this incomprehensible gift. We know that the Holy Ghost is the means through which the atonement of Jesus Christ is activated in our lives. Without covenants we may receive occasional visits, but through making and keeping covenants we are able to live constantly yoked with the Lord.

Fourth, those pursuing the covenant path also find singular blessings in various divinely appointed gatherings. We are able to gather with covenantal members of the Lord’s kingdom. We also receive the promise of a future gathering of our families as we make and keep sacred covenants.

Finally, it is only in pursuing the covenant path that we inherit the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the ultimate blessings of salvation and exaltation that only God can give. Only through the making of and obedience to the covenants with the Lord can we hope for exaltation. 

Having answered my friends’ question, I’m then led to other questions that may also be asked. What are the ordinances and covenants of exaltation. As members of the Church we know that they are:

Baptism

​Confirmation

​Priesthood

​Endowment (including the initiatory ordinances)

​Sealing in marriage

Each of these is part of the new and everlasting covenant. It is everlasting because it has always has been, and always will be. It is new because it is made with each of us anew as we enter the waters of baptism and then continue in the making of covenants. Time does not allow an exploration of each of these. Let me focus today on the covenants that we make in the Temple endowment. The first initiatory and endowment ordinances we receive are for ourselves, but every other time we worship in the Temple (except for Temple sealing of living spouses and children) they are on behalf of our ancestors who are in the Spirit World and didn’t have the opportunity to receive some/all of the ordinances of exaltation while in this life.

The focus on the Saviour and the plan of salvation, while evident in the initiatory and sealing ordinances, are brought into particular focus in the endowment. As we look at the images of the various rooms of the Temple we can see that the endowment is a place we receive instruction. The instruction surrounds:

• The Creation of the world

• The Fall of Adam and Eve

• The Atonement of Jesus Christ

• The Apostasy

• The Restoration

• The way all people can return to the presence of the Lord. 

Especially in the endowment there are opportunities to learn through the symbolism of how we worship, what we see and the clothing that we wear.  As part of the Temple endowment experience we also make covenants with the Lord, which include:

• Law of Obedience

• Law of Sacrifice

• Law of the Gospel

• Law of Chastity

• Law of Consecration

None of these are new covenants to us; but making them in the Temple adds a greater responsibility on each of us to live these covenants. We don’t suddenly find new aspects to the law of chastity, or tithing suddenly goes up. Rather, the covenants are made with a renewed spirit that suggests the importance of the Lord’s revelation that: “For of him unto whom much is given much is required…” (D&C 82:3). 

In the Temple it is important, as in life, that we take the opportunity to commune with the Lord, and take time to ‘Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). We must make the most of the time we have in the Temple to find the peace we are promised.

One of the scriptures that strikes me the most about Temple worship is in the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple recorded in section 109 of the Doctrine and Covenants:

And that they may grow up in thee, and receive a fulness of the Holy Ghost, and be organized according to thy laws, and be prepared to obtain every needful thing… (D&C 109:15).

In the Temple we are able to ‘grow up’ and receive more of a fulness of the Holy Ghost in being able to comprehend the Saviour and His work. I don’t think we can ever fully comprehend the work of the Saviour but we can always be moving forward. I worry that sometimes we can take the Temple for granted, and not see the importance of continued worship within the Lord’s house.

It is a place where we can carry out work for our family who have passed on, but more than that the Temple’s pre-eminent role in our lives is ‘the personal blessing of Temple worship’ that it provides in our lives (Howard W. Hunter, quoted in Jay M. Todd, “President Howard W. Hunter,” Ensign, July 1994, 5). Through our Temple experience we are able to receive so many personal blessings that it is important that we don’t skip over them in preparing blessings for our kindred dead. The power and understanding of the Saviour comes into our lives as we make and are reminded of sacred covenants. Returning to the covenants that we make.

Firstly, the law of obedience. We covenant to follow the Saviour in keeping all of the Lord’s commandments. The call to discipleship is a call to obedience. In keeping this covenant we are declaring ourselves for the Lord, and as such we should not look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. We must become as the people of King Benjamin who declared: “we are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do his will, and to be obedient to his commandments in all things that he shall command us” (Mosiah 5:5). Not only this but that their very nature was changed: “the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent… has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually” (Mosiah 5:2). This does not mean that they didn’t sin but that it wasn’t in their nature to want to. This is the change in character that we aim for in living the law of obedience. In so doing we become more Christlike, it was said of the Saviour that “notwithstanding he being holy, he showeth unto the children of men that, according to the flesh he humbleth himself before the Father, and witnessethunto the Father that he would be obedient unto him in keeping his commandments” (2 Nephi 31:7). If we want to become like the Saviour, we must live as he lived.

