Summary: As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who come to church each Sunday, accept callings and feel we are living the gospel, we can fall into the trap of thinking, “All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well [with me].” When we hear the message of repentance, we can many times think that it pertains to someone else. Yet, we’ve been commanded to be perfect like our Father in heaven. This article examines what it takes for that to happen.

In the 8th chapter of Moses we read, “And also, after that they had heard him, they came up before him, saying: Behold, we are the sons of God; have we not taken unto ourselves the daughters of men? And are we not eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage? And our wives bear unto us children, and the same are mighty men, which are like unto men of old, men of great renown. And they hearkened not unto the words of Noah” (verse 21).

Before we can better appreciate the message of this verse, we have to understand something that has confused a lot of people. In the 6th chapter of the Genesis we read, “That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose….There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown” (verses 2,4).

This talks about the “sons of God” coming and wedding “the daughters of men,” and then bearing children who, apparently, were giants and “mighty men of renown.” This has given rise to the speculation that divine beings (the sons of God) came down from heaven and mated with mortal women which then produced a posterity of giants who were extremely strong. In other words, these children were a hybrid of mortal and immortal parents.

However, the book of Moses clarifies this when he says, “And Noah and his sons hearkened unto the Lord, and gave heed, and they were called the sons of God. And when these men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, the sons of men saw that those daughters were fair, and they took them wives, even as they chose” (verses 13,14).

The “sons of God” are the sons of Noah who “hearkened unto the Lord.” and did “according to all that God commanded” (verse 22).

In the New Testament we often read that those who accept Jesus as their Saviour are referred to as sons of God or children of God. A son is entitled to the inheritance of their parents, which Christians believe means living with God eternally, which is the definition of salvation. And it is in this sense that Genesis is referring to when it talks about “the sons of God.”

Therefore, in the days of Noah, when the sons of men, meaning those who were worldly or unrighteous, saw that the daughters of the sons of God, (those women whose fathers followed the ways of God), were fair and beautiful, they took them for their wives, and together they bore many children. But what kind of children were they?

In Genesis we read, “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

Notice this does not say that these giants were the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men. It simply says “There were giants in the land.” Period. End of sentence. Then “AFTER that [is] when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men,” and their children “became mighty men.” The word “mighty” doesn’t necessarily mean “strong.” They could have become mighty hunters or mighty city builders, or mighty intellectuals or men of great wisdom. The scriptures don’t clarify what it means when it says these children were “mighty,” so we have to be careful not to make hard and fast assumptions about how we interpret the scriptures.

With this understanding, we are now in a better position to understand what verse 21 is telling us

Noah had preached repentance to the people of his day, and their response was, “We are the sons of God just as you are. Why? Because we married your daughters, so that makes us as righteous as you. You tell us that what we are doing is wrong and that unless we repent God is going to smite us. So where’s the proof? We eat and we drink, just the same as always and nothing has happened to us. We marry and have children and life goes on just like it always has, and God hasn’t smitten us. Therefore, what you are telling us doesn’t fit with reality. That means you’re a phoney, a crackpot, a delusional old man. So why should we listen to anything you say?” Because of this line of reasoning, “they hearkened not unto the words of Noah.”

The message here is that we too can think of ourselves as being “sons of God,” not because we always strive to follow his ways but because we’re members of his church who show up each Sunday and accept callings, and keep a few of the commandments all the time and many of the commandments some of the time, and refuse to keep those commandments we don’t like. When we hear our church leaders talk about needing to repent, we think they’re talking about someone else.

Furthermore, when some members of the church are living with one foot in the camp of God and the other foot in the camp of the world, it doesn’t seem that anything bad is happening to them. In fact, they might even be prospering, therefore they question why they should heed the call to repent? They tell themselves, “All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well [with me]” (2 Nephi 28:21).

It took Noah 100 years to build the ark and during all that time there were no catastrophes. There were no floods, no droughts, no widespread sickness, nor any kind of disaster. In 700 B.C. Isaiah called his people to repentance and went into great gruesome detail of what would happen if they didn’t. For the next 100 years, the Jews continued living the way they always had and nothing bad ever happened to them until 600 B.C. when Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem.

He removed Jehoiachim, their king, and installed Zedekiah in his place. Even so, life for the Jews went on the same as it had before. However, three years later, in 597 B.C. after Zedekiah had refused to pay Babylon’s required tribute, Nebuchadnezzar sacked the city of Jerusalem, slaughtering tens of thousands of Jews and took tens of thousands more as slaves back to the city of Babylon, thereby fulfilling Isaiah’s horrific prophesies to the letter.

But what were the Jews doing that was so bad?

