Come, Follow Me February 19-25: 2 Nephi 6-10
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.
They shall have a perfect knowledge of their enjoyment
By Terryl Givens
“They shall have a perfect knowledge of their enjoyment.” (2 Nephi 9:14)
Those words have always stood out as a peculiar formulation. We generally assume that we know when we are happy. The context of this scripture leaves unclear whether the enjoyment of which Jacob speaks is a present bliss or a future inheritance. The 1838 Webster’s Dictionary tells us that enjoyment refers to the “possession” of something “with satisfaction.” So the meaning of the verse may be that at the resurrection, a full recognition will dawn on us of a joy of which we are already in possession.
Obedience and repentance are clearly crucial principles in the Restored gospel and the Book of Mormon in particular. But so is a certain capacity to receive. One of the more unexpected truths revealed in section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants explains that those unprepared for life in celestial community “shall return again to their own place, to enjoy that which they are willing to receive, because they were not willing to enjoy that which they might have received” (32). One of Jacob’s themes in his sermons is the present reality of a blessedness we have not fully registered. Although his quoted Isaiah passages pertain to futurity, their impact on the lived present is his focus.
“Brethren, I speak unto you these things that ye may rejoice, and lift up your heads forever.” (2 Nephi 9:3)
“I am he; yea, I am he that comforteth you.” (8:12)
“I have read these things that ye might know.” (9:1)
“O how great the goodness of our God.” (9:10)
“. . . my heart delighteth in righteousness.” (9:49)
“Therefore, cheer up your hearts.” (10:23)
“Let your hearts rejoice.” (9:52)
“That ye may praise him.” (10:25)
The challenge for the believer is that the prospect of eternity can detract from full attention to the moment. The prospect of life as something to get through, to endure, to devalue has long been a pronounced strand in Christian history. It was not always that way. Before asceticism and other-worldliness took hold, Christians were alert to the “nowness” of heaven. “Let us love the present joy in the life that now is,” Ignatius wrote as he himself faced imminent martyrdom. To the Trallians, he similarly wrote that believers had left behind their old lives, having new life “bestow[ed]” on us. Only a few decades later, Justin wrote to dispel the falsehood of “those who are deemed philosophers . . . that we wish men to live virtuously through fear [of the future], and not because such a life is [presently] good and pleasant.”
Scant decades after Christ, Clement, as he wrote to the Corinthians, disregarded future joys, given “the gifts of God” conversion had brought in the here and now: “Life in immortality, splendour in righteousness, truth in perfect confidence, faith in assurance, self-control in holiness.”
Paul had told his Ephesian audience that they had been “dead through the trespasses and sins,” but now had been “made . . . alive together with Christ” (2:4-5). To the Colossians, he similarly said the faithful “have come to fullness” or “completion” in Christ (2:10). Paul drew a sharp distinction between the past misery of sin and the present, ongoing relish of the new life in Christ: “while we were enemies,” now, “we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received and enjoy our reconciliation.” By that point, Christ’s resurrection was a generation in the past, and the resurrection of the dead was, in one sense, a distant, future event to follow after signs and upheavals and to accompany the Messiah’s return. In a deeply non-metaphorical sense, however, a resurrection of believers was happening as fast as the Christian gospel spread and quickened those who embraced its message. First Christians celebrated the immediacy of a supernal joy, of a resurrection already underway, with the Eucharist being “the medicine of immortality” that marked and nourished the transformation already begun.
For Jacob, the principal joy he celebrated was in the reality of Christ’s resurrection. “To fulfil the merciful plan of the great Creator, there must needs be a power of resurrection” (9:6). And Christ’s own suffering and resurrection was so that “the resurrection might pass upon all men” (9:22).
For some disciples then as now, the resurrection was deeply enough entrenched in their faith that they did indeed live “after the manner of happiness” (2 Ne. 5:27). The promise Jacob holds out of a “perfect knowledge of enjoyment,” on the other hand, seems an offering to those of us whose faith does not yet seem that perfect, a promise that the weight of that unparalleled gift may be within our grasp now—if we can but contemplate more fully the meaning of our faith. One of the most gifted writers of our tradition expressed the challenge this way:
"If Christ has indeed purchased eternal life for humanity, I for one will awaken to the reality of his gift with an immeasurable gratitude. In the meantime, I make it the center of my Christian worship to anticipate that gratitude when I partake of [communion]. . . . It is not an unworthy way of celebrating the Lord’s Last Supper to measure one’s successes and failures in keeping the commandments and to renew one’s covenants to live righteously. Yet in a sense it seems a pity to take one’s immortality for granted, to expect it and count on it. It seems a pity to be so sheltered from the terror of death that one’s gratitude for the resurrection is merely dutiful and perfunctory."¹
[1] Levi S. Peterson, “A Christian by Yearning,” The Wilderness of Faith (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1991), 125, 134.