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Grace is a beautiful word. It has many meanings. However, the type of grace I am talking about is the grace of God. Many religions believe that they are saved by grace. Some believe by simply accepting Christ into your heart, you are saved. Do Mormons believe in grace? The simple answer is, yes. But, maybe not in the same way that others believe in grace. However, I feel like grace is something that us Mormons forget about. So much so that sometimes, I think we forget that we also are saved by God’s grace.
A book that changed the way I looked at this topic was titled, “Believing Christ” by Stephen E. Robinson. It talks about how as Latter-Day Saints, we need to believe in Christ, and more specifically believe what He taught. There is a whole chapter titled, “Saved by Grace” in this book. He writes:
“For some reason, however, some Latter-Day Saints are uneasy about the doctrine of grace. I believe this is because they have been so turned off by certain non-LDS interpretations of grace that they have rejected the term altogether, thus throwing out the baby with the bath water.” (pg. 66)
He goes on to explain how grace can exist even when we believe that works are important, too.
“When we accept Christ and enter into his covenant, the demands of justice, which are demands for a perfection we do not have, are met by the grace of God, and we are saved….But we can still refuse grace. We can resist God’s love and reject his covenant. Christ stands t the door and knocks, but he never kicks it in. We must open the door.” (pg. 69)
As a mother, there are days when I have really bad days. I feel defeated. Like a failure. Like I can’t do anything right. Yet, I think as latter-day saints, we often forget that we have to try as hard as we can, and ultimately we won’t be perfect. God does have to make up the rest. That is why he provided a Savior. And, that is belief in grace. We forget that though. And, if we can try to remember it daily. We might just forgive ourselves a little bit more.