Sunday, September 15, 2024

B. J. Allen, "Striving for Obedience While Relying on Grace"

  

Striving for Obedience While Relying on Grace

 

While being perfect is not a requirement for Christ’s grace, this truth does not excuse us from trying. The idea that we do not need to try for perfection is like a child asking his parent to teach him to ride a bike but then refusing to push the pedals. Christ’s atonement is meant to help us learn how to be perfect. Therefore, if we are not trying for perfection, we have missed the point of the Atonement altogether.

 

Some struggle with the balance of grace and obedience. Perhaps some infer that if we talk about salvation’s dependence on grace, then people may think salvation’s dependence on grace, then people may think salvation requires little effort. However, we should not equate an emphasis on grace with a de-emphasis on obedience. Grace and obedience can coexist. When a true understanding of grace is coupled with a true knowledge of the Atonement’s purpose, the desire to be our best becomes instinctive. As we truly comprehend that Christ’s mission is to help us become something great, we naturally want to strive for greatness.

 

While some may fear that stressing grace without obedience will cause idleness, stressing obedience without grace can cause hopelessness. President M. Russell Ballard taught, “Unfortunately, there are some within the Church who have become so preoccupied with performing good works that they forget that those works—as good as they may be—are hollow unless they are accompanied by a complete dependence on Christ.” (M. Russell Ballard, “Building Bridges of Understanding,” Ensign, June 1998) To this same point, those who focus solely on what they lack in “good works” are often ridden with guilt from never measuring up; they believe Satan’s false narrative that their level of perfection equates to the level of God’s love for them. I fear that sometimes we inadvertently help Satan pound this belief into ourselves and others. Perhaps in our desire to emphasize that obedience shows our love for God (see John 14:15), we inadvertently teach that God loves only the obedient. I believe part of why I was so anxious as a child and obsessive about my own worthiness before God was because I did not understand the Savior’s compensatory role in helping me learn obedience. To use President Ballard’s words, I had “become so preoccupied with performing good works” that I had forgotten my “complete dependence on Christ.” In time, I came to better understand the Savior’s role, which gave me more hope to keep trying. I had an even stronger desire to stay on the covenant path when I found out I was not walking the path alone.

 

In His godly omniscience, our Heavenly Father anticipates the day when His children are perfectly obedient, but HE does not expect it in this world. Our role in partaking of our Savior’s compensating power is to do our best while realizing that He is the One who does the perfecting, just as Moroni taught that “by his grace [we] may be perfect in Christ” (Moroni 10:32). (B. J. Allen, The Compensating Power of Christ: How Christ’s Atonement Rights the Wrongs of an Unfair World and Imperfect People [American Fork, Utah: Covenant Communications, Inc., 2024], 145-47)

 

 

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