I doubt we quote any scripture on grace more often than Nephi’s that “it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23). As covenant women, we have a tendency to zoom in on the “after all we can do” part of the grace-and-works equation, but then wonder how we can possibly do more than we already are—though we’re pretty sure whatever we’re doing isn’t enough.
This scripture is not about sequence, and it is not about feverishly working our way through an exhaustive list of good works. Jesus Christ is the only one to walk this earth and do all that could be done.
Instead, doing “all we can do” is about the direction we’re headed and what kind of women we are becoming. There is nothing simple about this, because it isn’t natural woman to want to do good or to be good. But the Lord’s Atonement and His gospel are all about change, and particularly a change of heart. If we are willing to yield to “the enticings of the Holy Spirit,” to stay on the covenant path, to hold tightly to the iron rod, and to partake of the fruit again and again, it is possible to “[put] off the natural [woman] . . . through the atonement of Christ” (Mosiah 3:19) and be transformed from fallen women riddled with faults into true disciples. Doing “all we can do” is all about discipleship. Discipleship requires at least three things for us: first, coming to love the Lord more than we love anything in the world, second, experiencing a change of heart so that we have no “disposition to do evil, but to do good continually” (Mosiah 5:2)—which doesn’t mean we no longer make mistakes, it just means we don’t want to—and third, behaving like true followers. The road to discipleship leads away from all forms of ungodliness (see Moroni 10:32). That means resisting the gravitational pull of the world and shedding the attitudes, appetites, and behaviors of the natural woman. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell put it, “Personal sacrifice never was placing an animal on the altar. Instead, it is a willingness to put the animal in us upon the altar.” (Neal A. Maxwell, Deny Yourselves of All Ungodliness,” Ensign, May 1995, 68) (Sheri Dew, “Sweet Above All That is Sweet,” in The Lord Will Give Grace and Glory: Talks from the 2014 BYU Women’s Conference [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015], 8-9)