Here is where the importance of the exclusion/inclusion conflict become particularly important in understanding Nephi. Verse 30 begins with “Behold, the Lord hat forbidden this thing.” This gives us a reference to something that has just preceded, but to what? The closest possible reference is to priestcrafts. It is quite certain that the Lord would forbid priestcrafts, but using priestcraft as a profession does not specifically fit with the rest of the verse. Whatever is forbidden, Nephi uses “wherefore” as the link between the think that is forbidden, and the positive commandment that is given to counter the forbidden thing.
The positive commandment is to charitable love. This is not a commandment against the profession of priestcraft, but rather against any sensibilities that would lead to exclusion. Love is perforce inclusive.
The language Nephi uses here is obviously echoing Paul:
1 Cor. 13:2
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
One should no approach Paul without remembering Paul as the apostle to the gentiles, certainly a context appropriate to Nephi’s discussion of the gentiles. However, in the context of Nephi’s aside, it is also instructive to remember the tensions that Paul had to deal with in creating the early gentile Christian community. In particular, Corinth had widespread conflicts in their community, including competing “theologians” and multiple factions (Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. Doubleday. New York, 1997, p. 511).
Indeed, Paul’s beautiful explanation of the value of love comes after discussing the apparently divisive use of gifts of the Sprit in Corinth (beginning in 1 Corinthians 12:1 and culminating in the declaration in 1 Corinthians 13:1 that charity (love) surpasses all of those gifts.
The question we may rightfully ask of Nephi is how Pauline responses to a gentile church should end up in Nephi’s discourse so long before this social situation becomes a reality in the Old World. To this question are two answers. The first lies in Nephi’s prophetic ability. The second may lie in Nephi’s social circumstances, which may have been going through precisely the problems Paul encountered.
In this second option, the reason for the Pauline language is not the adoption of Paul’s theology, but rather Nephi’s independent inspired arrival at the very same solution to the very same problem. The vocabulary is Paul’s through Joseph Smith. The solution, however, would be Nephi’s through the Lord. If Nephi’s immediate people (contrasted to the future people of his vision) were in the throes of integrating a gentile population, and particularly one that would be ethnically, culturally, and religiously foreign to the Nephites (at least religiously foreign before their adoption into Nephite religion, the possible subtheme of Jacob’s discourse) then an appeal to the healing and inclusive power of the principle of love becomes not only appropriate, but very meaningful to Nephi.
The very appearance of this Pauline language in these intercalated verses suggests that the passion of the aside is related to parallels Nephi’s sees in the future gentiles and the problems he has endured in creating his own religious/political community.