Humility and Other Stuff

I've blogged before about what I consider to be the main theme of the Book of Mormon, and it seems that every few pages there is something that hearkens back to the theme of deliverance as a result of faith. Two such passages caught my attention today.

The first came as I was looking over Alma 5, that opus of a chapter in which we learn of the conditions of salvation and conversion. In verses 10-13 Alma explains that the people who were baptized after hearing his father's preaching embodied this process, that their faith led to a change of heart, from which came humility. And due to this humility they were delivered. It's a tidy encapsulation of the process by which we can be freed of that which holds us in bondage.

A second reference came from our family scripture reading tonight. We were finishing Mosiah, and the discussion of installing judges to govern the people of Nephi. Here, in reference to the people under King Noah, Mosiah explains that they had fallen into iniquity and ultimately captivity.

Then in Mosiah 29:20 we read these words: "He did deliver them because they did humble themselves before him; and because they cried mightily unto him he did deliver them out of bondage; and thus doth the Lord work with his power in all cases among the children of men, extending the arm of mercy towards them that put their trust in him."

Again we find the same steps--faith leads to repentance, which leads to humility and then deliverance. I had not seen this third step before, and I am intrigued by the role humility plays in this process. The broken heart must preceed the freedom, the sorrow must anticipate the joy, much like Alma says to his sons later in his ministry, in speaking of his own deliverance from a life of rebelliousness and sin.