About 13 years ago I was sitting in the living room of a man who was studying to become presbyterian minister. He was in divinity school and was as interested in converting me to his faith as I was to converting him to mine. I was a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints.
Most of our discussions centered around faith, works, and grace. If I understand his position correctly, its very close to the evangelical idea that one needs to only have faith in Jesus Christ to be saved. Let it be said here that his position was very well thought out and based mainly on the writings of Paul in the New Testament.
He believed that once you except the Savior, you are saved and you simply cannot fall from grace. In other words, you are done. It does not matter what kind of life you lead from then on because Christ has covered you.
That isn’t to say that my friend would condone a life of sin. In fact, he would hope that you would try to model your life after Christ only because of the love that Jesus has shown to you by saving you. But if you don’t live your life for Christ, He will still save you because you have faith in Him. I asked him if he believed that a man who is “saved” and then went out and murdered people at will would still be “saved”.
He answered yes, it doesn’t matter if he murdered he would still be saved. Jesus Christ takes care of it all as long as you have faith. But back to this story a little later…
Latter-Day Saints often get painted in a dark light by our Christian friends because of our emphasis on works. After all, didn’t Paul say:
Eph. 2:8
8 For by agrace are ye bsaved through cfaith; and that not of yourselves: it is the dgift of God
And…
Titus 3:5
5 Not by works of arighteousness which we have done, but according to his bmercy he saved us, by the cwashing of regeneration, and drenewing of the Holy Ghost;
I’m sure I could show many more scriptural examples. To clarify the issue I would like to share with you now, and hopefully better than I did to my presbyterian friend of how Mormons view these scriptures and our relationship with Jesus Christ.
Faith And Works
Mormons often turn to the book of James to clarify the writings of Paul. James tells us of a way we can determine if our faith is real. Real and alive faith is always accompanied by works or action.
James 2: 14, 17-18, 20-22, 24-26
14 aWhat doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath bfaith, and have not works? can faith save him?18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my afaith by my bworks.21 Was not Abraham our father ajustified by works, when he had boffered Isaac his son upon the altar?
Being “Saved”
What does it mean to be “Saved?”
Latter-Day Saints have a very different view of what happens after death than creedal Christianity. Simply put, we don’t believe in a simple “Heaven” or “Hell”.
To a methodist, baptist, or Lutheran, the term “Saved” refers to Jesus’ power to save us from Hell. To the Latter-day Saint, the term “Saved” can mean being saved from “Hell” but also can mean other things as well.
For instance, we believe that because of Jesus Christ’s atonement and resurrection ALL mankind will be resurrected. (John 5: 25-29) This is regardless of how much they sinned or if they believed in Jesus or not. You could call that a form of Salvation. All being saved from the grave.
We also believe that in the end there will be different glories or heavens assigned each of us depending on our (true) faith in Christ. To the Latter-day Saint, there is only a tiny group of people called the “Sons of Perdition” that will not benefit from the great sacrifice and atonement of Jesus Christ. These are people who commit the unpardonable sin spoken of by Jesus:
31 ¶ Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven aunto men: but the bblasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall cnot be forgiven unto men.
These people will be cast out with the Devil and his angels. Everyone else will in some way be “saved,” or receive a kingdom of glory.
Having said that, most Mormons would only consider themselves “saved” if they end up in the highest kingdom which is called the Celestial Kingdom. This is the salvation most often talked about in the scriptures. To enter this kingdom, you must have (true) faith in Jesus Christ, repent of your sins, be baptized, receive the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end of your mortal life.
Beyond that there is yet a last and final form of being “Saved”. This is called “Eternal Life” or “Exaltation.” This is the highest level within the highest kingdom or glory. It is reserved for those who have made sacred covenants in the temple including eternal marriage and have been true and faithful to those promises made to God. Here you live with God Himself and with all of your family relationships in tact.
Why baptism is essential.
