The Know

One of the most central and yet perplexing questions in Christianity is what one must do to be saved. Jesus’s gospel, meaning “good news,” is that all people can be saved from both sin and death, but the requirements for His sacrifice to be applied to individual lives have been long debated. The Bible lists many requirements for salvation, including those used by the Church to define the gospel today: faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Spirit, and enduring to the end. However, these never occur together in one place in the Bible and, therefore, need to be pieced together from isolated passages.1

In contrast, the Book of Mormon connects those five elements more fully and more frequently than the Bible.2 Noel B. Reynolds suggests that many of the salvation statements in the Book of Mormon are actually meant to invoke those five elements through certain literary techniques. In fact, he notes that some of the phrases mentioned in conjunction with the gospel of Christ, such as Jesus’s invitation to “come unto me,” have a more technical and powerful meaning in the Book of Mormon than most readers might suspect.3 That strong invitation from the Lord could very well have been known to the Nephites—for example, from Isaiah 55:3, which reads, “Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you.”

Recognizing the different techniques used by various scriptural authors makes it easier to see how these five foundational principles of the gospel are frequently invoked throughout scripture. First, it is important to realize that scripture often uses synonymous or near-synonymous terms for these principles. For example, faith is equated with belief and trust, repentance is rephrased as turning to God, baptism is called being “born of water,” and receiving the Holy Ghost can be called “born of the spirit.” When these synonyms or near-synonyms are understood, it becomes easier to see elements of the gospel in scripture.

Second, scriptural authors sometimes use two or three individual terms to stand for the whole scope and fullness of the gospel. Reynolds suggests that this is an intentional use of a little-known biblical literary technique called merismus: “The most common form of merismus is the abbreviated list wherein mention of some of the elements of a known list is intended to invoke the full list as context in the reader’s mind—without a tedious listing of all its elements. Merismus is just another rhetorical technique in which the part stands for the whole.”4

Even a single word can serve as a stand-in for all five terms, either as a literary technique or because of the overlapping nature of these five steps.5 This applies to titles of the salvation process, like the gospel of Christ, doctrine of Christ, straight and narrow way, and path, but it also applies to the individual terms of the gospel, like faith and repentance. For instance, the modern-day admonition to “say nothing but repentance unto this generation” certainly does not exclude faith or baptism but is rather meant to invoke preaching the entire gospel.6

Perhaps most interesting is when scriptural authors seem to use a single word to stand for multiple but not all terms; Reynolds calls this a compound reference.7 Being born again, for instance, can refer to both repentance and baptism.8 Nephi also clearly defines and uses the term gate as a compound reference to both repentance and baptism.9

Reynolds argues that while Christ’s invitation to “come unto me” can refer to all components of the gospel, it also has the specific meaning of “enduring to the end” in the Book of Mormon. It can also be a compound term referring to faith and reception of the Spirit.10 Reynolds bases this conclusion upon his analysis of six Book of Mormon passages in which this invitation is mentioned alongside repentance and baptism in a Hebrew poetic structure, as set forth in the table below.11

While in each of these six passages repentance and baptism correspond to each other, the invitation to “come unto me” relates to a different phrase that helps to elucidate its meaning in each passage. These formulations each include a line A, a line B, and a final line (ballast). The first elements of line A and line B correspond, as do the second elements of line A and line B. In essence, they imply something like, “As repentance is to baptism, so ‘coming unto Him’ is to ___,” and thereby help to define the phrase.

These formulations are intriguing and noteworthy because they relate the invitation to “come unto me” with six different phrases:

1. “Have faith in me” (Moroni 7:34).
2. “Know of the true points of my doctrine” (3 Nephi 21:6).
3. “Be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost” (3 Nephi 27:20).
4. “Receive a remission of your sins, and be filled with the Holy Ghost” (3 Nephi 30:2).
5. “Build up again my church” (Mormon 3:2).
6. “Believe in my gospel” and be “faithful unto my name at the last day” (Ether 4:18–19).

Though only one of these elements directly corresponds to enduring to the end, Reynolds notes that missionary work and knowledge of doctrine are both essential elements of enduring to the end.12 Reynolds also argues that the phrase enduring to the end is itself especially connected to faith and reception of the Holy Spirit.13 Though most people typically and properly think of faith as the first sequential step in the gospel of Christ, Reynolds notes that Book of Mormon authors also connect faith (belief) with faithfulness (loyalty and obedience) and thus also with enduring to the end:14

And there is an important wrinkle in the way belief or faith is taught in the Book of Mormon that presents it both as a prerequisite for repentance and as a basic part of enduring to the end. . . . Nephi does not mention faith until he undertakes his final exposition of enduring to the end. . . . Clearly, Nephi does not see faith as merely the first step in gospel acceptance. He here emphasizes the continuing role it plays day by day for those who are enduring to the end or are “faithful to the end.”15

This can be further explained by the fact that enduring to the end is itself definitionally a compound reference to the repetition of the other four steps. Elder Dale G. Renlund taught,

Indeed, the elements of the doctrine of Christ—such as faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance, entering a covenant relationship with the Lord through baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end—are not intended to be experienced as one-time, check-the-box events. In particular, ‘enduring to the end’ is not really a separate step in the doctrine of Christ—as though we complete the first four elements and then hunker down, grit our teeth, and wait to die. No, enduring to the end is repeatedly and iteratively applying the other elements of the doctrine of Christ, creating the ‘powerful virtuous cycle’ that President Nelson described.16

The Why

These five foundational principles of the doctrine of Christ are the core of the missionary purpose: “Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.”17 This equates the invitation to come unto Christ with the five steps of the gospel’s covenant path, which thus defines a concrete set of instructions on how to do so.

Understanding how the Book of Mormon uses “come unto Christ” and other literary formulas as a shorthand for the complete doctrine of Christ illuminates how the Book of Mormon contains and delivers “the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Doctrine and Covenants 20:9). Indeed, when all the various ways the Book of Mormon alludes to the five essential elements of the gospel are recognized, the book is positively brimming with abundant testimony of the “the fulness of [Christ’s] everlasting gospel” (D&C 27:5).

As President Ezra Taft Benson explained, “In the Book of Mormon we will find the fulness of those doctrines required for our salvation. And they are taught plainly and simply so that even children can learn the ways of salvation and exaltation. The Book of Mormon offers so much that broadens our understandings of the doctrines of salvation.”18