As I have been learning more about Isaiah's ladder to heaven, or about how God exalts us, or does not exalt us, I keep seeing references to living higher laws. To me, being under the law has been something that we should want to avoid, because being under grace is preferred. When He revealed to me the answer, I was astonished because it was right there all the time! So obvious, and yet I had missed it for years.
A. As Isaiah teaches it, the higher law is nothing but an expression of God’s love in its purest form, demonstrating God’s design, and desire, to lift us up.
Q. What Does it mean to live a higher law?
A. As He lifts us up, we become more loving, and live a higher law each time we are lifted up. Being exalted means acquiring more and more of His attributes, including receiving more of His love. We can only abide higher laws if we are moving in the right direction, choosing Good (God) and turning to Him (repenting).
I am not sure that living a higher law is the right verb. Perhaps abiding or accepting a higher law is more accurate. I also like the verb receiving, as in receiving a higher law, or receiving what is offered and abiding in it. But even better, because it changes the emphasis to Him, we are enveloped in that portion of His love that we are willing to receive. The more we are willing to receive, the more we do receive. We can, if we desire, receive of His fulness. We receive grace for grace "that [we] may come unto the Father in my name, and in due time receive of his fulness" (D&C 93:19 emphasis added).
At the center of Isaiah’s prophecy, for all who have “eyes to see and ears to hear,” we discover God’s eternal plan to exalt His children, which is motivated by love. The more love we receive, the more loving we become, and thereby become more like Him, exalted as His sons and daughters. We can then be in His presence and abide with Him.
Isaiah’s theology embraces all people born on the earth, no matter how good or evil they turn out to be. In the process, Isaiah describes different ways of living that people choose for themselves, some drawing them nearer to God, others distancing them from Him. Each way has a place on the ladder to heaven. Where we find ourselves in this divine scheme depends on us, on what law we abide—a higher or lesser law.
Again, what is the higher law? "Jesus said..., Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Matthew 22:37-39; Mark 29:29-31; Luke 10:27; Deuteronomy 6:5).
On these hang "all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:40 emphasis added).
The biggest part of life’s test lies in what we love and worship—God or idols like success and money. The bottom line is, are we self-serving or do we serve God?
Only when we love Him more than we love ourselves—when we do what He desires and become more like Him—do we finally see God. But this the very law we cannot live. We cannot love God more than we love ourselves unless we are changed by Him and become more like Him!
Another way of saying this is that we are becoming more capable of living the truth, not because it is something we can do, but because of who we are becoming!
In the very act of desiring to give up our own will in order to do God’s will, we will begin, through the various stages of exaltation, to achieve our highest goal, which is also His highest goal for us. As I have said many times, when we want for ourselves and others, what He wants for us, then our will is aligned with His.
What Moroni taught about charity or the pure love of Christ has new enlightenment. After saying that charity is not self serving and rejoiceth in truth, he says:
"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, ¹if ye have not charity, ²ye are nothing, for ³charity never faileth. Wherefore, ⁴cleave unto charity, which is ⁵the greatest of all, for all things must fail. But ⁶charity is the pure love of Christ, and it ⁷endureth forever; and whoso is ⁸found possessed of it at the last day, it ⁹shall be well with him.
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, ¹pray unto the Father ²with all the energy of heart, that ye may ³be filled with this love, which ⁴he hath bestowed upon all ⁵who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye ⁶may become the sons (and daughters) of God; that when he shall appear ⁷we shall be like him, for we shall ⁸see him as he is; that we may ⁹have this hope; that we ¹⁰may be purified even ¹¹as he is pure. Amen"(Moroni 7:46-48 emphasis added).
Living or abiding in His love means that we serve others as God has served them, both temporarily and spiritually. The motivation being our love for them, or the degree of His love found in us. Our commitment to serving God by serving our fellow human beings goes beyond just being good neighbors. God himself is the highest example of service toward his creatures, great and small. Isaiah describes him as the “Holy One” (Saint) and “Valiant One” (Hero) of Israel, emphasizing the attributes that will get God’s people up the ladder. It is no accident that those whom God delivers at the end of the world are also described as “holy ones” (saints) and “valiant ones” (heroes). These and other godlike traits have qualified them as God’s elect (Isaiah 10:20; 13:3; 60:16). And these godlike traits are the result of His doing, not our own.
The prophet Malachi identifies “righteous” people in God’s Day of Judgment not as those who profess a particular creed or repeat religious slogans but as those who “serve God,” while the “wicked” are those who “don’t serve him” (Malachi 3:18).
