Degrees of clothing
The robe of righteousness is the character of Jesus Christ.6 To put on the robe of righteousness7 is to learn about and live more like Jesus Christ.8
There are many versions of the robe of righteousness, as each person’s understanding of how Jesus is differs, and many paths flow from that understanding to how Jesus actually is. Each improvement to a person’s understanding of the character of Christ could be considered another, better robe of righteousness,9 forming a chain of successively improving models of the character of Christ.
Each “garment” represents a level of understanding of how Jesus is, and as such, there will always be limitations in every garment, and a better garment still.10 No matter what we have sacrificed in our pursuit of God, at least some of what we understand about him will be incomplete or incorrect, and as the inadequacies of our model are revealed, we will feel as if our whitened robes of “righteousness are as filthy rags....” (Isaiah 64:6) As you live fully up to the character of Christ as you presently understand it, you will come to see shortcomings in your model of how Jesus is. These shortcomings are essential to providing you with the motivation and desire to receive additional teaching about how Jesus is beyond your present understanding, which almost always includes the difficult and painful task of abandoning at least some of the ideas you had about him before.
The growing nature of one’s understanding of God is one reason why the robe of righteousness can correctly be called a garment of light. While a garment of cloth or the skins of dead animals is fixed and can only ever wear out, a garment of light grows and flows. Though a robe is given to another all at once, the robes of righteousness are received as an unbroken series of individual lessons on the Lord’s nature that weave into an indistinguishable flow of constant and custom guidance. The incremental discovery and adoption of the character of Christ is akin to continuous development of a piece of software, where new portions are written, old portions are rewritten, most of it is reused, and sometimes everything needs to be scrapped and started over from scratch.
If you consider taking his name upon you as the decision to reconcile yourself to how you presently understand him to be, then you receive a robe of righteousness through the act of justification. If you consider taking the Lord’s name upon you as the process of learning more about him while remaining reconciled to how you understand him to be, then receiving the robes of righteousness becomes a process of wearing a robe of ever-increasing brightness, corresponding to your increasing understanding of how he is.
As you put on holier robes, you become qualified for holier places. God’s kingdom is organized into different levels of glory, each defined by the extent and accuracy of the model of Jesus which the inhabitants live according to.1674 God will reveal more of himself to those who live what they already know about him. It is through obtaining and living successively more expansive and accurate models of Christ that you ascend in his kingdom. The task of mortality can be expressed as obtaining the kind of garment necessary to dwell in the highest level of God’s kingdom that we desire.
Footnotes
- 1. No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. (Matthew 9:16) ↩
- 2. Elisha tore his old clothing before receiving the mantle of Elijah: “And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces.” (2 Kings 2:12) ↩
- 3. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles. (Mark 2:22) ↩
- 4. By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins—behold, he will confess them and forsake them. (D&C 58:43) ↩
- 5. Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins. (James 5:19-20) And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8) ↩
- 6. Righteousness means “as God is.” ↩
- 7. If thou followest righteousness, thou shalt obtain her, and put her on, as a glorious long robe. (Sirach 27:8) ↩
- 8. Verily, verily, I say unto you, this is my gospel; and ye know the things that ye must do in my church; for the works which ye have seen me do that shall ye also do; for that which ye have seen me do even that shall ye do; Therefore, if ye do these things blessed are ye, for ye shall be lifted up at the last day. (3 Nephi 27:21-22) ↩
- 9. The process of taking off lesser garments in order to receive better garments is demonstrated in a little-known passage in the Old Testament, where an angel is sent from God to replace the righteous high priest’s dirty garments with heavenly garments: “Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel. And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment. And I said, Let them set a fair mitre upon his head. So they set a fair mitre upon his head, and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the Lord stood by.” (Zechariah 3:3-5) ↩
- 10. And the Lord said unto me: These two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all. (Abraham 3:19) ↩