LDS Quotes on Commandements
The most important of all the commandments of God is that one that you’re having the most difficulty keeping. Today is the day for you to work…until you’ve been able to conquer that weakness. Then you start on the next one that’s most difficult for you to keep.
| Church News, May 5, 1973, p. 3
“Warn them that they will encounter people who pick which commandments they will keep and ignore others that they choose to break. I call this the cafeteria approach to obedience. This practice of picking and choosing will not work. It will lead to misery.”
“Someone once asked me, ‘Don’t you think the commandments should be rewritten?’ The answer was, ‘No, they should be reread.'”
“Being born again is a gradual thing, except in a few isolated instances that are so miraculous they get written up in the scriptures. As far as the generality of the members of the Church are concerned, we are born again by degrees, and we are born again to added light and added knowledge and added desires for righteousness as we keep the commandments.”
| “Jesus Christ and Him Crucified,” 1976 Devotional Speeches of the Year
God’s laws are motivated entirely by His infinite love for us and His desire for us to become all we can become.
“Sabbath observance is a good sign of a person’s religiosity. If [people] think enough to keep the Sabbath day holy, then they would likely be living . . . other precepts of their religion.”
“My brothers and sisters, the first great commandment of all eternity is to love God with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength—that’s the first great commandment. But the first great truth of all eternity is that God loves us with all of His heart, might, mind, and strength. That love is the foundation stone of eternity, and it should be the foundation stone of our daily life. Indeed it is only with that reassurance burning in our soul that we can have the confidence to keep trying to improve, keep seeking forgiveness for our sins, and keep extending that grace to our neighbor.”
| “Tomorrow the Lord Will Do Wonders among You”
There is a careful way and a casual way to do everything, including living the gospel. As we consider our commitment to the Savior, are we careful or casual? Because of our mortal nature, don’t we sometimes rationalize our behavior, at times referring to our actions as being in the gray, or mixing good with something that’s not so good? Anytime we say, “however,” “except,” or “but” when it applies to following the counsel of our prophet leaders or living the gospel carefully, we are in fact saying, “That counsel does not apply to me.” We can rationalize all we want, but the fact is, there is not a right way to do the wrong thing!
“But there’s another way of looking at taking the Lord’s name in vain. When we partake of the sacrament we renew a covenant to take Christ’s name upon us. When we do so out of habit rather than as a sincere choice, are we taking His name in vain? … The Hebrew word that was translated in our scriptures as vain means meaningless and empty… Perhaps the commandment in Exodus 20:7 should read thou shalt not take upon thyself the name of God with empty and meaningless intent. When we give up the hope Christ offers through His Atonement, are we taking the Lord’s name in vain? Are we rendering His grace, His divine help, as useless, empty, and meaningless in our lives?”
| The Law of the Gospel
“It has sometimes been asked whether God commands certain things because they are right, or whether certain things are right because God commands them…I empathically embrace the first alternative. The second might lead to the abominable conclusion that charity is good only because God arbitrarily commanded it — that He might equally well have commanded us to hate Him and one another and that hatred would then have been right. I believe, on the contrary, that ‘they err who think that of the will of God to do this or that there is no reason besides His will.'”