After Benjamin’s five "believe" statements and five "repent" statements (4:9–10), he added two "knowledge" statements (4:11); he followed it with two mentions of the word "remember," particularly that we must "retain in remembrance" what God has done for us (4:11). It is not enough to know something; you can forget it next week. We must not only know it and remember it, but always retain it in remembrance. Notice how Benjamin has moved from one thought to another. He did not use a simple repetition; he used elevation of the thought as it went along. He was guiding people step by step. He moves here from having believed, then done, then known, and then remembered, then humbled ourselves, then called on the name of the Lord daily, and at that point you shall rejoice and be filled with love. This will allow us to "retain a remission of our sins," grow in the knowledge of the glory of God, and then to know what is just and true. We achieve this goal one step at a time, and Benjamin marvelously sets out the step-by-step sequence. All of this is so that we can obtain a remission of our sins.
And remember that remembering in this sense is not just a matter of remembering intellectually. We truly remember when we remember to do certain things. And thus, toward the end of the next section of his speech, Benjamin will return again precisely to the idea of retaining a remission of sins (see 4:26). When I was a bishop, a girl who had transgressed—not terribly, but it was very troublesome to her—came to me, and she tried to repent. She kept coming back, and I would give her some ideas and she would feel better. Then she would come back two weeks later feeling bad again. She wondered why those bad feelings kept coming back. Benjamin’s words came to my mind, and I realized that her problem was that she had not retained a remission of her sins. I had never heard anyone talk about this step in the repentance process; but I had recently had Benjamin on my mind. So we read out loud Mosiah 4:26, together with its injunction to "retain" a remission of sins by giving to the poor, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, and administering to their relief both spiritually and temporally. This additional step is actually a step in the repentance process. When we think of the R’s of repentance, certainly retain is one we should add.
That was a "Benjamin moment" for me, in which these words took on powerful life and meaning, impelling us to go and do something. We set out some things that she was going to go do, and two weeks later she came back to my office and said, "Bishop, it has worked! I feel totally different." I told her to keep at it in order to always retain that remission. Benjamin has given us really profound guidance.