Are We Not All Beggars?

At Mount Sinai the Lord spoke to the hearing of the whole congregation of Israel:
"I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
Most of the ten commandments are written in a negative phrase 'thou shalt not;' what is the positive equivalent? 'Thou shalt have me as thy God.' He goes on:
"Thou shalt not bow down thyself to [any graven image], nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments."
The positive equivalent to this is, 'thou shalt bow down thyself to me, and serve me; love me, and keep my commandments.' Who bows down? Besides the worshiper to his God, there is the subject to his king, the servant to his master and the beggar to anyone who can provide. I'll come back to that.
Next the Lord says: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." (Exodus 20:2-3,5-7)
The positive equivalent to this is, 'thou shalt take the name of the Lord thy God purposefully' and I would add "with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ." (Moroni 10:4)
So what is the name of the Lord our God and how do we take it upon ourselves? As the sacrament prayer says, the name is 'Jesus Christ'; and in order to take it upon ourselves we must live up to the name. The name literally means 'Anointed Savior.'
I'm not going to go into how we can each become anointed. I will leave that up to your individual study; but I am going to talk about how we become saviors in my next blog post.

But first, I want to go back to the idea of beggars who bow down to the provider or, more specifically, us as beggars bowing down to the Savior. Did not King Benjamin say, “Are we not all beggars?” Elder Holland carried that question on "Don’t we all cry out for help and hope and answers to prayers? Don’t we all beg for forgiveness for mistakes we have made and troubles we have caused? Don’t we all implore that grace will compensate for our weaknesses, that mercy will triumph over justice at least in our case? Little wonder that King Benjamin says we obtain a remission of our sins by pleading to God, who compassionately responds, but we retain a remission of our sins by compassionately responding to the poor who plead to us." (Are We Not All Beggars? emphasis added)

This last phrase reminds me of the first great commandments. They are based on the fact that God loves all of us and, as His children, He wants us to be like him. We will not become like someone that we do not love, so first we are commanded to love Him; then, to become like Him, He commands us to love our neighbor. In the same pattern and based on the same reasons, He requires us to apply to the Savior to save us; He then turns around and requires us to be saviors to others.

It also reminds me of a parable of our Lord where a man owes the king a large debt. After begging for compassion, it is given and the debt is forgiven. The servant then turns around and exacts a very small debt from a fellow servant who cannot pay and throws him into prison showing no mercy. When the king heard about what the servant did he "delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him." (Matt 18:23-35) That man did not retain a remission of his debts.