Enlightening take, so thank you! A few books further on in the Book of Mormon, a righteous king preached to his people essentially the same thing. Mosiah 2:21 reads, "I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants." There is more in the verses previous and after, as you rightly state about context. No active Latter-day Saint believe salvation is based on works. Great article, again, thank you!
Super interesting. You make a strong case against the works as prerequisite reading of this verse. I’m adopting this view of the verse. What I don’t see in this chapter is an Evangelical-style chronological first grace, second works pattern. I see a grace “and” we keep the law, and a grace “yet” we keep the law.
Ah yes, the never ending Protestant view that "no no, God doesn't really care if do anything good.... there's zero difference between the man who sleeps in on Sunday and goes fishing and the guy who is out there at the soup kitchen 3 times a week and donating his time and money to widows! God loves them both equally and will save both equally, so..... yeah, you should be the guy helping the widow, but if you are the lazy bum instead, no big deal! You are saved, brother!"
We are all in the pit, and Jesus is going around offering everyone a ladder to climb out of the pit. Can the man who gets out of the pit by climbing the ladder boast that he saved himself? Of course not. But... you gotta climb the ladder! And Protestants say that no, no one has to climb the ladder. Just accept that Jesus saves and do nothing!
Maybe that's a caricature, but every single time I have run into a Protestant minister they go all "Grace alone! No need for works, ever! You can't earn your way to Heaven and God will punish you for thinking you must do something! God doesn't care!" and I ask... Did they actually read what Jesus said or are they just following a version of Paul that Paul is horrified at? And why would God require the Law of Moses and then tell Christians, "actually, that was all a lie. All you really have to do is say a little prayer and you're good. No sacrifice needed, no nothing, just your little prayer and if you have saving faith maybe you'll mow someone's lawn once in a while. None of that messy sacrifice and keeping commandments required! yes, I hated the Jews and gave them a different way to heaven. But trust Me, God is no respecter of Persons! You get the easy way, and people before I came, well, they got the hard way!"
That’s not Protestantism you’ve described; rather, it’s what Protestants themselves call “cheap grace,” which is “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” (Diedrich Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship).
Yes, God absolutely cares if His people "do good," because we were "created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Eph 2:10).
Here is a partial list of significant Protestants with whom the Protestants you've described are out of step (from a theology class I teach to the low-church, evangelical Protestant church where I pastor, i.e., this is what I, a Protestant pastor, tell fellow Protestants):
Martin Luther: “Oh, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith; and so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly. It does not ask whether there are good works to do, but before the question rises, it has already done them, and is always at the doing of them. He who does not these works is a faithless man.”
Augsburg Confession: "Also they teach that this faith is bound to bring forth good fruits, and that it is necessary to do good works commanded by God, because of God’s will..."
Philip Melanchthon: "Nor, indeed, is this faith an idle knowledge, neither can it coexist with mortal sin, but it is a work of the Holy Ghost, whereby we are freed from death, and terrified minds are encouraged and quickened."
John Calvin: "It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light."
Heidelberg Catechism: "But doth not this doctrine make men careless and profane? Answer. By no means: for it is impossible that those, who are implanted into Christ by a true faith, should not bring forth fruits of thankfulness."
Thirty-Nine Articles: "Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s Judgement; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith; insomuch that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit."
Formula of Concord: "First, there is no controversy among our theologians concerning the following points in this article, namely: that it is God’s will, order, and command that believers should walk in good works; and that truly good works are not those which every one contrives himself from a good intention, or which are done according to traditions of men, but those which God Himself has prescribed and commanded in His Word."
Westminster Confession of Faith: "These good works, done in obedience to God's commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith: and by them believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify God, whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus thereunto, that, having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, eternal life."
In sum, justifying faith is the sole instrument by which a sinner lays hold of Christ's righteousness, and that this same faith inevitably produces the fruit of obedience, so that that a professed faith without holiness is no faith at all.
The position you've encountered is a caricature of Protestantism, even if it’s held by self-professing Protestants themselves. They are wrong to believe God expects no good works from His people, but it is equally wrong to believe good works is what creates God’s people.
I hope you will help to correct this caricature by refusing to perpetuate it.
Every Protestant I ever met who wanted to debate with me preached, essentially, cheap grace because otherwise there's no real difference between our view (the LDS view) of grace + works and what you just posted. But salvation by "Faith alone!" meant and has always been directed at us members of the Church to mean nothing more than what you call cheap grace. "God never requires works! It's faith alone! No works, and if you think you need to do anything you are preaching Satan!"
