“Numbered Among My People”

Brant Gardner

The Savior makes an important distinction between the covenant community and the secular community. The meetings of the covenant community must exclude no one. However, the community has rules about the common covenants that define believers. This covenant relationship does not include or exclude based on nationality, heritage, social standing, gender, or race; rather, each believer who determines to keep Jesus’s commandments has access to the fellowship of the official covenant community. Those who disobey the commandments do not. This does not happen through social ostracism but rather through the sadly voluntary withdrawal of that person from the principles of righteousness. That personal withdrawal is then echoed in the communal recognition of that individual’s separation from the community.

Second Witness: Analytical & Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 5

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