There are several reasons why Baptism is essential, but I would like to touch on just one. You see, to the evangelical, once you pray the prayer of faith you have been saved and you ever more in a state of grace. But this contradicts what the scriptures say. I would like to cite just one scripture to prove it:
Galations 5:4
4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the alaw; ye are fallen from bgrace.
Wait! Did Paul just use the words “fallen from grace???” Yes he did. In context he is telling the Galations that if they go back to their faith in Moses’ Law, they are no longer under the grace of Jesus Christ. In other words, they have lost their faith so they are fallen.
So going back to James, we can also lose our faith, or our faith can become dormant or dead if it does not include action or works. Simply put if our works do not provide evidence of our faith, then we do not have true faith. If we do not have true faith, then we do not have access to the Grace of Jesus Christ. If we do not have access to the grace of Jesus, then we do not have access to Heaven.
I would submit to you that every time we undertake to sin (willfully) our faith has become dead and we need to repent in order to be restored to grace.
The evangelical might scoff at that and say something like “so do we just jump in and out of Christ grace constantly then?” In fact I’ll take you back to my story now. When I tried to explain this to my presbyterian friend he gave me a scenario. He said in effect “what if you were in a car accident and the last thought you had was a swear word? Would you then be damned in Hell even though you had tried to live a Christ like life?”
I believe the answer to this question is no. And here is the reason why.
After we show true faith, and after we repent of our sins, we enter into the covenant of Baptism. This covenant is very similar to the covenant we make at marriage. Just like you don’t divorce your spouse for the way they eat grape fruit God is not going to disown us for the small mistakes we make as long as we are consistently showing forth works meet for repentance.
If we are striving to overcome our weaknesses we will be found safely within the bounds of Christ’s grace. Because of the baptismal covenant we have made with Jesus, we are His. And just like in a marriage, only heavy, repeated infractions with no willingness to repent will fully break that covenant.
Jesus is in the business of saving souls. He knows our hearts. He is merciful to those who love and serve Him. As the Apostle Elder Jeffery R. Holland said:
When we join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, (Through Baptism) we board the Good Ship Zion and sail with her wherever she goes until she comes into that millennial port. We stay in the boat, through squalls and stills, through storms and sunburn, because that is the only way to the promised land. This Church is the Lord’s vehicle for crucial doctrines, ordinances, covenants, and keys that are essential to exaltation, and one cannot be fully faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ without striving to be faithful in the Church, which is its earthly institutional manifestation. To new convert and longtime member alike, we declare in the spirit of Nephi’s powerful valedictory exhortation: “Ye have entered in by the gate; … [but] now, … after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow path, I would ask if all is done? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; … press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, … and endure to the end, behold, thus … ye shall have eternal life.” 5
Jesus said, “Without me ye can do nothing.” 6 I testify that that is God’s truth. Christ is everything to us and we are to “abide” in Him permanently, unyieldingly, steadfastly, forever. For the fruit of the gospel to blossom and bless our lives, we must be firmly attached to Him, the Savior of us all, and to this His Church, which bears His holy name. He is the vine that is our true source of strength and the only source of eternal life. In Him we not only will endure but also will prevail and triumph in this holy cause that will never fail us. May we never fail it nor fail Him I pray in the sacred and holy name of Jesus Christ, amen.
”
Of this I add my witness that faith, repentance, baptism, The Holy Ghost, and endurance to the end is how we can access to the saving grace of Jesus Christ. And when we are found within His grace, we have true salvation.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Please click here to chat with Missionaries.
The most common misunderstanding of grace and works I have witnessed from the Mormon church was just summed up in the whole article written above. The jist of it all is “Christians can do whatever they want as long as they say ‘Hallelujah Jesus!'”
