Come, Follow Me March 18-24: 2 Nephi 31-33
In 2024, the Maxwell Institute will offer a weekly series of short essays on the Book of Mormon, in support of the Church-wide Come, Follow Me study curriculum. Each week, the Maxwell Institute blog will feature a post by a member of the Institute faculty exploring an aspect of the week’s reading block. We hope these explorations will enrich your study and teaching of the Book of Mormon throughout the coming year.
Knowledge of the Lord Comes Only Through Discipleship
By Jennifer C. Lane
2nd Nephi 30 offers us a key to help us understand what Nephi is teaching in chapters 31-33. In chapter 30, we see the end; in chapters 31-33 we see the means. In chapter 30, we see the vision that we all long for: The vision of no one being hurt in all his holy mountain, the vision that we will be at peace and living in harmony.
Chapter 30 helps us see how we get there with one phrase: “The knowledge of the Lord will fill the earth.” However, this phrase can only help us when we read it in its ancient context.
In the modern world, knowledge is information. Knowledge is power. But rather than offering us autonomy and independence, knowledge in an ancient sense puts us in a relationship that changes us. Knowledge is what an apprentice gains from a master. Knowledge is gained through submission and obedience.
To have the knowledge of the Lord fill the earth does not mean dumping data about God into the brains of everyone in the world. The knowledge of the Lord filling the earth comes as we individually choose to submit ourselves to God. It comes as we become his disciples. The knowledge of the Lord must fill us through the choices we make as individuals.
But if getting this knowledge depended only on our choice and power, we would never get there. We would never come to know God in the sense of becoming like Him. That is where 2 Nephi 31-33 comes in.
The doctrine of Christ is the how. The doctrine of Christ helps us know, day by day, step by step, how we move from being unlike God to taking on his nature, coming to the knowledge of the Lord.
2nd Nephi 31 points us to the gate, the birth of a new life in Christ. In baptism, we ritually enact an entire life of discipleship, of being submissive and teachable apprentices. We commit to obedience through being submerged in water. We show our trust in Christ’s power to give us new life by ritually dying. We show our willingness to submit again and again and again, daily, for the rest of our lives.
2nd Nephi 31 gives us confidence that this is the path because it teaches us that Christ also entered and followed this path. Both Christ’s baptism and his life of living out that covenant show us the way and “showeth unto the children of men the straitness of the path, and the narrowness of the gate, by which they should enter, he having set the example before them” (2 Nephi 31:9). As we read in the Gospel of John, Christ “always [did] those things that please him” (the Father) (John 8:29). That is who he is. That oneness and unity between the Father and the Son is the knowledge of the Lord we seek.
As we show that unity is what we want more than anything, with no hypocrisy or deception but with real intent, then we can receive. The gift of the Holy Ghost is certainly given with the ordinance of confirmation, but our choosing to draw on that power is tied to our choices.
Covenants create a relationship and give us promises in which we can have confidence. We can have confidence in the promise of the Holy Ghost being with us, but that confidence is tied to our willingness to do the will of the Son as he did the will of the Father. Nephi ends 2 Nephi 33 reiterating this point. No matter how much charity he has for us, he [Nephi] can only have hope for us if we are “reconciled unto Christ” and “enter into the narrow gate” (2 Nephi 31:9). There is no other way to come to a knowledge of the Lord except to be his disciple. We must “walk in the strait path which leads to life and continue in that path until the end of the day of probation” (v. 9).
We can get there, individually and collectively. A world of peace and harmony is possible in Christ. Reconciliation with each other comes as we are reconciled unto Christ. His covenants and ordinances put us on the path to a way of being that we long for, although in the short term that discipleship can feel uncomfortable and restrictive. A famous pianist once said, “Before I became a master, I was a slave.” Our submission and obedience to do the will of the Lord, to keep turning our hearts and minds to him through daily repentance, allows the Holy Ghost to be with us to teach us his ways and to enable us to walk in them. Little by little, discipline becomes discipleship becomes victory over self that allows us to live to bless others. This knowledge of God is “the love from self set free” that our hymn speaks of (see “Our Father, By Whose Name”). Nephi could see that vision, and in 2 Nephi 31-33, he teaches us how we can get there.