The Law of Consecration is given to us in the temple and in the Doctrine and Covenants as a law that commands us to “[dedicate our] time, talents, and everything with which the Lord has blessed [us] to building up Jesus Christ’s Church on the earth”. ¹ To consecrate something means to dedicate it formally to a religious or divine purpose—to make it sacred. The early saints were invited to live this law both outwardly as well as inwardly. “Under the law of consecration, Church members voluntarily consecrated their possessions to the Church by legal deed.”² In turn, the Bishop would give each family a stewardship proportional to their needs. In our day we are not yet invited to fully live the law of consecration in this outward way, though we covenant to accept the law in the temple. How do we accept this law while not actually being called to give all of our physical possessions to the church? We must be ready to live it outwardly if invited to do so. Before giving the law in Doctrine and Covenants section 42, the Lord began teaching the principles of consecration in section 38, “the rich have I made, and all flesh is mine, and I am no respecter of persons. And I have made the earth rich, and behold it is my footstool, wherefore, again I will stand upon it. And I hold forth and deign to give unto you greater riches, even a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey… And I will give it unto you for the land of your inheritance, if you seek it with all your hearts…And let every man esteem his brother as himself, and practice virtue and holiness before me”. ³
One key feature of a celestial people is that “they [have] all things common among them; not rich and poor, bond and free, but they [are] all made free.”⁴ As stated in D&C 38, in order to achieve this kind of society, everyone must esteem others as themself. This is another way to state that we must live the second great commandment to “love thy neighbor as thyself”.⁵ How do we love ourselves? We take care of our physical needs, consider our comfort, wish happiness for ourselves, hope that we will do better when we mess up, and forgive ourselves quickly. If everyone truly did love their neighbor like that, then we would find ourselves in a very celestial society and living a large part of the law of consecration. We each need to get out of our minds the idea that we are competing with each other. The Lord has made the earth rich and there is enough for all. God, after setting forth the law of consecration, declared, “if ye are not equal in earthly things ye cannot be equal in obtaining heavenly things; for if you will that I give unto you a place in the celestial world, you must prepare yourselves by doing the things which I have commanded you and required of you”.⁶ Our relationship to our fellow men is very indicative of how close we are to God. The Lord stated, “inasmuch as ye impart of your substance unto the poor, ye will do it unto me”⁷. As we serve others, we are demonstrating our dedication to God. If you would be willing to buy groceries for a parent or sibling that cannot afford it, what is the difference if it is for your neighbor? Another big part of making the law of consecration work is not being idle. The Lord told the early saints, “thou shalt not be idle; for he that is idle shall not eat the bread nor wear the garments of the laborer”.⁸ Everyone who participates in the law of consecration must learn how to take care of themselves so that they can then take care of those who cannot work or take care of themselves. King Benjamin said in his address, “and now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another. And if ye judge the man who putteth up his petition to you for your substance that he perish not, and condemn him, how much more just will be your condemnation for withholding your substance, which doth not belong to you but to God”.⁹
As stated in section 38, to live the law of consecration inwardly, we must believe that everything we have is given to us from God. This includes not only our earthly possessions, but also our family and friends, knowledge, time, talents, strengths and weaknesses, and character. Knowing that all we have belongs to God makes us see why we are obligated to help our fellow men and makes it easier for us to do so. In fact, we cannot give all we have to God without giving to the poor, and we cannot give to the poor without also giving to God. We should never assume that we are entitled to anything, especially when we know that Christ, the greatest of all, descended below all things. The Lord tells us in D&C 104, “I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens, and built the earth, my very handiwork; and all things therein are mine. And it is my purpose to provide for my saints, for all things are mine. But it must needs be done in mine own way; and behold this is the way that I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints, that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low. For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves.”¹⁰ When we believe that all things belong to God, it becomes obvious that there is nothing we can truly give back to Him that is not already His. King Benjamin taught, “I say unto you, my brethren, that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you… if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants. And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments… And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?”.¹¹ These principles make it obvious that God asking for 10% of our income, one day out of seven, and for us to give to the poor really isn’t asking much compared to all He has done for us. As the early saints gave all of their earthly possessions to God’s church, we must be ready to do so by giving our whole heart to God, ready to sacrifice even our own lives if called to do so.
