The Verse That Bothered Me

An Evangelical Reads 2 Nephi 25:23

Moses Receiving the Tablets of the Law (Paris, ca. mid 15th century).

“It is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.”

That’s it.

That single verse from the Book of Mormon long convinced me the doctrine of salvation in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was entirely based on some form of works-righteousness.

At the very least, it was among the least Protestant line I’d ever read.

Or so I thought.

It took awhile, but I’ve come to understand that the application of works to salvation in LDS thought has more to do with degreed exaltation in the afterlife than with salvation per se, but 2 Nephi 25:23 kept bothering me because it reads something like this: “Do the best you can, and God will make up the difference.”

The Martin Luther in me shakes his head: “Nein, Danke.”

Give me sola gratia.

It wasn’t until I read through the Book of Mormon again slowly, more carefully, that I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before. I had to admit that this verse doesn’t communicate what I’d originally assumed, and it might not even mean what some Latter-day Saints have told me it does.

Here’s 2 Nephi 25:23 in full:

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.

Latter-day Saints have quoted this verse ad nauseam to emphasize the necessity of good works in salvation, contra sola fide. Traditional Christians have quoted it, also ad nauseam, as a smoking gun that Mormonism is a works-based religion.

2 Nephi 25:23, to say the least, is a very exhausted verse because both camps generally—there are exceptions—read the phrase “after all we can do” similarly, as a temporal or conditional gate. First, you do everything you can. Then, and only then, grace steps in to cover whatever remains.

On that reading, grace is a supplement to human effort.

But “that’s Pelagianism, Patrick.”

In this essay, I want to argue—likely unoriginally—that this reading is wrong on both sides, and that both sides have been ill-served by it.

My thesis has two parts:

First, 2 Nephi 25:23 isn’t describing a works-grace hybrid soteriology; rather, when read in its context, it’s articulating something more at home in 19th-century Protestantism.

Second, to hammer the first point, “after all we can do,” read in light of 19th-century American usage, means something closer to “despite all we can do.”

I've come to think that what the Book of Mormon is doing here is having Nephi, a sixth-century BC Jew—written by a nineteenth-century American Protestant with his contemporaries in mind—explain to his (Nephi’s) fellow ancient Jews, and to those who would eventually read his record (in the 19th century and beyond, it turns out), why they were still obligated to keep the Law of Moses, despite already knowing salvation would come through the Messiah—all wrapped in something closely resembling Pauline theology.

I know that was probably very confusing; it’s why I need a whole essay to tease it out.

Caveat: I know I’m not the first person to point out the logical (not chronological) reading of 2 Nephi 25:23, especially in light of nineteenth-century American usage of “after” being better understood as “despite”—those aren’t my observations; rather, they belong to two LDS scholars. And I suspect I’m not the first person to argue that second point, either. Let me know via email or in the comments, so I can give proper attribution to the main thought behind this essay.

The Method Behind My Reading

Ok, a quick note before moving on. Anyone reading a text from outside their tradition should be up front about their method. Mine are the ones I learned in seminary, and have put into practice for over thirteen years of exegetical preaching.

1. Grammatical-historical method. Words meant what they meant in the time and place of the writer. A phrase’s meaning today isn’t automatically its meaning in 1830. The interpreter’s first job is to reconstruct the linguistics of the text’s original setting, so far as they are able.

2. Authorial intent. Meaning is what the author was attempting to communicate. This doesn’t mean readers can never draw meaning the author didn’t consciously hold, but it does mean the author set a ceiling for legitimate interpretation. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” can mean I can endure life’s challenges, but it can’t mean I can bench 450 lbs.

3. Immediate literary context. No verse is ever written in a vacuum. The surrounding verses, chapter, and book offer readers the keys to unlock the meaning of smaller portion of the text. A verse ripped from its context can be made to say almost anything.

4. Pastoral application. Exegesis isn’t an end in itself. The point of getting the meaning right is that people are trying to live by the words, so exegesis is the means to application. At least, as a pastor, this is how I preach the Bible. Granted, I won’t find pastoral meaning in a text I don’t considered inspired or canonical (i.e., the Book of Mormon); however, if we assume the original author had a pastoral application in mind, what would it have been?

Apply these four to 2 Nephi 25:23, and something surprising happen, at least, surprising to me.

What’s Nephi Trying to Say?

Before going further, a note for readers unfamiliar with the Book of Mormon.

Latter-day Saints regard it as scripture alongside the Bible. It’s organized into fifteen books—similar to the New Testament is organized into twenty-seven—and 2 Nephi is the second of those books. The narrative tells the story of two peoples, the Nephites and the Lamanites, whom early Latter-day Saints believed were descendants from ancient Israelites led away from Jerusalem before its destruction in 586 BC. God delivered them to the Americas as a new promised land. Nephi, the narrator of this passage, is the founding figure of the Nephites, generally the more righteous group.

