Your assignment, should you chose to accept it (the coming-unto-christ svithe)

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I was asked to speak on what it means to come unto Christ. I asked for the topic a couple months ago but the chaos of late means I didn't get it written until this week. I suspect it's a little long so I'll likely have to do some editing on the fly. But hey—what's all we can do, again?

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Often, we interpret the invitation to “come unto Christ” as a direction to “be like Christ.” But so much of what Christ did, we cannot do. And even if we could, he already did it for us. Consider what Christ did in the Garden of Gethsemane: In some way untethered to human time, he stepped out of his own life and experienced each of ours. Not so he could judge us but so he could understand us and comfort us and atone for us. Somehow, that evening, he lived my life and your life and everyone’s life, then came back to his own, prepared to do his impossible task.

None of us can do that. Nor do we need to. Christ did it for us.

So what do we need to do? How do we come unto Christ?

Let’s dance through the scriptures for a moment.

Amaleki, the final writer in the Small Plates, tells us that we “should come unto Christ…and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him…and, as the Lord liveth, ye will be saved.”

I like this idea that coming unto Christ is kinda the same thing as being saved.

Moroni, the final writer in the Book of Mormon, tells us to come “unto Christ, and be perfected in him…and love God with all [our] might, mind and strength, [because] then [will] his grace [be] sufficient… [and we] may be perfect in Christ.”

That being-perfect thing reminds me of Jesus’s commandment, the crazy one, that we be perfect. That’s a heavy instruction. I started this talk by saying Jesus does things we can’t be expected to do and now he himself tells us to be perfect? Coming unto Christ means being perfect first??

No. No, no, no.

That is not what Moroni said. We come unto Christ. Then we’re perfected in him. Because his grace will be sufficient to make us perfect.

Okay. We’re getting somewhere.

Now, here in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the most famous bonmot on grace has to be Nephi’s: “We labor diligently…to persuade our children…to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for”—here it comes—“we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.”

Now, most of my life I’ve tended to think this means that we’re saved by grace after getting ourselves as close to perfect as possible

Is that correct?

Well, let’s continue our dance across the scriptures.

Our first stop is Anti-Nephi-Lehi, the brother of Lamoni and the inheritor of their father the king’s responsibilities.

The Lamanites have split into two groups. Anti-Nephi-Lehi leads those who have been converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who have not been converted are filled with rage at what they see as a betrayal of their traditions and they have taken up weapons and are marching forward to destroy these converts.

Anti-Nephi-Lehi is their king. His people are filled with faith. But they fear for their lives. And the lives of their families and friends.

What would you say?

This is what Anti-Nephi-Lehi said:

“I thank my God, my beloved people, that our great God has in goodness sent these our brethren…to preach unto us…. And…I thank my great God that he has given us a portion of his Spirit to soften our hearts…. And I also thank my God, yea, my great God, that he hath granted unto us that we might repent of these things, and also that he hath forgiven us…and taken away the guilt from our hearts, through the merits of his Son….

“Now behold, my brethren, since it has been all that we could do—”

Let me interrupt Anti-Nephi-Lehi here to point out that we were just wondering what it means that “it is by grace…we are saved, after all we can do” and now this good man is about to tell us exactly what “all we can do” is. Let’s let him do it.

“Now behold,” he was saying, “it has been all that we could do…to repent of…our sins…and to get God to take them away from our hearts…it was all we could do to repent sufficiently before God that he would take away our stain—

“[And now]…my best beloved…since God hath taken away our stains, and our swords have become bright, then let us stain our swords no more….

“The great God has had mercy on us, and made these things known unto us…because he loves our souls…. In his mercy he doth visit us by his angels, that the plan of salvation might be made known unto us as well as unto future generations. Oh, how merciful is our God!”

In this moment, the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi attain a sort of perfection unique in the Book of Mormon. They lay down their evil tools, their swords and their cimeters, and rather than staining those tools with the blood of their fellow children of God, they allow themselves to be slain. This is a remarkable choice. No one else in the Book of Mormon has such courage. And their courage changes the hearts of their enemies. Their courage brings many of those enemies, too, unto Christ.

So. According to Anti-Nephi-Lehi, what is “all we can do”? We can repent.

That doesn’t seem like much.

That doesn’t seem like very far on the road to perfection.

