Taking Strength Unto Ourselves

In Zenos' Allegory of the Olive Tree, the Lord asks His servant this question: "Who is it that has corrupted my vineyard?" The servant answers with two questions:  

"Is it not the loftiness of thy vineyard--

have not the branches thereof overcome the roots which are good?"  

He then says, 

"And because the branches 

have overcome the roots thereof, 

behold they grew faster 

than the strength of the roots, 

taking strength unto themselves, 

behold, I say, is not this the cause 

that the trees of thy vineyard 

have become corrupted?" 

(Jacob 5:58 emphasis added)

When we take strength unto ourselves and boast in our own strength, then we are "left to our own strength" (Helaman 4:13), we do not prosper, we do not bring forth any good fruit, we become corrupted and are good for nothing but to be cast into the fire. 

For more on not bringing forth any good fruit see We Are The Wild Branches.

Compare on the other hand, taking strength unto ourselves with "relying alone upon the merits of Christ, who is the author and the finisher of our faith" (Moroni 6:4).  Moroni was echoing what Nephi had previously written, reminding us that we only get into the strait and narrow path by virtue of the word of Christ with unshaken faith in Christ "...relying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to save" (2 Nephi 31:19).

One requires faith in Christ and the other is putting our faith in ourselves, and in our, or even some of our strength and abilities. It is either relying totally upon the merits of Christ or not relying totally upon the merits of Christ.  

I have a problem, therefore, with the way that we teach and understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let me give you an example. A few years ago in a Sacrament meeting a brother who had had extensive experience in the church as a bishop, stake president and mission president, gave a talk on charity. He used Moroni 7 as the basis for his talk. It was well researched and well presented, but he concluded his talk by admonishing us to have more charity and to be more charitable in our daily lives, as if all we had to do was decide to be more charitable, and then act more charitable. In other words, we were being admonished to rely on our own strength and through better efforts, be more loving. Unfortunately this is the norm of our teaching rather than the exception. It totally misses the mark.

If he had just directed us to one more verse in Moroni 7, we would have known that the only way for us to receive charity and become more charitable was to "...pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that (we) may be filled with this love, which he has bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ" (Moroni 7:48). In other words, we cannot be more charitable through any will or acts of our own. We can, however, be filled with His love by receiving His love from Him. We then become more loving, not by our efforts, but by His filling us with His love for us and for others. Another reminder that He is the vine and we are the branches and that the branches cannot bring forth fruit of themselves.

We need to remember that love is one of the blessings that lies within God's gifts, and His power, not our own.  Let me illustrate this with another story.

A dramatic example of this gift comes from the life of Corrie Ten Boom, who survived incarceration in a World War II concentration camp with her radiant testimony of the power of God intact.  Ten years later, she was speaking at a church service in Munich when:

I saw him the former SS man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there--the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothes, Betsie's pale blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing, "How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein," he said. "To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away."

His hand was thrust out to shake mine.  And I, who had preached so often....the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more?  Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

I tried to smile. I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His.  When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself. (The Hiding Place, p 239)

This is true of all the gifts of God. We do not and cannot earn them.  Because they are gifts we must receive them.  

"For what doth it profit a man 

if a gift is bestowed upon him 

and he receive not the gift? 

Behold, he rejoices not 

in that which is given unto him, 

neither rejoices in him 

who is the giver of the gift"  

(D&C 88:33).

Christ has reminded us that He is the vine and we are the branches, and that the branches cannot bring forth fruit of themselves. By taking strength unto ourselves, we deny His power and His gifts, which is a lack of faith in His goodness and power.

Because God is the source of all goodness, and because we do not merit anything of ourselves, it is death for us to take strength unto ourselves.

"For our words will condemn us, yea, all our works will condemn us; we shall not be found spotless and our thoughts will also condemn us..."  (Alma 12:14). The only way we are found spotless is through the blood of Jesus Christ. Now these are His words and if we harden our hearts against His words (believing that we must do it by our own strivings, our doings, our efforts, our successes, our goodness, our virtues, our callings, and our activity), then His word will not be found in us and 'we shall be condemned' which is another way of saying we are corrupted because we have taken strength unto ourselves and are good for nothing except to be cast into the fire. (Jacob 4:48)

Corrupted is also used in the scriptures to describe the people in the days of Noah before the flood, and specifically "...the wickedness of men had become great in the earth, and every man was lifted up in the imaginations of the thoughts of his heart, being only evil continually" (Moses 8:22).