Now, 2 Nephi 25 opens with its namesake character, Nephi, explaining why his previous quotations from Isaiah have been so hard for his people to follow.

Isaiah’s prophecies about the Messiah, he says, are difficult for “[his] people” (3) to understand because they don’t know “the manner of prophesying among the Jews” (1). So, Nephi’s going to change his approach. He’s going to “prophesy according to the plainness which hath been with me from the time that I came out from Jerusalem” (4) and he’s going to write in such a way that his people “cannot err” (20).

Let me be crystal clear, is a phrase that we might use today. Nephi wants his contemporaries and “all those that shall receive hereafter these things which I write” (3) to be able to understand what Isaiah’s saying about the future Messiah.

Nephi’s “plainness” (4) begins around verse 12, and runs through the end of the chapter. His argument, condensed, is essentially this: the Messiah will come, he’ll be rejected and crucified by his own people, he’ll rise on the third day, and he alone can save. So, believe in him, and don’t turn away. His name will be Jesus Christ (19).

That sets the frame for verse 23 through to the end of the chapter. Verse 23 says “that it is by grace that we are saved,” and verse 24 immediately adds:

And, notwithstanding we believe in Christ, we keep the law of Moses, and look forward with steadfastness unto Christ, until the law shall be fulfilled.

The word “notwithstanding” is key here. Verse 24 is answering a question raised by verse 23: If salvation is by grace through the coming Messiah, then why on earth are Nephi’s people still keeping the Law of Moses?

Great question.

Nephi’s answer is that the Law hasn’t been fulfilled yet because, it being the 6th century BC (or Before Christ), obviously, Christ hasn’t come yet. The people who know the Messiah is coming still live under the covenant that points to him.

So, now, verses 23 and 24 belong together as a single answer to a single problem. The problem is covenantal and chronological; it’s not really a soteriological problem at all. Nephi isn’t building a doctrine of grace-plus-works; rather, he’s explaining, to his own people—and to the eventual readers of his record—why proto-Christian Jews kept the Torah.

Make sense?

It’s important to grasp that point before moving on.

Put another way, Nephi is, essentially, say, “Yes, yes, of course—we know the Law doesn’t save because Christ alone saves, but he hasn’t come yet, so we keep the Law until he does.”

“After All We Can Do”

But, still, what about “after all we can do”?

It sounds like Nephi is saying, “We know Christ will save us by grace, but we have to put forth the effort first, which is why we keep the Law.”

But I don’t think that’s the right interpretation.

LDS scholars have noticed how “after all we can do” is logical, rather than chronological, and, when put back into its original linguistic environment, means something more like “despite all we can do.”¹

Consider these examples, collected from one of those scholars:

• Thomas Blackwell describes finite humanity as “owing his all to God, and having nothing of his own, and who, after all he can do, is still an unprofitable Servant.”

• Samuel Seyer wrote: “It is certain that after all we can do, still we are unprofitable servants.”

• Beilby Porteus: “…after all his endeavours, and the very utmost he can do, he is still not only an unprofitable, but too often an ungrateful and disobedient servant.”

Catch the drift?

In each case, the author is denying that human effort, no matter how thorough, can produce merit before God. These sentences wouldn’t make any sense if “after” were read temporally. Blackwell isn’t saying humanity becomes unprofitable only once every possible work is completed. He’s saying humanity remains unprofitable regardless of what we do, so we are at the complete and utter mercy of God’s grace alone to save us.

That’s classic Protestant soteriology. I preached this same sort of thing on Sundays.

Later examples make the connection to grace explicit.²

• John Hersey, writing in 1831—one year after the Book of Mormon was published—wrote: “your own wisdom and greatness must be laid in the grave—it

  is after all you can do, the free and unmerited gift of God.”

• An 1834 Evangelical Magazine article argued that human effort “unaided by the immediate operation of the Spirit on the heart” is “altogether inadequate to the production of holy affections. . . . And after all they can do, without this

  Divine influence on the heart, they remain utterly unprepared for

  the kingdom of heaven.”

• An 1840 volume titled The Fireside Friend puts it plainly: “after all that you can do, you will find, on examining yourself by the word of God, that you fall short

  of your duty, and need pardon and forgivenesss.”

This phrase, “after all you can do” is a specific rhetorical phrase used to insist that grace is unmerited, i.e., that no amount of human striving closes the gap between sinner and God Almighty.

You can try to jump to the moon, and maybe you achieve a greater height than your neighbors by a few inches, but you’re still off by 238,900 miles, give or take a few thousand.

That’s the sort of thing the author of the Book of Mormon is trying to communicate.

