1. "Let them bring their families to this land, as they shall counsel between themselves and me. For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward. Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward. But he that doeth not anything until he is commanded, and receiveth a commandment with doubtful heart, and keepeth it with slothfulness, the same is damned."
2. "They shall also be crowned with blessings from above, yea, and with commandments not a few, and with revelations in their time—they that are faithful and diligent before me."
Quick comments today on a surface contradiction between the above two passages which context and attention to semantics can resolve.
First, passage 1 is commonly cited for its surface meaning, and often requires no context. But the citation usually begins with the "For behold". It transparently helps readers remember that there is a lot more to what God commands us than the "thou shalt nots", and that we are agents who are learning to tool our liberties to alignment with His will, which entails experimentation with initiating good works without specific direction some times. It reminds us that we are not robots and that God's glory doesn't consist in merely doing His will, but in CHOOSING his will, because knowing Him consists in knowing how to live the kind of life He lives--Eternal Life. It's a wonderful sermon on letting God inspire us to do good, and applying our own ingenuity toward the kind of upward-reaching, self-sacrificial acts that His Son's example sets for us as a model.
But I've cited it with an extra verse for context, and I think we would do well to keep that context in mind for a deeper understanding of the direction of the command not to require commandments. It's a general truth that we shouldn't wait for specific revelation before beginning work on good projects. But for this group of saints, having completed the sacrifice of a long journey leaving behind work and investments, wondering now what to do with a place less prepared for them than they had hoped and imagined, the message was not merely to get back to work. It was, instead, to counsel together and then to counsel with the Lord, and to allow for the possibility that direction for how to establish the Zion society they were all aligned to do could and should come from many sources simultaneously. It wasn't so much about avoiding a personal spirit of doing the least possible work until commanded by the Lord, but was more about letting one's own ideas contribute in a ground-up fashion to the solutions of the group's common problems; working out laterally how to proceed in a common project, under the presidency of a Bishop, but through a Ward Council; and allowing the spiritual gifts of all, each with their various forms and connections with the Lord's Spirit to inform the common project. The passage is not about independently going around the Lord and establishing autonomy from Him, but is rather a call to add one's consecrated mind, heart, words, and hands to the communal seeking out of the Lord's will even in the specifics. We must supply the will, but seek out the direction in His ways.
This framework allows us to see seeking out the Lord's counsel through contribution to His prescribed forms of social and economic connection, such as the wards were in such times as then and now--and the commandments that come from such direction seeking--as positive in and of itself. We shouldn't wait to be commanded, sure, but commandments, when they come, are blessings. As passage 2 suggests, the faithful and the diligent are crowned with rewards of more responsibilities, which means more powers and more freedoms, for having kept and magnified the responsibilities already given.
May we all seek the Lord's will in all things, exercise the faith to take steps in the dark even before we know the full light of God's directing knowledge, and move from magnified stewardship to magnified stewardship until the Lord welcomes us with His loving smile, not for the profits we made, but for the power to serve we expanded, with the words, "well done, thou good and faithful servant."
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