The End Of The Commandment Is Charity

"Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned" (1 Timothy 1:5). The purpose of any commandment, of every commandment, is to help us to purify our hearts, to fill us more fully with charity, the pure love of Christ, to leave us with a good conscience, and to strengthen our faith unfeigned. If we are struggling to keep a commandment, whether it be the law of tithing, the word of wisdom, keeping the Sabbath day holy, whatever, and more importantly, if we are struggling to understand the reason that we are being so commanded in the first place, then we can have this hope: if we are obedient to the commandment, then we will have a good conscience; if we are obedient to the commandment, then will our faith be unfeigned; if we are obedient to the commandment, then our hearts will be purified by being more filled with the pure love of Christ. It does not matter if our first efforts at keeping the commandment are halting and half-hearted, or if we're just trying to fake it until we make it, or if our conscience often burns with our failures. This is the beginning of keeping the commandment. But the more and more we try, the less we fake it and the more we make it. Our faith may have seemed phony at first, but through our persistent efforts, our faith has grown more and more sincere. Our heart may have been in a great turmoil of conflicting emotions when we began our attempts to keep the commandment, but with every renewed attempt, we trusted the Lord a little more, we opened our hearts to Him a little wider, and He filled us more and more with His love, and the churn and roil of warring emotions stilled as every thought and feeling was illuminated by Christ's pure love. If we feel like there is no compelling reason to keep a commandment, then the promise of a clear conscience, a stronger faith, and a greater portion of love in our hearts and in our lives should be enough to get us started.