Depending on God’s Grace for Our Spiritual Ascent
March 6, 2021
If we continue from grace to grace on our journeys through mortality; and if, as Jesus was called the Son of God, so we are called Jesus’ sons and daughters; and if we go on and attain a ‘fulness’ of grace as he attained it, what is the process? Nephi the son of Helaman, on whom Jesus bestowed the sealing power, exhorts his people, ‘May God grant, in his great fulness, that men might be brought unto repentance and good works, that they might be restored unto grace for grace, according to their works’ (Helaman 12:24). In other words, God’s granting his grace occurs in proportion to men’s ‘works.’
“Jesus defines those works: ‘If you keep my commandments you shall receive of his fulness, and be glorified in me as I am in the Father; therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace’ (Doctrine & Covenants 93:20). God’s grace, however, is inseparable from his truth: ‘I, John, bear record that I beheld his glory, as the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, even the Spirit of truth, which came and dwelt in the flesh’ (Doctrine & Covenants 93:11). Nephi concurs: ‘Redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth’ (2 Nephi 2:6).
“Receiving a fulness of grace thus goes hand in hand with receiving a fulness of truth: ‘The Spirit of truth is of God. I am the Spirit of truth, and John bore record of me, saying: He received a fulness of truth, yea, even of all truth; And no man receiveth a fulness unless he keepeth his commandments. He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things’ (Doctrine & Covenants 93:26–28). Paul alludes to this process as ‘the gospel of God’s grace’ (Acts 20:24), which gospel, he asserts, pertains to ‘the dispensation of God’s grace’ (Ephesians 3:2).
—From Becoming Kings and Queens of the Gentiles, Chapter 3, by Avraham Gileadi Ph.D.
Posted in Love Isaiah!