Reading 2 Nephi 25:23 as “it is by grace that we are saved, despite all we can do” isn’t a novel or clever reading; rather, it’s the reading that would have come naturally to informed early nineteenth-century American reader.

Like it or not, the Book of Mormon author here is saying:

It is by grace that we are saved, despite every good work we can perform.

Indeed, LDS apostle Dieter Uchtdorf wondered “if sometimes we [Latter-day Saints] misinterpret the phrase ‘after all we can do’” He said, explicitly: “‘after’ does not equal ‘because.’”

I don’t think he needs to wonder.

He’s exactly right.

Verse 25 is the Hermeneutical Key

Return, now, what Nephi’s arguing. Verse 23 states his purpose—i.e., to persuade his hearers to believe in Christ and to be reconciled to God—and gives the theological ground for that purpose—i.e., because grace saves, despite all we can do.

Verse 24 heads off the obvious question. “If grace saves through the Messiah, why the Law?”

Well, because, says Nephi, the Law hasn’t been fulfilled yet.

Then, verse 25 pulls it all together.

For, for this end was the law given; wherefore the law hath become dead unto us, and we are made alive in Christ because of our faith; yet we keep the law because of the commandments.

Let’s walk through this slowly.

“For, for this end was the law given.” What law? The law of Moses, the one Nephi just said his people keep (see 24). What end? The end just described in verse 24, pointing forward to Christ, until the law shall be fulfilled.

“wherefore . . .” What’s the ‘wherefore’ there for? To point us back to verse 23, that it is by grace that we are saved, despite all we can do.

“the law hath become dead unto us.” In principle, the Law of Moses is dead to Nephi’s people as a means of salvation. Compare this with Paul in Galatians 2:19: “For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.” It’s Paul’s same theology, only anachronistically applied to someone who lived centuries before him. The atoning mechanism of the Law was never its power source; rather, grace was always the basis for its power. Therefore, the Law, considered as a means of salvation, is dead.

“and we are made alive in Christ because of our faith.” Because grace saves, faith in Christ is what makes us alive. Works of the Law never did, because they never could to begin with.

And yet, says Nephi…

“we keep the law because of the commandments.” Here’s the conundrum for Nephi’s people, i.e., proto-Christian Jews living six hundred years before Christ with full knowledge of the gospel. Christ hasn’t yet come, obviously, so faith in the coming Messiah is what animates them. And, yet, they still keep the Law.

But why? What’s the point?

Because, God commanded it.

Interestingly, the word “commandment” appears only once in this chapter, but throughout 2 Nephi, it consistently refers to direct instructions from God. So, the sense is that they keep the Law of Moses because God said so, even though they know its saving function is provisional, and its days are numbered.

When read together, verses 23–25 reflect Pauline theology. Grace saves, despite all we can do (see 23). The ancient Jews kept the Law because it hadn’t yet been fulfilled (see 24). The Law was dead to them in principle, because they knew faith in Christ is what makes them alive, and they only keep the Law because God commanded it (see 25).

Again, that’s proto-Pauline theology of the Law compressed into a handful of verses.

Reconciliation and the Apostle Paul

I’d like to elaborate on that last point because the Pauline echoes in 2 Nephi 25:23–25 are hard to miss. The apostle makes the original move in Galatians 3:23–25:

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

The Law guards and anticipates and points forward to the Lord Jesus. So, when the Messiah arrived, the pointer expired—it was no longer needed because the thing pointed to had come. Nephi’s people are on the pre-arrival side of the pointer, which is why he explains things they way he does.

The reconciliation language in verse 23 also reminds the reader of Pauline theology. Reconciliation is among Paul’s preferred categories for what Christ accomplished on the cross.

• “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son . . .” (Romans 5:10).

• “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. . . . God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).

• “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death . . .” (Col. 1:21-22a).

Reconciliation is what God does through Christ, on the ground of grace, apart from human merit. It’s not something we start, and then God supplements. The book of Galatians is, in essence, making that same point, warning that any reconciliation apart from Christ nullifies His finished work.

Now, consider the layering of the Book of Mormon to understand what the original author intended to say in 2 Nephi 25:23.

The text presents Nephi, a sixth-century BC Jewish figure, writing to fellow Jews about a Messiah he expects, but hasn’t seen yet. The text also presents itself, through the persona of Nephi, to nineteenth-century American Protestant readers who know the Messiah has come.

Nephi’s rhetorical situation requires him to hold both audiences at once.

So, to his own people, he must explain why they still keep Torah, but to his eventual readers, he must communicate what the Messiah accomplishes.

Add to this dual-audience the vocabulary the author uses—i.e., Jacobean English employed by an early nineteenth-century American—and the theology the author deploys—i.e., Protestant doctrine of grace: reconciliation, faith in Christ, salvation by grace despite all we can do.

