Understanding Grace

Are you worried about putting in the right amount of effort to fill the gap and pay the debt?

Imagine a fill-in fundraising meter that measures the amount of money left to reach a charity’s goal– now imagine that the meter measures the amount of work you need to put in before you can pay back Jesus’s sacrifice and be worthy of the Celestial Kingdom. How much work have you put in? How much work is left?

‘Never-enough’ syndrome

When faced with the concept of grace, many of us feel that we can never measure up. We think that to reach eternal life and the Celestial Kingdom, we need to be near perfect. We often feel that we need to pay Jesus back for all that he has done for us. However, through the plan of salvation, God gave us eternal salvation by allowing Jesus to sacrifice Himself.

Grace

Grace means that God forgives all of our sins, that Jesus paid the debt in full. We do not need to be anxious about grace, constantly worried about doing our part and filling the gap between what God and Jesus have done for us with the atonement, and what we need to do on Earth. In a BYU devotional talk titled “His Grace Is Sufficient”, Brother Wilcox says, “Jesus doesn’t make up the difference. Jesus makes all the difference. Grace is not about filling gaps. It is about filling us.” There is no gap, no meter measuring our worthiness or the distance between us and eternal life. Grace means that the way has already been paid in full. Our sincere effort to be Christlike will light our path and bring us back to God.

Peace Through Grace

The concept of grace brings me peace– the pressures of earthly life are lifted from my shoulders because I know that I’ve already been saved by God’s plan and Jesus Christ’s atonement.

Sincere Effort

God is merciful and forgives all our sins, asking only for sincere effort in return. Knowing that it’s to show Heavenly Father and Jesus how grateful I am for the plan of salvation, rather than in order to fill some unattainable, figurative gap that Jesus left for me to take care of, I try hard to be the best that I can be. Jesus has already sacrificed to pay the debt we couldn’t pay, and He and Heavenly Father simply ask us to do our best to show them we want to become like Them and return to Them.

We don’t need to worry and stress about being good enough to deserve God’s grace, because it’s already been given to each one of us. Grace cannot be earned or lost: the way is paid in full, we simply need to do our best in our mortal existence to be the best disciples of Christ that we can be.