So. Good week. Well... yeah. It was a good week.
First
off, I remembered something I was going to write in a letter home a
while back but forgot, then I looked back in my planner and remembered. A
couple weeks ago, Elder Peery turned to me at the end of the day and
said, "You know who you remind me of?"
"Who?"
"The raccoon from Over The Hedge. Mixed with the squirrel."
Well
thank you Elder Peery. I will actually take that as high praise. Those
happen to be two of my greatest role models. ;) We had a good laugh
about that one.
Canada is still pretty cold. It
continues to snow then melt then snow then hail then melt then rain
then freeze then snow then melt then snow. Yeah. That's my life. And
it's a good one. I'm definitely setting records for how fast one can
scrape/brush the ice off of a windshield and get back into the car.
There's an important point I want to bring up this week that has come up a lot in these past few months.
The importance of faith, and the importance of works.
We
know from the New Testament that faith, without works, is dead. (see
James 2:17-18) We also know that Paul states multiple times in his
epistles that men are saved by grace, not works. So... how do we
reconcile these two points? Was James wrong? Was Paul wrong?
Of course not. They were both men of God. So... what's the answer?
To start off, let me make an important point.
Works
do not save us. Baptism, confirmation, temple ordinances, and just
being a good person don't save us. Repentance doesn't save us. Faith
doesn't save us. Enduring to the end doesn't save us.
Jesus saves us.
All
of these things we do and are - faith in Jesus Christ and His
Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost,
temple ordinances, attaining Christlike attributes, etc. - are nothing
without the Savior. Without a living, resurrected, perfect Messiah, all
of these "works" would be dust in the proverbial wind.
Now.
To explain further, there is an important change which took place with
the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Mankind, without Christ's
Atonement, would be left under a law of justice, requiring that every
mistake or sin or imperfection be repaid in full by him who committed
it. This would mean that all who ever lived, who live, or who ever will
live would be literally damned, unable to progress or learn or grow for
the rest of eternity.
That is not our Father in Heaven's plan.
In
order to progress, we needed to be mortal. But being mortal meant
making mistakes. And making mistakes, under the law of justice, meant
damnation. Unless.
Unless a perfect Being,
namely Jesus the Christ, became mortal, and lived perfectly, and
performed a perfect Atonement for every last one of our mistakes and
failures and shortcomings and imperfections.
Now. Here's the important part.
Does
the fact that Christ lived and died for us, the fact that He bled in
the garden of Gethsemane for us, eliminate any personal responsibility?
Do we really only have to look inside our selves and say we accept His
Atonement, and we're automatically placed on a list of "Saved Souls"
somewhere in the heavens?
Absolutely not.
The
Atonement of Jesus Christ took us from under the law of justice and
placed us under the law of grace. This means that it is no longer our
works which save us, but those of Jesus Christ. We no longer have to
live perfectly to live with God again.
But this is not a free ride, either.
Christ
does indeed ask things of us. He asks us for faith in Him, which, as we
see in James 2, manifests itself by WORKS. We show our faith through
repentance, baptism by immersion, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost,
receiving sacred ordinances in the temple of God, and working to be more
like Jesus Christ. But these things we do, they don't save us.
They QUALIFY us to BE saved.
Christ
can not, and will not, save a soul who chooses NOT to be saved. And we
choose whether we will let Him save us. We choose by showing Him our
faith through our works.
"For we labor
diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to
believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is
by grace that we are saved, after all we can do."
2 Nephi 25:23
It is by Christ's grace we are saved.
After all we can DO.
En avant!
Elder Bryan McOmber
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