Continuing from a previous post ‘My Yoke is Easy’:
Some people reject the idea of grace because it seems too easy. They want being saved to be harder than it is. There is a certain comfort in saying, “Salvation is so hard that I just couldn’t make it, so I don’t really need to try.” This provides a convenient excuse for not trying at all. This reminds me a little bit of a young woman who kept turning down a date from a young man who just as persistently shot her excuses down one by one. Finally she was forced to admit the truth, “Look, I’m out of excuses, so I’ll give it to you strait. I just don’t want to go out with you.”
Some of us try similar evasive tactics with the Lord when He invites us into His kingdom. We give excuse after excuse why we can’t enter in. . . . Now continuing. . . But God’s grace which has removed all the obstacles and cleared the path, shoots down all our excuses. By his grace any problem can be overcome, any circumstance can be worked around, anyone can be saved—if only we just really want the kingdom. We say, “I’d really like to go with you, but I can’t keep this or that commandment all the time,” and he replies, “Can you keep it ninety percent of the time (or eighty or seventy)? Then start there for now and we’ll work on it together!” Finally, in the face of all God has done and is willing to do for us, after he has cleared the away all the obstacles and we are faced with an open door, we must either say, “Yes, I want to go with you,” or “Look, I’ll give it to you straight, I just don’t want to go.” None of us can weasel our way out by saying, “I’d really like to, but I can’t.” Grace has eliminated every excuse but one: “I just don’t want to go; I prefer my sins to your kingdom.”
Whenever I hear someone complain that the doctrine of grace makes things too easy, I think of the occasion when the Lord tried to illustrate the grace, merit, and mercy of Christ to Israel when they had sinned in the wilderness: “He did straiten them in the wilderness with his rod; for they hardened their hearts, even as ye have; and the Lord straitened them because of their iniquity. He sent fiery flying serpents among them; and after they were bitten he prepared a way that they might be healed; and the labor which they had to perform was to look; and because of the simpleness of the way, or the easiness of it, there were many who perished.” (1 Nephi 17:41; cf. Numbers 21:4-9)
I fear in the modern Church we similarly have those who will perish rather than accept the grace of God because it seems to them too easy. They will not believe Christ. But as Alma said to his Son Helaman: “Do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way; for so was it with our fathers; for so was it prepared for them, that if they would look they might live; even so it is with us. The way is prepared, and if we will look we may live forever.” (Alma 37:46.)
~ Stephen E. Robinson, Believing Christ (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019), 138-141 Dwarsligger®
