Understanding Your Baptismal Covenants | Mosiah 4-6 | Come Follow Me

Mosiah Chapter 4:1-12 discusses the importance of coming to terms with our carnal nature as human beings and understanding how important is to constantly gain a "remission" of our sins and ask to be forgiven. 

 

Mosiah 4:10: 

10: And again, believe that ye must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you; and now, if you believe all these things see that ye do them.

 

One big way that we do EVERY Sunday is partake of the sacrament and renew the covenants that we make at baptism. 

Through baptism we reaffirm in mortality the covenant relationship we had with our Father in the premortal life. We already covenanted with God to obey Him when we decided to follow Jehovah in the premortal life. The council in heaven was not a casual picking of teams or a random assignment to sides. No, it was a conscious decision to covenant with God or with the adversary, an act of free will. And by virtue of the fact that we are here as mortals, we know that we chose to follow Jehovah and obey God. That is what following Jehovah consisted of.

But we do not remember that covenant. The veil of forgetfulness gives us the opportunity and privilege of establishing our allegiance to God anew. The test of mortality begins with birth. Then we are given an eight year training period before we are responsible for making and keeping covenants with God. When we have reached the point of accountability, baptism is a momentous act of agency that ties us again to our Heavenly Father, from Whom we came.

 

 

Obedience to our Father is the preeminent covenant we make at baptism. Elder D. Todd Christofferson said: “For our turning to the Lord to be complete, it must include nothing less than a covenant of obedience to Him. We often speak of this covenant as the baptismal covenant since it is witnessed by being baptized in water (see Mosiah 18:10). The Savior’s own baptism, providing the example, confirmed His covenant of obedience to the Father.”

Whether we were baptized when we were eight years old or come to those waters later in life, the covenant of obedience is the same. President M. Russell Ballard provided this reminder:

 

Many of you were baptized when you were eight years old, and you may not realize that this is the promise you made to your Heavenly Father when you were baptized. Always remember that you are under this covenant. Your Heavenly Father has promised in return that He will give marvelous blessings to those who honor their covenants, keep His commandments, and endure faithfully to the end. They will be sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise and will be “given all things” (D&C 76:55; emphasis added; see also D&C 76:50–54, 70), including an inheritance in the celestial kingdom (see 2 Nephi 31:16–20).

 

Baptismal covenants are serious and obligating covenants, but God’s promises are sure. President George Q. Cannon said: “When we went forth into the waters of baptism and covenanted with our Father in Heaven to serve Him and keep His commandments, He bound Himself also, by covenant to us, that He would never desert us, never leave us to ourselves, never forget us; that in the midst of trials and hardships, when everything was arrayed against us, He would be near unto us and would sustain us. That was His covenant, and He has fulfilled it up to the present time, and has shown that we can tie to the promises that He has made.”

 

The following was an excerpt from the book "Sacred Covenants" currently available at cedarfort.com