No saved Christian in their right mind would tell you it’s OK to commit a murder because Jesus has got you covered. A follower of Jesus would never abuse the grace of God in that way. We understand that we all sin, all the time, but to willfully commit a sin against God’s word is simply not done because we believe the Holy Spirit lives in us and is constantly changing us. This is not to say that you can’t be forgiven of murder, because the bible says clearly that you can be. It just means that you cannot call yourself a follower of Jesus if you would go out and murder someone because Jesus just covered it. We understand the significance of God’s one and only son, being humiliated, beaten and murdered as an innocent man to atone for us. We don’t blow it off as a casual event in history!
What you should be discussing (and also why I can say that Ephesians and James do not contradict one another) has to do with the motivation for works rather than just works on their own. I have a great example.
My mother is Mormon and she told me to be careful because there are always people that will take advantage of me if I’m too generous. I told her that as a Christian, it’s impossible to give too much and be taken advantage of if I do it with the a heart for God. She was confused. I told her that Jesus said “If you do it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it unto me.”
She gave me an example of a time she took dinner to a friend that had surgery and the friend said “I really wish I had an apple pie.” She said that she felt like she was being taken advantage of. This is what I mean by a heart for God. If she truly understood she was serving God, nobody could ask too much of us because we owe God everything. James isn’t saying “forget the grace– it’s about works.” He’s saying that if Christ lives in you, you’ll naturally be inclined to serve people. He’s not saying that you have to serve people to get a better spot in heaven. That is twisting God’s word and in my opinion, the book of James is taking a beating by that kind of twisting.
Also, you want to blow off what Paul said. You didn’t even quote the entire verse! He said, “It is by grace we are saved, not by works, so that no man can boast.”
A Follower of Jesus does not boast for themselves…they glorify God through their service. A Mormon seeks to gain access (and glorify themselves) through service.
So next time, look at your heart rather than your deeds!
Thanks for this clarification of a Mormon view of salvation, grace et al. Sometimes it seemed to me that this was rather unclear, I appreciate you’ve attempted here to interact with “christian friends” honestly.
Many thanks
Jonathan from spritzophrenia
Natalie,
Sorry I’m just now getting back to you, I’ve been very busy. I think we agree with each other in many ways. I’m happy you don’t believe in the calvinist view that once you are saved you cannot fall from grace.
It’s true that motives can be wrong and works alone will never get us to heaven. Jesus is the only one that can make that happen. King Benjamin taught that we are all beggers and that no matter what we do it will never be enough.
I can assure you I didn’t purposely withhold the entire verse when quoting Paul.. it’s one of my favorite verses. King Benjamin in the same sermon referenced above also makes the point that we have no reason to boast in our own works:
Having said that, there are a couple of reasons that works are important, namely:
1. They are evidence of our faith. If we are not bringing forth fruit meet for repentance, then we don’t have true faith in Jesus Christ, and therefore, do not have access to His divine grace to save us. This is the kind of faith both you and I belive in. We don’t believe that a person who is willfully commiting murder etc is a true deciple of Jesus Christ, and thus is a parkator of His gift of Mercy and Grace.
2. God has made us so that we can do good things and He expects us to use that power. We might disagree in this point but I would like to spot-light the differences below…
Your statement “A Mormon seeks to gain access (and glorify themselves) through service.” may be true for some, but is not what the Church teaches as the right motive. The Church and the Savior Himself teaches that service should grow out of our love for Jesus and His incredible gift to us. It is evidence of our faith in Him and evidence of the sanctification that is taking place in our hearts through the Gift of the Holy Ghost.
But service is something good we CAN do. Mormons don’t believe that we are all born inherently evil. That is a fundamental difference between Calvinist belief and the LDS faith.
