Faith and Works - Personally

This is an essay I wrote for my New Testament Class. During the experience I had to delve into my soul and so this piece, while not the best literarily, is a part of me and my truth.

There is a debate oft posed between born-again Christians and some Latter-day Saints surrounding the grace of Christ. Are we saved by grace or works? Or is it a combination of the two? For years I have known it was mostly works and tried to defend my views. I was wrong.

During my missionary years I fortified the idea of self-perpetuation. Sure I included God in the mix, but He was always a foot note to the task. It was laden on me to find His sheep and that would only happen if I were doing everything possible and doing it right. In the end I left the mission field with around a dozen baptisms and no true appreciation of my Savior.

Don’t misunderstand me! I truly love this work and this gospel. I know it is divinely inspired and that it has power and authority. What I lacked was the personal testimony of how the savior fit into all of this. Obviously he is the central figure in the plan of salvation and the key to resurrection and exaltation, but that didn’t come with a one-to-one attachment in my mind. He was the Savior of the world as a whole, not of me individually.

In my mind I treasured up two verses of scripture to support my view. First from James: “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone,” (KJV James 2:17). Then I used Nephi’s words when he said, “we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do,” (2 Nephi 25:23, emphasis imagined in my mind years ago). Together it was so obvious: grace is a gift unto those with faith which is dead without works requiring our all. Shortening the statement yielded the following idea – grace is a reward to those who give it their all. This was okay since our all is too short of the mark anyway and therefore it is Christ who technically saves us in the end.

That held up fine until five years after my mission when I was in a religion class with Brother Richard D. Draper. He told a parable of little boy who worked hard all summer to save enough pennies for the circus and finally on the last day had exactly enough to go in, but succumbed to temptation before reaching the Big Top by buying a penny sucker. The man at the counter checked the pennies individually and found the boy short. It was made clear that he had no chance to obtain another penny for the show. That’s where Brother Draper excused us until the next class – two days later!

Walking out of that testing center classroom I found a penny on the floor. I found myself yearning to give it to the poor little boy when the parable translated to real life and I found myself sorrowing for my own sake and the countless spiritual pennies I had squandered and could never get back. For two days I agonized over this penny and carried it wherever I went.

The next class we talked of the Savior and his atonement. The boy was offered the missing fee in exchange for the lollipop which the man threw into the trash. It solved the story, but not me. Here it is months later and the truthfulness of this doctrine is only now sinking in. As I sit writing this essay I feel the pains of inadequacy both in my righteousness and in my understanding.

It is through Paul’s teachings that I am gaining a truer appreciation of what my Savior has done for me. In his epistle to the Romans he stated, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. Therefore being justified only by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith only, without the deeds of the law,” (JST Romans 3:24, 27). This verse alone clears up a great deal of my mistaken ideas. For instance, rereading Nephi and attaching an earlier verse we discover, “it is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved,” (2 Nephi 10:24). His use of “after all we can do” was not to imply a requirement, but a fact that what we do is as nothing in the face of what Christ does for us. Yet this is just the beginning of Paul’s impact.

Time and time again Paul speaks of the negative influences upon the saints that are directly sourced from the Judaizers. In Galatians he tells the saints to “be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage,” (KJV Galatians 5:1). It isn’t that the Law of Moses was base or unhelpful, but that the misapplication of it was destructive. What a true statement! In my life I have continually directed my efforts to vain and inappropriate emphasis on the commandments.

We cannot and will not work our way into heaven. We must try to live the teachings of the gospel and strive to be better constantly for that is the attitude of a saint. Yet despite any good we may accomplish in this life, we all “have sinned, and come short.” I am learning this slowly and through great repetition.

Moreover, we cannot expect perfection in this life nor anytime soon following it. In the epistle to the Hebrews we are admonished, “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith,” (KJV Hebrews 12:1). My futile efforts to obtain perfection through my own works have been my downfall time and time again. I finally learned this semester that I am not expected to do everything at once. I had to drop a class and consequently my status as a full time student. However as the Lord said to Joseph Smith, “Do not run faster or labor more than you have strength and means provided,” (D&C 10:4).

I am trying to rely on the Lord for my strength now. He knows my capabilities and my weaknesses. He knows my potential. He offers eternal life to me for the price of following him. Not that I earn it, but that Christ is giving it to me and asking, in exchange, for a comparatively worthless piece of agency. I know I can give it to him and hope to do so forever more.