I was recently gently challenged by a very important question, “What do you believe about grace?” This caused me deep reflection and difficulty as I have attempted to condense down my very personal answer to this excellent question because I love the gift of grace. When I think of grace, I think of the atonement of Jesus Christ, when he suffered and died to redeem each of us. This gift is freely given with perfect love and it inspires me to want to be more like Christ in every way.

Within this question lies a fundamental principle that often spurs contention within the Christian community. At the core of the debate is the sound scriptural assertion, “If Christ has truly paid for our sins, we can no longer believe it is our works that will save us. It is only in and through the merit of the Son of God that salvation comes.” This is beautifully put, but the argument sometimes tries to conclude that because there is nothing we can do to earn the gift of salvation, our works don’t matter. Let me assert that our works do matter and are of eternal significance, not to earn the gift of grace already given and paid for in whole, but to come to appreciate and use this gift to both enrich our lives, to bless others and to become the woman or man who Christ would have us become.

Please note that all biblical scriptures quoted herein are from the King James version of the bible.

Grace Enables Us to Become

The best gifts in life require work because they are not merely trinkets to put on a shelf, but they are enablers to become something.

Let us explore this with a skiing analogy. We could be given the finest ski equipment, complete with warm clothing, season passes, provisions and transportation, but we will never become an expert skier unless we use the gifts and risk the falls to explore and expand our capability.

One day, a co-worker of mine in Japan spoke of how she was going skiing for her first time. She told of how she had purchased a book on skiing and was studying it hard.

It made me smile to think of how this contrasted culturally with my first time on the slopes, where experienced skiers talked me through the basics of snow plowing and how to fall safely even as they adjusted my equipment and helped me bind my boots to the skis. Their advice was extremely important and memorable as it was very ‘hands on’ and in short order we were on the hill putting the principles into practice.

I’m sure the book was helpful for my co-worker, and would have been for me, but I am equally sure she learned far more when she actually went skiing. One thing for certain, if she had never gone, she would never have become a skier. Becoming something requires us to act on gifts and opportunities we are given.

The gift of grace enables us to become like our Father in Heaven and our Savior Jesus Christ. It is the gift that ensures that we can someday fulfill the Lord’s commandment to “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

The gift of grace reconciles our fundamentally divine nature as sons and daughters of God with the fallen state we inherit by electing to be born into a mortal body subject to temptation and infirmity.

16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. Romans 8:16-17

Because of our fallen mortal state, we are in a position choose to nurture the divine potential in us and come to a rebirth in Christ and eternal life or we can choose carnal and selfish paths and risk losing sight of our divine nature, even becoming like our adversary…

God has given us this agency. Only we can choose to use our gift to become like Him.

Who we become is the great test of our mortality.

Showing Appreciating by Using our Gift

How we use our gift of grace is very important.

Imagine being given a new sports car, engineered for unexcelled acceleration, speed and style. 

We would surely be grateful for the gift, but if we merely bragged about the car without using it, it would have no real utility and would surely not please the giver of the gift.

We could use the car to seek carnal pleasure, becoming self-important and prideful, or we could choose to use this car to provide rides to those in need, both strangers and friends, the powerful motor swiftly conveying people to destinations they could never reach on their own.

The use of the gift is where the true value lies and is how we show our true appreciation. If we never make the effort to use the gift wisely, then we have faith without works. The Lord may as well have given the car to my chickens, and dubbed the car, the chicken coupe.

For me, I can’t imagine my Savior, in his mortal ministry, passing by the spiritual beggars around him and not doing for them what he did, for he “went about doing good.” John wrote (21:25): “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”

Jesus did these works because of the divine nature of who he was. It was not to keep a mental tally of all the things he had done right that day in order to calculate blessings he had earned. As we partake of the divine nature of Christ through the gift of His love and grace, it will be the same for us. May the Lord’s angels write volumes of our good works as extensions of His grace, that our works will be His works. No wonder the world itself can scarce contain the extent of His boundless work.

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The Gift of Eternal Life

I consider grace the common thread that weaves together all other gifts of God, culminating in eternal life and exaltation which is the greatest of all God’s gifts.

In His great intercessory prayer that Christ offered just before he died for us, he said:

3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.  (John 17:3)

A critical part of knowing God and Jesus Christ is to serve them. The Book of Mormon teaches, “For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart?” (Mosiah 5:13).

Where our treasure is, there will our heart be also. In short, we come to know and love those we serve. God and the people we serve become the treasure of our hearts, and in the heavens, surely these relationships and our capacity to love will be our greatest treasure. We can never truly love others without increasing our love of God.

7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (John 1:4)

Our capacity to love is tied to our eternal state. My friend, John Butrick (refer to article), in his out-of-body experience was shown three spheres or worlds that were differentiated by the amount of love he felt in each sphere. As he described it to me, I was reminded of Paul’s description of the 3 degrees of glory in 1 Corinthians 15:40-42, where all those resurrected are in a saved state with an immortal body, but some receive glory only as a distant star appears. Others received glory as that of the moon but for some the glory was even as the sun.

God’s gift of grace enables us to love more fully, to become righteous and to bridle all our passions that we may be filled with love. I must love and serve others, for Christ, “went about doing good.” And he asked us to be like Him. In doing so, I’m not earning the gift of grace. I am using the gift of grace to become someone who will be comfortable in the presence of God.

The Role of Covenants

Yesterday, I was in a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I was simply observing the people entering the temple and an unexpected feeling of pure love came over me for each of these saints who had come to present themselves to the Lord, each having overcome obstacles in their lives to be there, each with a radiant countenance, and each still in need of the Gospel of Repentance as taught by our Savior Jesus Christ.

At times, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are accused of trying to earn their salvation through their works because of their emphasis on covenants made in sacred temples to keep the commandments of God.

Covenants invite us to act in higher and holier ways by creating a special bond with the Lord, just as a marriage covenant or contract does with a couple.

Abraham was called the father of the faithful. Because of his faithfulness, God made a covenant with Abraham that he would become a father of many nations and that through his seed all the nations of the world would be blessed. Because of continued faithfulness to this covenant, it was renewed with Isaac and Jacob (Israel) and remains in force today as “an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.” Saints in the latter days each personally accept and renew this covenant in sacred temples, and thus every nation is blessed, as promised to Abraham, for we become his seed through adoption into this covenant and Christ’s word is fulfilled that God is ‘able of these stones to raise seed to Abraham.’ (Matthew 3:9)

Some feel constricted to have so many of God’s commandments attached to His covenant, but in receiving these covenants, I remember feeling with each promise I made, that I was becoming freer and freer from every dark and distracting influence. God’s commandments are a manifestation of His love, each encouraging us to be like Him. I realized with joy that, if I was faithful to the covenants I had made in the temple, I would become free from any influence that would prevent me from becoming completely clean.

2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
3 And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. (1 John 3)

I make and keep covenants not to earn the gift of grace, but to deepen my relationship with Jesus Christ, binding myself to him and thereby taking His yoke upon me, for his yoke is easy and his burden light.

Conclusion

The gift of grace, to me, is all about letting Christ change us.

Ezra Taft Benson, in a powerfully moving conference talk said, “The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of the people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature. (Born of God, Conference Report, Oct. 1985)

Given this beautiful work of our Savior, the common argument that, “We are saved by grace or by works. You can’t have it both ways”, sounds tinny and beside the point. The Lord does reward us for our good works, but we are saved by grace. That being said, I must work because I love the Lord and I want to become like Him.

32 Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

33 And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot.

(Moroni 10:32-33, Book of Mormon)