Secondly, the law of sacrifice. In this we are, again, following the example of the Saviour. He made the infinite and eternal sacrifice that enables our reconciliation with the Lord. If he sacrificed his life for each of us, we should be willing to sacrifice for Him. But what does this mean in our lives. Joseph Smith taught that “a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation” (Lectures on Faith, 6:7). How can we sacrifice all things? The Doctrine and Covenants tell us that “They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon” (1:16). The suggestion is that we can set up idols that replace the focus that should be on the Lord. That might be money, popularity, football, the list is endless. Anything that we place in the way of our worship of the Lord should be sacrificed- maybe not completely, but in a way that they are ancillary to the Lord. The Lord tells us to “seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you” (3 Nephi 13:33). Everything is placed into its proper focus if we make the Saviour at the centre of all that we are and all that we do.

One way we do this is through the other covenants that we make in the endowment, including the Law of the Gospel, the law of consecration. What do we mean by the law of the Gospel. This is explained as faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism and reception of the gift of the Holy Ghost. One might ask, surely this is the way of life that we committed to when we joined the Church. Why do we need to make this covenant again? For me, this refocuses our attention on the fundamentals of the Gospel, namely our relationship with the Saviour. We must live in a constant and consistent state of faith, repentance abiding in the Holy Spirit made possible through the renewal of our baptismal covenants through the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. We sacrifice our own will, our own ego and pride in a complete reliance on the Lord as we make our way through life.

Secondly, the law of consecration. This “means dedicating our time, talents, and everything with which the Lord has blessed us to building up Jesus Christ’s Church on the earth.” The Church is an institution whose whole purpose is to draw us into a relationship with Lord, and others. The service that is given by all members of the Church is a prelude to the service and unity that can be found within exaltation. Thus, a participation in the work of building the Church is a necessary preparation for exaltation. In the novel, The Shack, an explanation of what the Church is, by Jesus, could have been written to describe the Latter-day Saint ideal: “It’s simple, Mack. It’s all about relationships and simply sharing life. What we are doing right now− just doing this− and being open and available to others around us. My church is all about people and life is all about relationships” (Young, 2008: 178).The unity with the Godhead and others in this life and in the next is the nature of exaltation. The Church functions as a place where an individual’s relationship with the Godhead can be similarly worked out and centred. The Church’s most important function is as a channel for the blessings of the atonement of Christ and the reception of the Holy Spirit.  

If we hope for exaltation we must spend life developing relationships. The most important is with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But one important way that we do that is in relationship to other people. The Church (including the ward and the Stake) is organised to help us develop unified relationships that prepare us for exaltation. Each of us is an integral part of the Ward and we should each make everyeffort to develop this service and unity, without which we cannot hope for exaltation. This may be a bold claim to make: that our exaltation depends on how we contribute to the Ward and relate to those people around us. It is nonetheless true, as each of these are indicative of the grace we have received in our lives.

The final covenant we make, while incredibly important, seems slightly out of place for me in relation to the other covenants we have discussed. It is the covenant of the Law of Chastity. This is that we have no sexual relations outside the bonds of marriage. I wonder if this is included by the Lord because he knew that the erosion of marriage would be one of the biggest problems in the latter-days. Just as the other four are about developing a relationship with the Lord in preparation for exaltation, this is about developing a relationship with our spouse that will be fulfilled in the Celestial Kingdom. This suggests complete fidelity in thought, word and deed to our spouse. Elder Bruce C. Hafen(2015) noted when sealing a couple in the temple: 

I invited them to the altar, and as the groom took the bride by the hand, I realised that they were about to place upon that altar of sacrifice their own broken hearts and contrite spirits—an offering of themselves to each other and to God in emulation of Christ’s sacrifice for them.By living that way every day, they would each come closer to God, which would also bring them closer to each other. Thus, living the covenants of the sealing ordinance would sanctify not only their marriage but also their hearts and their very lives.

With this as a background, the way that we live our lives and also the way that we attend the Temple in the future, as a couple, will be influenced as we consider not only, our own relationship with the Saviour, but also that of our family.

After having spoken at length about covenants I realise I have not been very personal in my approach. But my thoughts are based on striving to live covenants over nearly forty years. Every expression of who I am, strives to evidence the covenants I have made and keep. My prayer for each of us is to be reminded of our covenants, but not only of what they are but also in the way that we live them. If the Temple isn’t part of our life we must prepare to worship there; if it is we must make sure that it continues to be. Through the Temple and its associate covenants we are able to experience the Lord more in our lives, and know that He is God.  Let us make and keep sacred covenants so that we may be found acceptable before the Lord.