Tracking? (I’m sorry if not; this was quite a complicated thing to explain…)

Let me show this concept visually.

Scroll back up to the top of the essay, and examine the image. It’s from a 14th century French Bible.

Moses stands on Sinai and extends both hands to touch the tablets containing the Law.³ On the other side, the Law is held out by the two hands of Christ-Logos. Notice, the Law comes from Christ because the Law points to Christ. Moses receives it from Christ.

That’s late medieval Christian theology that the Book of Mormon author, through Nephi, is expressing, because both are the theology Paul laid out in his epistles.

The Law of Moses was a schoolmaster to God’s people, until Christ should come. This is a very old Christian conviction. The Book of Mormon, in its own way, is expressing it.

Two Big Takeaways

If this reading is right, then, in my opinion, both the standard LDS and traditional Christian could benefit from revisiting this verse.

First, the traditional Christian polemical use of this verse turns out to be quite fragile because 2 Nephi 25:23 isn’t a proof-text that the Book of Mormon teaches work-righteousness. Now, that doesn’t resolve every soteriological difference between traditional Christianity and Latter-day Saint theology—there are real differences, I’ve written about them elsewhere, and I think legalism is a serious issue in the LDS Church, I’ve not been shy about my opinion on this. And neither does my reading authenticate the Book of Mormon as an inspired text worthy of canonicity.

At least, those aren’t the conclusions I was lead to; rather, to me, it shows how deeply embedded in Protestant theology the original author(s) of this passage was.

What it does, however, is takes this particular verse off the table as ammunition. Evangelicals who quote this verse to prove Mormonism is legalistic are using something the text doesn’t support, and will need to look elsewhere for that evidence.

The LDS reading has a different task, though, because the “prerequisite gate” interpretation has been read to me so often that, apparently, it’s become an identity marker. I think it’s ill-serving Latter-day Saint readers, though. If “all we can do” is the prerequisite for grace, then no one qualifies.

Consider Ephesians 2:8–10

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Grace saves, through faith, not of works. Then, works arrive in verse 10, not as the price of grace but as its product.

Just as the sun produces light and heat, so faith produces good works. It’s impossible for faith not to produce good works, just as it is impossible for the sun not to produce light and heat.

In short, first, God saves, and then his people walk in the works he laid out for them.

Notice how that’s precisely the sequence Nephi describes. First, “We are made alive in Christ because of our faith,” and, second, “we keep the law because of the commandments” (2 Nephi 25:25).

Made alive first, by grace, through faith. Then the works, keeping the Law, follow, because God commanded them.

That’s why the “prerequisite-gate” reading of 2 Nephi 25 falls apart. I’ve heard Latter-day Saints explain, essentially, that “after all we can do” is the toll we pay, and grace is what waits on the far side.

But neither Paul nor the author of 2 Nephi 25 place works before grace. Both put grace first and works after, as fruit to receive rather than a fee to pay.

In the end, it’s God alone—through the atonement of the Son by the power of the Spirit—that we are redeemed from sin and death. That’s why we can say, soli Deo gloria: to God alone be the glory for our salvation.

📘 Out Now! 40 Questions About Mormonism

If you’ve appreciated this essay, you’ll love 40 Questions About Mormonism (Kregel Academic). It’s written for traditional Christians who want clear, charitable, and biblically faithful answers to the most common questions about the Latter-day Saint faith and tradition.

ORDER TODAY and download three free chapters.

1. Daniel O. McClellan, “2 Nephi 25:23 in Literary and Rhetorical Context,” JBMS 29 (2020):1–19. Stephen E. Robinson earlier suggested the same when he interpreted “after”as logical rather than chronologically (i.e., that grace does not follow “all we can do” but comes regardless of “all we can do”). So Robinson: “the preposition ‘after’ in 2 Nephi 25:23 to be a preposition of separation rather than a preposition of time. It denotes logical separateness rather than temporal sequence. We are saved by grace ‘apart from all we can do’ or ‘all we can do notwithstanding,’ or even ‘regardless of all we can do’” (Believing Christ: The Parable of the Bicycle and Other Good News [Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1992], 91–92).

2. These three are quoted in McClellan, “2 Nephi 25:23 in Literary and Rhetorical Context,” 12.

3. The horns in this painting seem weird, I know, but they represent the glory with which Moses’s face shone after being tin the presence of God. This is because the Latin Vulgate translates Exodus 34:29 qāran as cornuta (Lt. “horns”) rather than “shone” (KJV/ESV/NIV), while the LXX translates it with doxas. Still, weird, but I’m assuming it made total sense to Latin-reading Christians in fourteenth Paris.