We often think the things we have are all ours and we need to give some of it to God. This is better than thinking the things we have are ours and not giving any of it to God, but as Joseph Smith said, “a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation; for, from the first existence of man, the faith necessary unto the enjoyment of life and salvation never could be obtained without the sacrifice of all earthly things.”¹² We must give our whole heart to God, rather than assuming our heart is our own and we just need to give part of it to God. CS Lewis talked about this and how we don’t just want to improve who we are, we need to become an entirely new person. He wrote, “[when we take] our natural self as the starting point… one or other of two results is likely to follow. Either we give up trying to be good, or else we become very unhappy indeed. For, make no mistake: if you are really going to try to meet all the demands made on the natural self, it will not have enough left over to live on. The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you. And your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier… The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good… Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’ It is like that here. The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call “ourselves,” to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be “good.” We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way—centered on money or pleasure or ambition—and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us [we] could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be plowed up and re-sown.”¹³ So we must give Christ our all, holding back nothing, both in temporal and spiritual things, consecrating it to Him so that He can then consecrate it for our gain, making it holy.
The world teaches us that it is survival of the fittest, that there isn’t enough for everyone, that everything you have is yours, and that the more you focus on yourself and build yourself up, the more you will have. Christ teaches us that nothing we do not give to Him will ever truly be ours. Prophets in the latter part of the Book of Mormon taught about the opposite of the law of consecration when they wrote about “hiding things up”, “curses”, and things becoming “slippery”. Nephi, the son of Helaman wrote, “it shall come to pass, saith the Lord of Hosts… that whoso shall hide up treasures in the earth shall find them again no more, because of the great curse of the land, save he be a righteous man and shall hide it up unto the Lord… and because they have set their hearts upon their riches, and will hide up their treasures when they shall flee before their enemies; because they will not hide them up unto me, cursed be they and also their treasures; and in that day shall they be smitten, saith the Lord… because ye have set your hearts upon [your riches], and have not hearkened unto the words of him who gave them unto you… And in the days of your poverty ye shall cry unto the Lord; and in vain shall ye cry, for your desolation is already come upon you, and your destruction is made sure; and then shall ye weep and howl in that day, saith the Lord of Hosts. And then shall ye lament, and say… O that we had remembered the Lord our God in the day that he gave us our riches, and then they would not have become slippery that we should lose them; for behold, our riches are gone from us. Behold, we lay a tool here and on the morrow it is gone; and behold, our swords are taken from us in the day we have sought them for battle. Yea, we have hid up our treasures and they have slipped away from us, because of the curse of the land. O that we had repented in the day that the word of the Lord came unto us; for behold the land is cursed, and all things are become slippery, and we cannot hold them. Behold, we are surrounded by demons, yea, we are encircled about by the angels of him who hath sought to destroy our souls. Behold, our iniquities are great.”¹⁴ Mormon wrote the fulfillment of that prophesy, saying, “And these Gadianton robbers… did infest the land, insomuch that the inhabitants thereof began to hide up their treasures in the earth; and they became slippery, because the Lord had cursed the land, that they could not hold them, nor retain them again.”¹⁵ While the Nephites and Lamanites hid up their treasures, but not unto the Lord, Mormon hid up the sacred records unto the Lord. And because Mormon consecrated the records and hid them up unto the Lord, they were preserved, and have brought light and knowledge to millions in the latter days. We are not only talking about literally burying things in the ground here, we are talking about the fact that the more selfish the Nephites and Lamanites became, the more they kept their substance from God and from their fellow men, the more their substance slipped away from them. We can learn from this and see that the more we try to hold on to what we believe is our own, the more “slippery” it will become, but the more we give to God, the more God will give to us. This applies to our personalities too. CS Lewis said, “The more I resist [Christ] and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact, [without Him,] what I so proudly call ‘Myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call ‘My wishes’ become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts or even suggested to me by devils… Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideals. I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own… There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up yourself to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most ‘natural’ men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints. But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ‘blindly’ so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are [concerned] about, you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him… The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”¹⁶
It has thus far been made clear that: 1. You must esteem your neighbor as yourself. 2. Everything you have and are is given to you from God. 3. You must give everything to God. 4. Anything you do not give to God will never really be yours. The next topic I would like to address is what God in turn does for us when we consecrate all we have to Him. In the Book of Mormon, we read of Jared and his brother. In Ether 1, Jared says to his brother, “Go and inquire of the Lord whether he will drive us out of the land, and if he will drive us out of the land, cry unto him whither we shall go. And who knoweth but the Lord will carry us forth into a land which is choice above all the earth? And if it so be, let us be faithful unto the Lord, that we may receive it for our inheritance.”¹⁷ Jared, instead of complaining or assuming the worst, decided to trust the Lord and say, “maybe God will give us the very best He has”. In response to the brother of Jared’s pleadings, the Lord says, “I will go before thee into a land which is choice above all the lands of the earth… And thus I will do unto thee because this long time ye have cried unto me”.