I heard it over and over and over. Maybe you protestants say something different to each other, but when it comes to the "grace and works discussion" with members of the Church of Jesus Christ, your side has always dropped back to cheap grace. Because we evil Mormons think we can earn our way to heaven, blah blah blah so God must only want you to say that prayer and you are saved, brother! Anything more is of the devil because Jesus loves you, sinner that you are, and will never ever require more than you to accept him in your heart! That's all that's necessary!
So I hope you are right, but my own experience is that when discussing works and faith with my faith, Protestants go straight to cheap grace.
As plainly as I can say it, Protestants do, indeed, believe that we are saved by works, they're just not our works; they are the finished works of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we place faith in His work and gospel, then we are saved, and in that salvation, we produced the good works for which we were created.
If you've heard any other message from a Protestant, then they are out of step with their own tradition.
Ok, so... not our works then? We ourselves are not required to do anything, just rely only on Jesus' works and that's it? All we have to do is have faith and that's it. If we "produce a good work" great, but if we don't.... no big deal.
How is that not "cheap grace?"
Your new book, in fact, attacks the Church of Jesus Christ for actually saying that people need to keep commandments:
"Since we are imperfect, we will inevitably fail to obey these laws, thereby meriting nothing less than death itself (see 1 Cor 15:56). No wonder Paul cautioned against such law-based, spiritual self-improvement. Not only is it impossible to be sanctified by making and keeping covenants with God, but it nullifies the gospel’s power, “for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing” (Gal 2:21, NIV). (p. 298)14
The only covenants we make with God are the ones we break. But praise God that the only covenants he makes with us are those he keeps. . . . The beginning of our redemption is not found in our promises to God but in his promises to himself for us. All people, traditional Christians and Latter-day Saints alike, must tune their ear to hear the sweet “I will” promises of Jesus. . . . “I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:40) for those who place their trust not in their own faithfulness to Christ but in Christ’s faithfulness to God alone (see Phil 3:9). (pp. 289–90)
So you argue that it's impossible to keep a commandment therefore God does not require it. We just need to "have faith!" and that will save us.... except for Mormons, whose faith is not sufficient, because we fail the great theology quiz after this life where we stand in front of ... something, certainly not a a God with a body, and if we say we actually believe that God has a body wand died for us and was resurrected, we are doomed because that is not faith.
Faith alone! And you have to pass the great Protestant theology quiz because if you believe in the God that Peter and John preached, you are wrong! (Because no one believes that Peter and John preached the god of Nicea.) So it's not just faith in Jesus as our savior, it's faith in the Nicean creed that everyone who knew Jesus never believed in.
I'm not arguing its impossible to keep commands God gives; I'm arguing that Christ alone can keep God's commands, than we must place our faith in Christ's righteousness, and we will produce good works as a result.
I'm a bit confused by your framing that I've "attacked" the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and suspect you're following a recent reviewer who expressed a similar disposition toward the book's posture.
Can you, please, point to other places in the book where you feel like I've attacked the church that are not included in Jeff Lindsay's review?
So what's the punishment for failing to keep a command of God? If we have faith, does any consequence at all flow by, say, sleeping with your neighbor's wife? Does God punish us for that?
I read Jeff Lindsay's review of your book with great interest. It seems he has some pretty good points about your book, and how disappointing it is that you are using your book as a "guide to try to save Mormons" without recognizing that we actually have lots of scriptural support for our beliefs.
But even outside of Lindsay's review, I saw your video with the Hello Saint's guy about Conference and felt you weren't being very open then, either. You were giving off a "How stupid are these Mormons!" vibe and "oh gosh, are they hopefully moving away from Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon to a view where God shut up 2000 years ago and we never, ever need to hear from Him again? That would be grand if they would just discard their belief in a God that still cares enough to speak to His children!"
On my mission I once had an evangelical pastor invite my companion and I and two members who we had for a come along visit. He lied to us, claiming to be interested. In fact, he was just there to attempt to tear us down and destroy our faith. This man could recognize the Spirit of God..... he fled the room whenever the Holy Ghost came. That is what "evangelical preacher" means in my experience: Someone who lies in what to destroy faith and flees from the Holy Ghost. It is a disappointment that your book is apparently designed to be used in that same fashion, as a guide to get members of God's church to leave and go to a faith that believes God no longer cares enough about His children to talk to us. To a faith that instead of preaching about knowing God preaches that we can never know about Him.
Enlightening take, so thank you! A few books further on in the Book of Mormon, a righteous king preached to his people essentially the same thing. Mosiah 2:21 reads, "I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants." There is more in the verses previous and after, as you rightly state about context. No active Latter-day Saint believe salvation is based on works. Great article, again, thank you!
