23 Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust.
I love the imagery used here by Lehi. It’s so descriptive of
what happens when someone is caught up in sin. And it can happen to good people,
who before they realize it have been lulled away into behavior they never
intended. Satan’s methods can be almost hypnotic at times. A later chapter in 2
Nephi tells us that one of Satan’s strategies is to “pacify, and lull [us] away
into carnal security” where we are seduced away from the paths of
righteousness, and are led away “carefully down to hell” (see 2 Nephi 28: 21).
And it can happen so gradually that we don’t realize it is even happening until
we are sometimes very far down the wrong path. If you’ve ever had the
experience of reading by natural light as the day gradually slips away to
evening, you can get the imagery here. You are so engrossed in your reading
that you don’t realize it is getting darker, even too dark to read well, until
someone else walks in the room and turns on the light. The contrast can be
startling and “wake you up” to what you didn’t even realize you were doing,
reading in the dark.
How do we avoid falling into that false sense of security?
Lehi draws on another word picture to teach how: the armor of righteousness.
The comparison of righteousness to armor has been made in other places in the
scriptures, but this is the earliest comparison chronologically that I am aware
of. Paul elaborates beautifully on what the armor represents in his letter to
the Ephesians (see Ephesians 6: 11–18), and a similar comparison is made in the
Doctrine and Covenants (see D&C 27: 15–18). There is power in this armor to
resist the fiery darts, or temptations, of Satan, who is looking for any way to
bind us in chains of sin.
Sin has the effect of shackles, in a spiritual sense. Once these
chains bind you it is very difficult to break free. Sin is like that; it leads
to more sin, if not checked right away. One big difference between sin and
righteousness is that sin is addictive in nature, while righteousness is not.
It’s easy to break out of patterns of righteousness; it’s easy to break those
habits. Even though righteous behavior makes us feel good, like we want that
feeling all the time, the righteous habits are easily broken. You would never
hear of someone bound down in the “chains of righteousness.” You always have
full capacity to exercise your agency to break habits of righteousness. In
fact, it’s way too easy to do so, or seems to be. Not so with habits of sin.
Those habits become addictions. Those habits restrict or hinder your ability to
exercise your agency. Like chains, they limit your freedom to act. And like
chains, you often can’t break out of them alone, without help. That’s where the
Savior and his infinite Atonement comes in. When Lehi tells his sons to “shake
off the chains,” he is telling them to turn to the Lord. They need the
atonement to shake off those chains. They can’t do it alone, but it does have
to be their decision. The Savior will not enter and help where He is not
wanted.
When Lehi pleads with his sons to “come forth out of
obscurity,” I don’t think he is telling them to become famous. The older
definition of obscure is, “lacking
light; dim; dark; murky” (Webster’s New World
College Dictionary, 3rd ed. 1997). Lehi is telling these wayward
sons to leave their dark deeds behind them, to come into the light and
righteousness. Likewise, the term dust
has an older, less common, but more applicable definition than “small powdery
earth” usually associated with the word. Dust also means, “confusion; turmoil”
(ibid). With these older definitions,
Lehi’s plea makes even more sense, and become more than simply beautiful
imagery. He’s telling them to come out of darkness, and stop living in turmoil.
They were in that condition because they were bound by the devil’s “everlasting
chains of death” (see Alma 36: 18), due to not wearing the armor of
righteousness, and being lulled into a false sense of security. They were
reading in the dark and didn’t realize it.
- John 8: 32
- Ephesians 6: 11–18
- 2 Nephi 28: 20–24
- Jacob 3: 11
- D&C 27: 15–18
