Grace, Works, and a Preposition

Verse 10 is the half of Ephesians 2 that rarely gets quoted. Having said salvation is not of works, Paul immediately says we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, prepared in advance for us to walk in. Works are excluded as a basis and required as an outcome, in consecutive sentences.

Both quote Genesis 15:6 — "Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness" — and reach opposite-sounding conclusions, because Paul is looking at Genesis 15 and James at Genesis 22. Paul sees a man trusting a promise before he had done anything. James sees the same man, decades later, on Moriah, demonstrating that the trust was real.

Latter-day Saints have no need to reconcile these by subordinating one to the other. The Book of Mormon holds both without embarrassment: salvation is by the merits, mercy and grace of the Holy One of Israel (2 Nephi 2:8), and "none but the truly penitent are saved" (Alma 42:24).

Read as "grace applies once you have exhausted your own efforts," this verse has produced a great deal of quiet despair — because nobody ever finishes doing all they can do. That reading also makes Nephi contradict Moroni, who says flatly that it is by grace that we are made perfect (Moroni 10:32–33).

Note also the immediate context. Nephi is not writing a formula for salvation; he is explaining why his people keep the law of Moses while looking to Christ (2 Nephi 25:24–27). The verse's own purpose is to subordinate obedience to Christ, not to condition grace on obedience.

Both, D&C 20 insists, come through grace. That is the distinctively Latter-day Saint contribution to this argument: the tradition that separated justification from sanctification and assigned the second to human effort is not the one the Restoration inherited. Here grace is not only the pardon at the beginning but the power throughout.

Helaman 3:35 gives the process in one sentence, and it is worth memorising: they "did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God."

Yielding, not achieving. Which is where King Benjamin's natural man ends up too (Mosiah 3:19), and where Ether 12:27 puts it: grace is what makes weak things strong, and the condition is humility rather than accomplishment.