Thanks for reading, and for sharing those thoughts!
Super interesting. You make a strong case against the works as prerequisite reading of this verse. I’m adopting this view of the verse. What I don’t see in this chapter is an Evangelical-style chronological first grace, second works pattern. I see a grace “and” we keep the law, and a grace “yet” we keep the law.
It was points out to me that this is similar to Jared Ludlow’s interpretation:
https://rsc.byu.edu/vol-18-no-1-2017/after-all-we-can-do-2-nephi-2523
This conversation always reminds me of the phrase "just men made perfect" from D&C 129 and ideas in D&C 76:52-53.
I guess it depends on whether you believe Nephi was an actual living person or not. If not, the verse is meaningless.
Ah yes, the never ending Protestant view that "no no, God doesn't really care if do anything good.... there's zero difference between the man who sleeps in on Sunday and goes fishing and the guy who is out there at the soup kitchen 3 times a week and donating his time and money to widows! God loves them both equally and will save both equally, so..... yeah, you should be the guy helping the widow, but if you are the lazy bum instead, no big deal! You are saved, brother!"
We are all in the pit, and Jesus is going around offering everyone a ladder to climb out of the pit. Can the man who gets out of the pit by climbing the ladder boast that he saved himself? Of course not. But... you gotta climb the ladder! And Protestants say that no, no one has to climb the ladder. Just accept that Jesus saves and do nothing!
Maybe that's a caricature, but every single time I have run into a Protestant minister they go all "Grace alone! No need for works, ever! You can't earn your way to Heaven and God will punish you for thinking you must do something! God doesn't care!" and I ask... Did they actually read what Jesus said or are they just following a version of Paul that Paul is horrified at? And why would God require the Law of Moses and then tell Christians, "actually, that was all a lie. All you really have to do is say a little prayer and you're good. No sacrifice needed, no nothing, just your little prayer and if you have saving faith maybe you'll mow someone's lawn once in a while. None of that messy sacrifice and keeping commandments required! yes, I hated the Jews and gave them a different way to heaven. But trust Me, God is no respecter of Persons! You get the easy way, and people before I came, well, they got the hard way!"
They are wrong, plainly so.
That’s not Protestantism you’ve described; rather, it’s what Protestants themselves call “cheap grace,” which is “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” (Diedrich Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship).
Yes, God absolutely cares if His people "do good," because we were "created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Eph 2:10).
Here is a partial list of significant Protestants with whom the Protestants you've described are out of step (from a theology class I teach to the low-church, evangelical Protestant church where I pastor, i.e., this is what I, a Protestant pastor, tell fellow Protestants):
Martin Luther: “Oh, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith; and so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly. It does not ask whether there are good works to do, but before the question rises, it has already done them, and is always at the doing of them. He who does not these works is a faithless man.”
Augsburg Confession: "Also they teach that this faith is bound to bring forth good fruits, and that it is necessary to do good works commanded by God, because of God’s will..."
Philip Melanchthon: "Nor, indeed, is this faith an idle knowledge, neither can it coexist with mortal sin, but it is a work of the Holy Ghost, whereby we are freed from death, and terrified minds are encouraged and quickened."
John Calvin: "It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light."
Heidelberg Catechism: "But doth not this doctrine make men careless and profane? Answer. By no means: for it is impossible that those, who are implanted into Christ by a true faith, should not bring forth fruits of thankfulness."
Thirty-Nine Articles: "Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s Judgement; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith; insomuch that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit."
Formula of Concord: "First, there is no controversy among our theologians concerning the following points in this article, namely: that it is God’s will, order, and command that believers should walk in good works; and that truly good works are not those which every one contrives himself from a good intention, or which are done according to traditions of men, but those which God Himself has prescribed and commanded in His Word."
Westminster Confession of Faith: "These good works, done in obedience to God's commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith: and by them believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify God, whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus thereunto, that, having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, eternal life."
In sum, justifying faith is the sole instrument by which a sinner lays hold of Christ's righteousness, and that this same faith inevitably produces the fruit of obedience, so that that a professed faith without holiness is no faith at all.
The position you've encountered is a caricature of Protestantism, even if it’s held by self-professing Protestants themselves. They are wrong to believe God expects no good works from His people, but it is equally wrong to believe good works is what creates God’s people.
I hope you will help to correct this caricature by refusing to perpetuate it.