My presbytiern minister friend really did believe that a saved person would still be saved even if they murdered. That may not be what you believe, but it follows Calvinistic thought correctly. (Calvinists are found mostly today in the Presbyterian, Southern Baptist, and Evangelical branches of Christianity)
Point 4 of John Calvins Genevan Confession says:
IV. Natural Man
“We acknowledge man by nature to be blind, darkened in understanding, and full of corruption and perversity of heart, so that of himself he has no power to be able to comprehend the true knowledge of God as is proper, nor to apply himself to good works. But on the contrary, if he is left by God to what he is by nature, he is only able to live in ignorance and to be abandoned to all iniquity. Hence he has need to be illumined by God, so that he come to the right knowledge of his salvation, and thus to be redirected in his affections and reformed to the obedience of the righteousness of God.”
As bolded above, they believe the man is incapable of good works and is full of perversity of heart…
This doctrine has led to the idea that because Men and Women cannot do good, They also cannot fall from grace once they are saved. In other words, once they are saved, they now cannot do anything bad in the eyes of God. They believe that we are culpable for Adams sin and that every infant child is born a sinful creature full of guilt. Also every saved person is not accountable for their works anymore. That isn’t to say they believe saved people should go out and sin, but only if they did, it would not matter.
Mormons do not believe this. Our second article of faith is:
“We believe that man will be punished for his own sins and not for Adams transgression.”
Here is how it works:
Everyone is born into the world innocent. They inherit a fallen nature from Adam and Eve (not a sinful nature, but a fallen nature that is subject to temptation and the appetites of the flesh) They also inherit a divine nature from Heavenly Father because before this life each child was literally begotten of the Father who is the Father of our spirits.
No child is accountable for any decisions made before the age of accountability. This is because they do not understand fully what they are doing wrong. All children who die before the age of 8 years old are automatically saved by Jesus Christs atonement. After the age of 8, they are accountable and everyone who has ever lived has chosen wrong or sinned at some time or another in their life except for Jesus Christ. No matter what they do, they cannot be saved without the mercy and Grace of Jesus Christ. The way to access this Grace is to:
1. Have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
2. Repent of your sins
3. Be Baptized and enter into a special covenant with Christ
4. Receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost by the Laying on of hands by those who have authority
5. Endure faithfully to the end of their mortal lives.
Everyone who has ever lived in this world (even those who lived before Christ) will have a chance to accept His gospel in this life or the next. If they have the chance in this life but do not accept it, they will not be saved in His kingdom. If they do not have the chance in this life, but accept it in the next, they will be saved in His kingdom.
Mormonism gives the opportunity for everyone equally who has ever lived on this earth to hear the Gospel message and to accept or reject it.
Because we have a divine nature, being the literal offspring of God, we have inherited the ability to do good. It is expected that we will use this divine inheritance to show our faith in Jesus Christ and to grow to become like our Father in Heaven. When we do this, we show the evidence of our faith and because our faith is pure, we are encircled in the arms of Jesus’ grace and mercy and made clean. We also change. We become better. We go through the process of sanctification. We eventually will become like our Father in Heaven.
That is the fundamental difference. Calvinists believe we are all born sinners. We believe we are born innocent but can and do sin (often in my case!). Calvinists believe unsaved people are incapable of doing good of their own free will. We believe that God has given everyone agency to choose between the good and the evil, and the ability to repent and be forgiven of the sins we commit through the mercy of Jesus Christs atonement. Adams sin is swallowed up in Christ and no one is accountable for it. This means we are only accountable for those things that we have control over.
Calvinists beleive that once in a state of grace, there is nothing a person can do to fall from that grace. We believe that just as Adam and Eve fell we too can fall, and do fall, so we need access to the Saviors atonement to be forgiven and to be saved. After Baptism we embark on a life of learning, repentance, and sanctification. If we stay on this path we are guaranteed salvation through the merits and mercy of Jesus Christ alone.
I hope this clarifies where we agree and may disagree. I believe you are a sincere follower of Christ and may He bless you. I testify that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is His church. I testify that the authority to baptize is found within this church. I also testify that baptisim is a pre-requiste of Salvation. If you would like to know more here is a link:CLICK HERE
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
[…] was a recent comment that was very interesting. You can read it here. Below is my reply to that […]