Welcome to Part 2 with Dr. Doug Benson, the book of Ether chapters 12 through 16.

Maroni then comes down in verse 28.

Leading up to weakness, he's talking about faith and hope.

And he gives all these examples of people and how they have exercised faith.

This is behavior. People do things and because they have

done things, they're blessed. Things come to them. And they probably aren't blessed in ways they

thought they would be blessed. So, Moronite gives us all these examples of how having hope and faith

can help us to put off the natural man and also accept

the natural man that we have weaknesses. But then he goes back to that. He starts coming back

out of this chasmac where he starts to talk about faith and hope again, but he adds charity.

Charity is an interesting attribute because it's the

attribute that is both necessary for and the result of. We have hope and faith and charity,

which increases our hope and faith and our charity.

And without charity, we are nothing.

When we talk about weakness, part of putting that off is moving beyond our behavior and seeking something that we don't have.

We talk about charity as the pure love of Christ. As Roni says later, I can't have the

pure love of Christ on my own. I'm going to suffer here. Everyone is. We're weak. We just

learn that in verse 27. We're all imperfect and we're all going to suffer here. We're also all going to

feel joy if we are having faith in Christ and hope. And then there's charity. I can't have the

pure love of Christ because I won't suffer everything. I can feel pain for other people. I can

have empathy, but I think charity is different.

Charity is a gift of the spirit that we have to seek out and almost like apply for.

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