¹⁸ Jared and His brother were willing to give their best to God, so God was willing to give them the best He had. Later in the same story, Jared, his brother and their company reach the beach on their journey to the promised land. They are commanded to build barges to cross the ocean. After building the barges, they are faced with three problems with the barges: 1. They do not have a way to steer. 2. They do not have a way to get air. 3. They do not have any light. The Lord simply takes care of the first problem on His own, saying that the winds go forth from His mouth and will take them to the promised land. The second problem is solved by the brother of Jared following the Lord’s instructions, “make a hole in the top, and also in the bottom; and when thou shalt suffer for air thou shalt unstop the hole and receive air.” When it comes to solving the problem of having no light, the Lord first tells the brother of Jared that fire and windows are not going to work. Then the Lord asks the brother of Jared, “what will ye that I should prepare for you that ye may have light when ye are swallowed up in the depths of the sea?”¹⁹ It is intriguing that the Lord cares so much about inviting the brother of Jared to collaborate with Him in problem solving. The important problems of steering and air have already been addressed. The company would not die if they crossed the waters without light, but the Lord wants the brother of Jared’s input. Likewise, in our lives, the Lord will simply take care of some problems like He took care of the steering. When the danger is high, as it was with having air, He will give us very strict instructions. Other times, the Lord will tell us to make a decision as He told the brother of Jared to bring Him an idea for solving the light problem. Everyone at some point asks God what to do and God seems like He is not answering. We all must learn that when God does not answer, that means that He trusts us to make the decision. The story continues, “And it came to pass that the brother of Jared, went forth unto the mount… and did molten out of a rock sixteen small stones; and they were white and clear, even as transparent glass; and he did carry them in his hands upon the top of the mount, and cried again unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, thou hast said that we must be encompassed about by the floods. Now behold, O Lord… we are unworthy before thee… nevertheless, O Lord, thou hast given us a commandment that we must call upon thee, that from thee we may receive according to our desires… O Lord, look upon me in pity, and turn away thine anger from this thy people, and suffer not that they shall go forth across this raging deep in darkness; but behold these things which I have molten out of the rock. And I know, O Lord, that thou hast all power, and can do whatsoever thou wilt for the benefit of man; therefore touch these stones, O Lord, with thy finger, and prepare them that they may shine forth in darkness; and they shall shine forth unto us in the vessels which we have prepared, that we may have light while we shall cross the sea. Behold, O Lord, thou canst do this. We know that thou art able to show forth great power, which looks small unto the understanding of men. And it came to pass that when the brother of Jared had said these words, behold, the Lord stretched forth his hand and touched the stones one by one with his finger. And the veil was taken from off the eyes of the brother of Jared, and he saw the finger of the Lord”.²⁰ Many of us are full of anxiety and fear that we will choose the wrong decision or somehow mess up God’s plan for us. We fear that our efforts are not enough. We fear that we are not enough. We, like the brother of Jared, can decide to give our best to the Lord, consecrating our decisions, our trials, our sins, our mistakes, and all of our efforts to the Lord, and He will make them holy and able to provide light. The brother of Jared does his best, consecrates it unto the Lord, and in return, the Lord respects his decision and makes it the right decision. That is what God does, He makes things work for your good, ultimately leading to your perfection. One example is that young single adults often fear that they won’t find their “soulmate”, but the truth is that you don’t usually find glowing stones like that in the wild. You take the stone that you choose and you ask the Lord to make it glow. In other words, you make the decision and God will make it the right choice for you. And if it really is the wrong decision, like using fire for light in an enclosed space, trust that God will warn you that it is wrong. Remember that the Lord said, “I will not suffer that they shall destroy my work; yea, I will show unto them that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil”.²¹ If the Lord’s wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil, then it is also greater than your poor decisions, ignorance, and weaknesses. Remember that, like the lost tribes of Israel, “[you] are not lost unto the Father, for he knoweth whither he hath taken [you].”²² Lehi said to his son Jacob, “thou knowest the greatness of God; and he shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain”.²³ This is how we can walk through life with confidence, not dwelling on our shortcomings, but focusing on the greatness of God and having faith that He can and will make the bitter sweet. Nephi, son of Lehi taught, “ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul.”²⁴ Consecration seems to have two parts to it, the setting apart for a holy purpose and the making holy. Our job is to give the Lord everything we have and are, setting it aside for a holy purpose. As we do so, God will make whatever we give Him holy and for our good. Take your bad days to the Lord and ask Him to consecrate it for your gain. Take your depression to the Lord and ask Him to consecrate it for your gain. Bring Him your failed efforts to become sober. Bring Him your failed math test. Take your miscarriage to the Lord. Take your same-sex attraction to the Lord. Take your efforts to fulfill your calling to the Lord. Bring your broken heart to Him over and over again. Ask the Lord to consecrate it for your gain. No matter what it is, God can consecrate it for your gain as you keep his commandments. His grace is sufficient and “all things work together for good to them that love God”.²⁵ Ultimately we give God our life and He gives us His life—eternal life. If we give the Lord all we have, then He will give us all He has. In all our trials, we have the chance to share in the pain Christ felt when He performed the Atonement and we have the opportunity to gain empathy for Him and our fellow men. If you ever doubt that something in your life can become holy, remember that God’s plan took the worst pain imaginable, and turned it into Christ’s matchless empathy. God’s plan took the death of His perfect Son, and turned it into the salvation of billions of souls. Christ is our ultimate example of giving everything to God. His life was the ultimate consecration, He gave everything to His Father and to us. We have thus been given this life as a stewardship with which we must serve Him.
