Continuing from a previous post, ‘Justification by Faith’, (‘Keeping the Commandments’), Stephen E. Robinson teaches from his book ‘Believing Christ’:
. . . . But are we not required then to keep the commandments? The answer is yes—and no. When I ask my students if it is necessary to keep the commandments to enter the celestial kingdom, they all answer with absolute certainty that it is. They know that this is true because they have heard Church leaders and teachers tell them so all of their lives. But when I ask them if they have broken a commandment, or if they are not now living any commandments one hundred percent, most of them answer in the affirmative. They don’t usually see the major problem implied by these two answers.
Latter-day Saints habitually use the phrase “keeping the commandments” differently from its technical and historical meaning outside the Church. That is not wrong, but it is different, and for this reason, “keeping the commandments” is sometimes an ambiguous and troublesome phrase for the Latter-day Saints. We generally say “keeping the commandments” when what we really mean is “trying really hard to keep the commandments” and succeeding most of the time.” Defined in this way, the phrase describes the attempts at obedience that the new covenant requires as our token of “good faith.” “Keeping the commandments” is both possible and necessary; that is, trying to keep the commandments, doing the best that we can at it, is a requirement of the gospel covenant, even though succeeding right now in keeping all the commandments all of the time is not. This is why the gospel covenant offers repentance and atonement in addition to commandments.
Technically, however, this customary LDS usage is incorrect. If we insist on fine points, “keeping the commandments” means not breaking them—not any of them, not ever. It means keeping them perfectly, and in reality no one does this. Technically, you can’t claim to keep the commandments in this sense so long as you break any of them at all. This is what James says when he says in James 2:10: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.”
The ambiguity between the traditional meaning and the customary LDS usage of “keeping the commandments” has caused Latter-day Saints and other Christians to talk past each on occasion and led some who don’t understand our theological vocabulary to accuse us in believing in salvation by works. It has also caused some in the Church to conclude incorrectly that perfect performance is a requirement of the gospel covenant, even though the real bottom line is being committed to the proper goals and doing all we can to achieve them. In fact, the whole purpose of the atonement of Christ is to provide a way whereby those who have not kept, do not keep, and probably will not keep all the commandments all the time, can still be exalted in the celestial kingdom of God—where they will continue to make progress in eternity until they are perfected—providing they genuinely hunger and thirst after righteousness. ~Steven E. Robinson, Believing Christ, (Deseret Book, Salt Lake City, 1992) 83-86 Dwarsligger edition. (~continued)
