Fruits of Faith

In our scripture study the other day, my husband and I read Ether 12. I had forgotten how much neat stuff is in there!

I wanted to see if I could learn more about what faith is by pulling out the things it causes. When I was writing up this blog post, I also saw that there were different phrases used to indicate that faith influenced something. See the lists below of the "fruits of faith" that I found in Ether 12.

Because of the faith of men...

• Christ showed himself to the world. (verse 8)
• Christ has glorified the name of the Father and prepared a way that others can be partakers of the heavenly gift. (verse 8)

By faith...

• The law of Moses was given. (verse 11)
• A more excellent way has been fulfilled. (verse 11)
• Miracles are wrought. (verse 16)
• The Brother of Jared obtained the word of God and then saw His finger, then received a promise that he would see the Lord, and then saw all things that the Lord had promised. (verse 21)
• Their forefathers obtained a promise that the scriptures should come to their brethren through the Gentiles. (verse 22) 

William Blake [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The miracles listed below were brought about by a person's (or several people's) faith.

• "it was the faith of Alma and Amulek that caused the prison to tumble to the earth." (verse 13)
• "it was the faith of Nephi and Lehi that wrought the change upon the Lamanites, that they were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost." (verse 14)
• "it was the faith of Ammon and his brethren which wrought so great a miracle among the Lamanites." (verse 15)
• " it was by faith that the three disciples obtained a promise that they should not taste of death" (verse 17)

In addition to telling us a sampling of the things faith has done for certain people, Moroni explains that faith will help each of us. If we have faith...

• We can have hope and be partakers of the divine gift.(verse 9)
• We can take part in miracles, can work miracles in God's name. (verse 16,18)
• We might with surety hope for a better world. (verse 4)

It's interesting that there are different phrasings used--by faith, because of faith, it was the faith of ____. That seems to indicate that some things are done by the power of faith (by faith), while others happen as a result of, but not necessarily by the power of faith (because of faith).

What do you think of the phrasing used to talk about faith in Ether 12?

Some of these have close phrasing to the actual verses--I decided to forego quotation marks, since I list what verse each comes from and the source is readily available at lds.org.