Every Protestant I ever met who wanted to debate with me preached, essentially, cheap grace because otherwise there's no real difference between our view (the LDS view) of grace + works and what you just posted. But salvation by "Faith alone!" meant and has always been directed at us members of the Church to mean nothing more than what you call cheap grace. "God never requires works! It's faith alone! No works, and if you think you need to do anything you are preaching Satan!"
I heard it over and over and over. Maybe you protestants say something different to each other, but when it comes to the "grace and works discussion" with members of the Church of Jesus Christ, your side has always dropped back to cheap grace. Because we evil Mormons think we can earn our way to heaven, blah blah blah so God must only want you to say that prayer and you are saved, brother! Anything more is of the devil because Jesus loves you, sinner that you are, and will never ever require more than you to accept him in your heart! That's all that's necessary!
So I hope you are right, but my own experience is that when discussing works and faith with my faith, Protestants go straight to cheap grace.
As plainly as I can say it, Protestants do, indeed, believe that we are saved by works, they're just not our works; they are the finished works of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we place faith in His work and gospel, then we are saved, and in that salvation, we produced the good works for which we were created.
If you've heard any other message from a Protestant, then they are out of step with their own tradition.
Ok, so... not our works then? We ourselves are not required to do anything, just rely only on Jesus' works and that's it? All we have to do is have faith and that's it. If we "produce a good work" great, but if we don't.... no big deal.
How is that not "cheap grace?"
Your new book, in fact, attacks the Church of Jesus Christ for actually saying that people need to keep commandments:
"Since we are imperfect, we will inevitably fail to obey these laws, thereby meriting nothing less than death itself (see 1 Cor 15:56). No wonder Paul cautioned against such law-based, spiritual self-improvement. Not only is it impossible to be sanctified by making and keeping covenants with God, but it nullifies the gospel’s power, “for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing” (Gal 2:21, NIV). (p. 298)14
The only covenants we make with God are the ones we break. But praise God that the only covenants he makes with us are those he keeps. . . . The beginning of our redemption is not found in our promises to God but in his promises to himself for us. All people, traditional Christians and Latter-day Saints alike, must tune their ear to hear the sweet “I will” promises of Jesus. . . . “I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:40) for those who place their trust not in their own faithfulness to Christ but in Christ’s faithfulness to God alone (see Phil 3:9). (pp. 289–90)
So you argue that it's impossible to keep a commandment therefore God does not require it. We just need to "have faith!" and that will save us.... except for Mormons, whose faith is not sufficient, because we fail the great theology quiz after this life where we stand in front of ... something, certainly not a a God with a body, and if we say we actually believe that God has a body wand died for us and was resurrected, we are doomed because that is not faith.
Faith alone! And you have to pass the great Protestant theology quiz because if you believe in the God that Peter and John preached, you are wrong! (Because no one believes that Peter and John preached the god of Nicea.) So it's not just faith in Jesus as our savior, it's faith in the Nicean creed that everyone who knew Jesus never believed in.
I'm not arguing its impossible to keep commands God gives; I'm arguing that Christ alone can keep God's commands, than we must place our faith in Christ's righteousness, and we will produce good works as a result.
I'm a bit confused by your framing that I've "attacked" the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and suspect you're following a recent reviewer who expressed a similar disposition toward the book's posture.
Can you, please, point to other places in the book where you feel like I've attacked the church that are not included in Jeff Lindsay's review?
So what's the punishment for failing to keep a command of God? If we have faith, does any consequence at all flow by, say, sleeping with your neighbor's wife? Does God punish us for that?
I read Jeff Lindsay's review of your book with great interest. It seems he has some pretty good points about your book, and how disappointing it is that you are using your book as a "guide to try to save Mormons" without recognizing that we actually have lots of scriptural support for our beliefs.
But even outside of Lindsay's review, I saw your video with the Hello Saint's guy about Conference and felt you weren't being very open then, either. You were giving off a "How stupid are these Mormons!" vibe and "oh gosh, are they hopefully moving away from Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon to a view where God shut up 2000 years ago and we never, ever need to hear from Him again? That would be grand if they would just discard their belief in a God that still cares enough to speak to His children!"
On my mission I once had an evangelical pastor invite my companion and I and two members who we had for a come along visit. He lied to us, claiming to be interested. In fact, he was just there to attempt to tear us down and destroy our faith. This man could recognize the Spirit of God..... he fled the room whenever the Holy Ghost came. That is what "evangelical preacher" means in my experience: Someone who lies in what to destroy faith and flees from the Holy Ghost. It is a disappointment that your book is apparently designed to be used in that same fashion, as a guide to get members of God's church to leave and go to a faith that believes God no longer cares enough about His children to talk to us. To a faith that instead of preaching about knowing God preaches that we can never know about Him.