When asked what the greatest commandment in the law was, Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 which reads, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine hearth, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” But what does it mean to love the Lord with all your heart, soul and might?

The prophet Isaiah condemned the Jews of his day, not because they weren’t keeping the law of Moses, but because of how they were doing it. In speaking for the Lord, he said, “Stop bringing [me your] meaningless offerings. [The burning of] your incense is detestable to me. [Your] new moons, Sabbaths and convocations I cannot bear your worthless assemblies” (Isaiah 1:13, NIV).

The Jews were going to the temple and making the required offerings, and the priests were burning incense as the law required, and they were observing the Sabbath and holding their religious assemblies as God had commanded, but none of that was pleasing to the Lord because they weren’t doing it to worship him. The King James Version calls these “vain oblations.” The people were going through the motions of keeping the law but their heart wasn’t in what they were doing. It was for this reason that their actions were meaningless to the Lord and why he called them an abomination.

In Isaiah’s time, the people viewed the Law of Moses as nothing more than a ritual that required no heartfelt commitment to Jehovah. And why did they behave this way? “Because their hearts [were] set so much upon the things of this world, and [they did] aspire to the honors of men” (D&C 121:35). It’s our thoughts that indicate where our heart is.

Jesus taught, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). When we treasure something, we set our heart on it because it’s important to us. When we treasure the things of the world, such as our time, material possessions, and worldly pursuits, we focus our attention on them because this is what our heart desires. And it is the desires of our heart that motivates our actions.

When we put little effort into worshiping God, we keep his commandments half-heartedly, instead of loving him with all our heart; we treasure the things the world offers us more than desiring the things of God.

God wants us to be sincere and genuine in the way we worship him, or as Moroni put it, to do it having real intent. God wants us to obey him because we love him with all our heart and that can only happen when our desire is to emulate him because we want to become as holy and perfect as he is.

In the days when Alma was the chief judge of the land and the head of the church of God, the saints in the city of Zarahemla had begun drifting away from living the gospel. To help bring the saints back to God, Alma gave up his job as chief judge so he could spend all his time restrengthening the members of God’s church. In speaking to the members in Zarahemla, he said, “Have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?” (Alma 5:14).

Loving God with all our heart isn’t a casual endeavor. It’s a sign of our loyalty to Christ and it doesn’t happen by accident. It’s something we have to keep working at and never give up. It’s a lifelong endeavor. As Alma told the Zoramites, it takes constantly nourishing our faith so it will grow and become strong.

Just like all skills, it takes consistent practice, and if we stop practicing, those skills gradually become less effective. To prevent that from happening takes self-discipline, and this principle also applies to loving the Lord with all our heart. The more we sincerely practice living his commandments, the better we become at it. But the less we work at it and the less sincere we are, the more we’re enticed by the call of the world to come follow their ways.

But just like any skill, progress comes a little at a time rather than in large strides. In the book of Genesis we read how it took God six days to create the earth. From what we know, it appears that each day was not a twenty-four hour space of time but rather represented an unspecified period to accomplish one particular part of the earth’s creation. With all the power and wisdom God has, it still took considerable time to complete his work.

Instead of snapping his fingers and everything suddenly appeared, it took God working a little here and a little there, one step at a time to prepare the earth with everything man would need. In the Bible it gives the impression that God took some dirt, formed it into the shape of a man, then breathed the breath of life into him. Then he took a rib from Adam and somehow suddenly made a woman. Doing all of that could be done in a relatively short few hours at most, yet the Bible tells us it took one full “day” for God to do that. Obviously, there was much more to the creation of man than what the Bible tells us.

If it took God five days just to prepare for man to be created and then took an entire day to make man, we shouldn’t expect that we can become perfect in a short period of time. In fact, when God created man in his image, both male and female, that was just the beginning of his work because he is still in the process of making man in his image. And it appears it’s going to take seven more creative periods, including the millennium, for him to fully complete that process.

But since God doesn’t force anyone to become perfect, therefore we have to be willing to allow God to transform us, and that requires us to participate in that process. And since it takes time for that transformation to be completed, that then requires us to patiently endure to the end.

This was the message the apostle Paul told the Romans when he said, “To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: (Romans 2:7). And the apostle James counseled the saints in his day, “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord” (James 6:7). In our day the Lord has said that if we “continueth in God, [we will] receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day” (D&C 50:24).

Our journey to become like Christ is going to be long, but if we love the Lord with all our heart and patiently continue to the end in following his ways, the time will come when we will be crowned with glory, honor, and eternal life. For us, that will become our perfect day.

 

Related articles can be found at The Nature of Man