The Olive Tree and the Gospel

I would like to connect the gospel with the allegory of the olive tree, the sacrament prayer and your life to see if I can help the spirit inspire you to live better.

When we were born we died spiritually because of the fall of Adam; that is, we left God's presence to come to earth. The Lord caused that we should die physically, symbolic of that spiritual death and the second spiritual death that should come except we live by certain conditions. Those conditions were taught to us and shown to us by Jesus Christ and his prophets and faithful saints.

In the allegory of the olive tree the Lord compares the tree to the house of Israel or to you who are of the house of Israel. In the allegory the Lord talks about what He does to bless you and help you come back to Him. He starts out with your spiritual fall and what He does to keep you from falling further (v4). Then talks about how He puts thorns in your side (wild branches) to inspire you to rely on your roots - your covenants made before and during this life to apply the atonement of Jesus Christ in your life. Then He talks about what happens after we rely on the atonement - we bear fruit. That fruit He stores for His purpose (v18). That fruit is our faith in the name of Jesus Christ.

He then talks about apostasy and death and the bad fruit that comes because of ignoring truth and not relying on the atonement. Then God calls us to repentance by mixing up our lives, causing changes that we don't expect or necessarily want, causing us to remember Him. He then starts preparing us to bear fruit again by removing evil from our lives and adding upon our heads talents that He took away during our apostate time and helping us improve them.

Then He finishes talking about the fruit of obedience that He requires of us (v76). That "season, which speedily cometh" is resurrection and judgment, resurrecting us from that first spiritual death, at which time if we have no fruit stored up, then the second death will take hold on us and we will be cast out to outer darkness; but, if we have fruit stored up, having become spotless in the face of God at that last day, we will be accepted into the presence of God to "go no more out."

With the sacrament we renew all of our covenants made and we are reminded of the three things that are mentioned in the allegory which cause us to bear fruit:

1) Take upon us the name of Christ - We do this by having faith in Christ.
2) Always remember Him - We need to remember that His atonement allows us to repent.
3) Keep His commandments which He has given us - Reading the scriptures brings to our minds with things that we need to work on and improve in our lives.

The Holy Ghost is given to us to impress our minds even more and show us what commandments we missed. Sometimes those things that are shown to us that we need to do are hard, that is why it is called a baptism of fire, because God is trying us and trying to improve us so we can bear fruit that is acceptable for the Kingdom of God. Ultimately, we are the fruit that God wants to store up in His kingdom.