Noah wasn’t born “a righteous man, perfect in his generation,” but he became this ¹by loving and serving God (Genesis 6:9). God directed Abraham to ²attain the same perfection (Genesis 17:1). Those who knew God anciently didn’t know Him all at once, but God revealed Himself to them to the degree that they sought Him. As it was in the past so it is in the future: “You will seek me and find [me] when you seek me with *all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).
*Note the link between 'all your heart,' and Moroni's 'all the energy of heart.'
Living or receiving a higher law, then, may not mean just more or greater blessings from God. It is the path that literally brings us into God’s presence, enabling us to interact directly with God. We see in the Bible that specifics of this higher law were the privilege of prophets and others to whom God appeared and gave instructions. It makes sense that much of the time such a law would follow a personalized script, not written down but rather revealed by God through His holy Spirit. Thus, Abraham didn’t see God until he had acted on faith (see Moroni's comments on faith in Moroni 7:41-44 and how it relates to receiving of the fulness of His love), and followed God’s word to him personally (Genesis 12:1–7). Moses didn’t see God until he had valiantly defended the rights of the oppressed (Exodus 2:11–3:6).
God called the Israelites in Moses' time to be a “royal priesthood,” to minister His love and salvation to the rest of humanity. For them, it was an opportunity for spiritual service, not a bid for elitism. But instead of accepting God’s call, they hardened their hearts and turned down their mission of ministering to the world. Thus, Isaiah laments that God’s people, then and now, “have not wrought salvation in the earth” to the extent they should have, neither anciently nor even at the end of the world (Isaiah 26:18).
They refused to receive of His fulness.
But in Moses’ day, seventy elders of the congregation of Israel “went up” or “ascended” to that ministering level. They saw God on Mount Sinai and ate and drank in His presence (Exodus 24:9–11).
We often pass by the Old Testament as if it doesn’t relate to us, as if its “sacred history” is no longer sacred. And yet, who today can match the spiritual heights those ancients attained? The law they kept went beyond not sinning. Their lives were models of love and service. In comparison to the higher law, the lesser law centers around becoming clean of sin and spiritually pure. The higher law puts us on a path to attaining perfection by loving others as God loves us, so that we can enjoy the company of God and angels. Those who loved God and neighbor so as to attain this perfection also truly loved themselves, as we do justice to ourselves only when we love God first and foremost.
The fact that Israel’s God Jehovah met with people anciently shows that a higher law existed before New Testament times. Keeping that law of love led to the extraordinary blessings those persons received, as God called them to be patriarchs, prophets, and kings to his people. Some of those “men of God” wrote down the things God revealed in words and visions, which became the Bible. Like Moses, they may have hidden in their writings things they considered sacred or ahead of their time—knowing that people exposed to the higher law who rejected it would come under condemnation. But to their disciples, and to all willing to search their writings for deeper meanings, they left a profound spiritual legacy.
We should not be fooled by the fact that the individuality of illustrious Old Testament figures and their diverse personalities have been succeeded by today’s group psyche. Our different religious and cultural values cultivate stereotypes that tell us we must believe and perform the same sorts of things.
Clearly, those personalities from millennia past were beloved of God and were privileged to see and know more about God and angels than many of us can comprehend. That isn’t because we are inferior but because we consider our love superior, though we have little to show for ourselves by comparison. If we allow those men of God to speak to us there might be a lot we can learn. But perhaps we lack the motivation that can only come from the pure love of God?
According to Isaiah, for people to be born on the earth is but half of life’s equation. Ascending the ladder to heaven completes the process. It is therefore a comforting thing to know that God accommodates everyone born on the earth, equipping each of us with a script that is individualized according to our needs and desires. That way, we aren’t in competition with anyone but work out our salvation at the pace we choose. As God comes from a position of infinite love, He knows that the circumstances into which we are thrown in life are the best for us personally, that from them we are potentially able to gain the most growth. Ask anyone who has “gone through it” and they will tell you it is so.
Those being exalted leave no one behind. By the very nature of becoming more like God, they continue to minister to those below, so those may also receive more. Those ministering below are continually being ministered to by those above them. And it is all motivated by love, and is a measure of how much of the love of God is found in us.
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Some ideas and narrative I captured from Isaiah Decoded: Ascending the Ladder to Heaven by Avraham Gileadi, which helped me make many connections to how the Lord exalts us.
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