It Is By Grace That We Are Saved * After * All * We Can Do

"For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to our God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do." (2 Nephi 25:23). A few months ago I wrote about grace commas. Today I would like to take a look at how we can understand different aspects of the relationship between our Savior's Grace, our efforts, and our salvation by adjusting the punctuation in the phrase "It is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do." We are all familiar with the general sense of this phrase as it is typically written - we do everything we can - obey the commandments, honor our covenants, love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves - and the Savior will take care of the rest. But what if we look at those same words like this - "It is by grace that We are saved after all; we can do (it)"? Despite all of our many fears and doubts, despite all of our failures and sins and rebellions and denials and refusals, despite all of the times we were too lazy or too tired or too selfish to do the right thing, we are saved by grace after all. We can do it. We can put off the natural man, we can humble ourselves before God, we can repent and return to the fold. We may have made mistakes but in the end, we are saved by grace after all. This may not have been the sentence that Nephi wrote, but I do believe there is some truth in it. Or how about this sentence?: "It is by grace that We are saved ... After... all, we can do." This is admittedly clumsy, but bear with me. We are saved by grace, and then, after we have been saved, we can do all things. Paths that we had thought forever shut to us can now be opened after we have been saved by grace. Our God is a God of miracles. Things that seem impossible to us can nevertheless be accomplished after we have been saved by grace. It is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do. It is by grace that we are saved after all; we can do it. It is by grace that we are saved... After that, we can do all things. I do not claim the authority to be shifting around punctuation in Holy scripture, nor do I assert that these other variations on this eternal truth are in any way more accurate or truthful than the original. I merely wanted to examine how we can understand a little better the mysteries of God by examining them from every angle. I do believe with all my heart that the Lord requires all we can do to work out our Salvation, and that this can be accomplished even after all of our doubts and fears, and that when we have embraced our Savior with all of our heart, we can do all things through His grace.