King Benjamin wanted to demonstrate a new lifestyle for rulers. He wasn’t trying to show off or boast of his service to the people. He just wanted them to realize that a call to service in any capacity is a call to serve God and should be treated accordingly. It is interesting that the American Founding Father undertook this principle, and tried to encourage a similar lifestyle under their inspired Constitution. Washington declined any salary while serving as commander in chief, and even though the war had ruined his plantation he somehow managed to survive without taking any of the salary provided for in the Constitution as President.
Here is how Franklin explained this remarkable ideal of the Founders to a friend in Europe: “In America salaries [for public office] where indispensable are extremely low [and] much public business is done gratis [or for nothing]. The honor of serving the public ably and faithfully is deemed sufficient. Public spiritin America exists there, and has great effects.”1
Franklin pointed out that the office of high sheriff in each county in England is filled by public servants who receive no compensation. Nevertheless these offices are accepted as a call to public service and are executed with great diligence. Franklin concluded: “I only [cite these examples] to show that the pleasure of doing good and serving one’s country ... are sufficient motives with some minds to give up a great portion of their time to the public.”2 In our own day it is in this same spirit that 23,000 bishops of the LDS Church and 60,000 missionaries serve without compensation.
Now King Benjamin wants to emphasize how indebted every human being is to God:
“And behold also, if I, whom ye call your king, who has spent his days in your service, and yet has been in the service of God, do merit any thanks from you, O how you ought to thank your heavenly King! I say unto you, my brethren, that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another -- I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another -- I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants. And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land; and he never doth vary from that which he hath said; therefore, if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless you and prosper you.”