The loftiness of the branches is synonymous with pride, and imagining ourselves as 'good guys' simply because our behavior may be somewhat better than that of the world. But remember that it is not about our behavior, but about our hearts. As my friend Tim Merrill says the Gospel is about choosing good, the righteousness of God, not about being good. We can and do deceive ourselves into thinking we are good, but we cannot deceive our Father in Heaven by simply 'living' our religion.

C.S. Lewis reminds us that Satan is perfectly content to see us being chaste and self-disciplined, while he sets up in us the dictatorship of pride. He cures our cold but gives us cancer.

This particular type of wickedness is consistently described in the Book of Mormon and other scripture, and describes the conditions of the last days not only among the world but particularly among the members of the Church as well. "For 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..." (D&C 1:16).

George MacDonald put it another way: "True victory over self is the victory of God in the man, not of the man alone. It is not subjugation that is enough, but subjugation by God. In whatever a man does without God, he must fail miserably--or succeed more miserably."

We have already talked about His gift of love and how we pray to Him to be filled with His love, but let me give you some other examples of ways we put the focus on us rather than on Him.

We let our light shine--rather than His. Our light is but a spark (Isaiah 50:11) in comparison to His light which is the light of the sun, moon and stars! (D&C 88)

We seek to attain righteousness through our works, through the law, rather than through faith (Romans 9:30-33).

We go about to establish our own righteousness, rather than submit ourselves to the righteousness of God (Romans 10:1-4).

We rely on our merits (or some of them) rather than rely wholly or alone upon His merits.

We put our trust in man, rather than in God, thereby worshiping the creature rather than the Creator.

We teach that we can acquire the attributes of Christ through our efforts and discipline.

We teach a Gospel of performance rather than a Gospel of repentance.

We teach that the Gospel is about our righteousness, rather than our unworthiness (Alma 38:14).

Let me give you a personal example.

I would not have described myself as a sinner when I was younger or even in my middle age years. Only other people were sinners, those bad people who committed terrible acts and transgressions, none of which I had committed. I had been taught that the Gospel of Jesus Crhist was about my righteousness, my goodness, my worthiness and my works. To have been called as a Bishop I had to be righteous. I had to be one of the good guys. Right? I was so good in the pre-existence that I was born a Mormon, had married in the temple, had great kids. I lived the word of wisdom was morally clean, had a temple recommend, and paid my tithing. I had to be good. Right?

I can't remember when I first began to realize that I had been living a perverted gospel, and that I had been deceiving myself into thinking that I was good. But the more I searched the scriptures and listened to His voice in His words, the more I realized that I was worshiping a false image--an image of myself as a good guy in a world with a lot of bad guys. But something changed when I read Romans 10:1-4. I realized I had been going about to establish my righteousness, and had not submitted myself to the righteousness of God.

I learned that repentance is the process of turning to God and His Goodness. I began to see myself as I really am. Even though I was born innocent, there were flaws in my nature, weaknesses in my character and evil in my heart.

Soon everything that I was reading and hearing in the scriptures was telling me: It is not about your righteousness, but about Christ's.  I began to experience my lost and fallen state, and it was then that I realized the need for the Atonement in my life.

When I realized that there are divers ways and means whereby we can sin, even so many that we cannot number them (Mosiah 4:29), and that one sin, no matter how small, subjects me to the Justice of God  (James 2:10), hope for me came only in my Savior. I began to rely wholly on His merits and knew that because of His mercy and righteousness it was possible to not only be found guiltless at the judgment bar, but to have Him not only forgive my sins, but take away my disposition to commit sins and the capacity to commit those sins.

How grateful I am for His gift of repentance, for His love and His mercy.  I can feel that He is taking away my disposition to do evil and curing my tendency to turn away from Him.  I stand all amazed that for me, a sinner, He suffered, He bled and died.