But remember what Moroni said: it’s by coming unto Christ that, in him, we are perfected. All we can do is repent—and then we are saved by his grace.

Paul taught that “We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.” And the truth of Christ is that he was born, he lived, he died, and he lived again—all for us.

Ammon was one of the missionaries who brought so many Lamanites, including Anti-Nephi-Lehi, to Christ. Reflecting on that great labor, he said, “Let us glory…in the Lord.

“Yea, we will rejoice, for our joy is full…we will praise our God forever…. Who can glory too much in the Lord?... Who can say too much of his great power, and of his mercy…?

“Who could have supposed that our God would have been so merciful as to have snatched us from our awful, sinful, and polluted state?

“[But] he that repents and exercises faith, and brings forth good works, and prays continually without ceasing—unto such…it shall be given…to bring thousands of souls to repentance, even as it has been given unto us to bring these our brethren to repentance.”

In Lehi’s dream, when he saw the Tree of Life, his first thought was to share it. So it was with Ammon and his fellow missionaries. So it was with Lamoni and his fellow Lamanite converts.

Joseph Smith tells us that missionary work “should…be attended to with great earnestness.” Even when we feel like our actions are small and insignificant, we should not “count them as small things; for there is much which [lies in the future]…which depends upon these [small] things.

“You know,” Brother Joseph said, “a very large ship is benefited very much by a very small helm in the time of a storm, by being kept workways with the wind and the waves. Therefore…let us cheerfully do all things [all things!] that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.”

Our little things are little. But they are enough.

With Christ, they are enough.

Jesus teaches us that if we “have not faith, hope, and charity, [we] can do nothing.”

So we come unto Christ by repentance—it’s the only thing we can do. He gives us faith, hope, and charity. And then—we can do things. Which only means little, small things. All we can do.

Last month, on the way to my uncle’s funeral in Idaho, my parents, sister, and I went to church in Beaver, Utah. There were two youth speakers who talked about girls camp, then the first adult speaker opened with this observation:

No one will remember this talk.

No one will remember any talk they hear.

My mother and father and sister later insisted they remember lots and lots of sacrament-meeting talks. Maybe they do. I kinda doubt it, but maybe.

Regardless, giving a talk? It’s a pretty small thing. I’m taking up ten minutes of your time. Probably you will have forgotten this talk before Sunday School’s over. But, today, it’s what I can do. That and repent, I suppose.

Jesus taught we can do nothing without faith, hope, and charity.

Not even repent?

Paul explained that even if we have “the gift of prophecy, and [understand] all mysteries, and [have] all knowledge,” without “charity, [we are] nothing.” Yes, he said, “faith, hope, charity,” all great, “but the greatest…is charity.”

Jesus is clear that he always has his arms open to us. The only thing keeping us from his grasp is our own selves. Which is all sin is: Rejecting Christ’s grace. And this is all repentance is: Accepting Christ’s grace. Repentance is accepting as real the relationship we have with Jesus Christ—the relationship he never stops believing in.

Perhaps that is why the greatest of these is charity. Because if all we can do is repent, and if all repentance is is accepting the Savior’s love, then perhaps all we can do is have charity for ourselves. Perhaps that is all repentance is: Learning to love ourselves. Just as Christ does.

My most profound spiritual experiences have been about just that—recognizing that I am loved.

I was at the end of my mission, sitting on an airplane. It was too late to do anything better than I had already done. I worried that I hadn’t been as good a missionary as I should have been.

Then the Lord told me to stop comparing myself to other people. He had called me to be a missionary. And I, me, as myself, had been a missionary. It may have been a small thing, but it was enough. And I repented. I chose to love myself and my service. I accepted myself as Christ accepted me.

This is all any of us is asked to do.

Think about your current responsibilities—family, calling, whatever. What you do may not be large in the scope of world history. But “a very large ship is benefited very much by a very small helm….being kept workways with the wind and the waves. Therefore…let us cheerfully do all things [all things!] that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.”

Our little things are little. Our small things are small. But they are enough.

All we can do is enough.

And all we can do is repent.

And all repentance is is allowing Christ to love us—to feel his charity for us.

We can do that.

We can do that.

We can allow our Savior to love us.

We can have charity, as he does, for ourselves.

From there, we can learn to feel charity for all.

“By small and simple things are great things brought to pass”—including the salvation and perfection, of our own souls.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.