Moroni’s writings in these verses contain a sequence that illustrates the rising effect of faith, hope, and charity that leads, in steps, to positive eternal consequences. This upwardly rising list is followed by an equivalent downward spiral that transpires if one does not have faith—a spiral that leads to despair because of iniquity. Moroni does not go into detail as he mentions the necessity of having faith, hope, and charity, probably because he has already included his father’s lengthy discourse on this grand trilogy in Moroni 7.
But Moroni does add an important summation of the necessary co-existence of these three (in verse 20), and then states (in the opposite order) the necessary requirement of having charity, hope, and faith (verses 21, 22, and 23). He stresses that these three are both necessary and sufficient. One can be “saved in the kingdom of God” if and only if one has all three.
And he also quotes, as his father had done, a saying of Jesus that we don’t otherwise have. Mormon had quoted this saying as follows, “And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me” (Moroni 7:33). Moroni then intensified that saying to read: “And Christ truly said unto our fathers: If ye have faith ye can do all things which are expedient unto me” (10:23).