There are many places in the scriptures in which we see that the Lord can make more out of our lives than we ever could on our own. Jesus’s first miracle performed during His ministry was turning water into wine.²⁶ We should give Christ our lives, trusting that He can and will turn it into something sweeter and worth more. The Lord, when He saw the five thousand people, asked his apostles, “Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” Andrew responded, “There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?”²⁷ Likewise, when the Lord asks us how we will handle a problem, we may look at our efforts and ask how they could make any difference against such a large problem. Yet, the loaves and fishes were brought to the Lord, and not only were the five thousand people fed, they were filled, and there was more food left over. When we give our five to the Lord, He will bless it and make it more than five thousand. A widow who was collecting sticks to prepare her last meal for her and her son, first gave Elijah of her food. She gave this and in return the Lord blessed her by miraculously providing her with endless oil and meal. This widow gained far more from giving to the Lord’s servant than she would have if she had decided to keep her food for herself. Miracles do not usually happen on our personal time table. I am sure the widow would have preferred that Elijah had visited long before she was down to her last meal.²⁸ But we must never assume that the Lord has forgotten us. Sometimes it takes time for the things we give the Lord to be made holy. If you are giving your best to the Lord and have yet to see the fruits, I would ask, as Mormon did, “has the end come yet? Behold I say unto you, Nay; and God has not ceased to be a God of miracles.”²⁹ Hold on and trust in the Lord.
The law of consecration is not some kind of religious take on communism, it is a divine principle given to us from the Lord to teach us about our relationship with our fellow men and with our Heavenly Father. We all must learn to esteem our neighbors as ourselves. We each must come to see that all we have and are is given to us from the Lord and that we are therefore required to give all we have back to Him. Anything that we keep back from the Lord will become slippery and will never really be our own. The Lord wants to bless us, and the more we give to Him, the more He can give us. We worship a God of miracles who can make anything be for our good in the long run. I testify that as we covenant to consecrate all we have to the Lord, He covenants to give us all that He has.
References
¹ General Handbook: Serving in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Chapter 27
² Doctrine and Covenants and Church History: Gospel Doctrine Teacher’s Manual
³ Doctrine and Covenants 38:16-25
⁴ 4 Nephi 1:2-3
⁵ Matthew 22:39
⁶ Doctrine and Covenants 78:6-7
⁷ Doctrine and Covenants 42:31
⁸ Doctrine and Covenants 42:42
⁹ Mosiah 4:21-23
¹⁰ Doctrine and Covenants 104:14-17
¹¹ Mosiah 2:20-25
¹² Joseph Smith, Lectures on Faith, Lecture Sixth, 7
¹³ CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book IV, Chapter 8
¹⁴ Helaman 13:18-21, 32-37
¹⁵ Mormon 1:18
¹⁶ CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book IV, Chapter 11
¹⁷ Ether 1:38
¹⁸ Ether 1:40-43
¹⁹ Ether 2:18-25
²⁰ Ether 3:1-6
²¹ Doctrine and Covenants 10:43
²² 3 Nephi 17:4
²³ 2 Nephi 2:2
²⁴ 2 Nephi 32:9
²⁵ Romans 8:28
²⁶ John 2
²⁷ John 6:5-9
²⁸ 1 Kings 17
²⁹ Mormon 9:15
