From before, Adam S. Miller writes: Nothing is more enabling than life itself. A world filled with life is a world radiating grace. . . . Continuing from the chapter: “Creation” and his book “Original Grace:
Elder Bruce R. McConkie frames the plan of salvation in terms of what he calls “the three pillars of eternity.”. He argues that, in order to “work out our salvation,” we must ” take the three greatest events that have ever occurred in all eternity and show how they are interwoven to form one grand plan of salvation.” What are these three great events? The three pillars of eternity, the three events, preeminent and transcendent above all others, are the creation, the fall, and the atonement.These three are the foundation upon which all things rest. Without any one of them, all things would lose their purpose and meaning and the plans and designs of Deity would come to naught.”1 Creation, fall, atonement: our understanding of each must get interwoven with the others.
With these three pillars in mind we might adapt Elder McConkie’s framework to address our own questions about sin and grace.
Where does the logic of original sin go wrong? The logic of original sin misunderstands grace and atonement because it tries to tell the story of salvation with only two pillars. If our story begins with the fall and ignores the grace of creation, then sin will inevitably appear original. And if sin appears original, then God’s grace will inevitably show up as a late and limited effect. In short if the story is with just two pillars, we end up with a truncated theory of grace. The logic of original sin and a special theory of grace go hand in hand.
Against this logic and with Elder McConkie, I want to hold that we need all three pillars, I want to claim that sin must itself be understood in the context of God’s original work of creation. And what’s more, I want to take the additional step of explicitly claiming that God’s original work of creation is also the fundamental expression of his grace.
If we view sin against the backdrop of God’s original grace, how might this deepen our understanding of God’s original grace, how might this deepen our understanding of sin? in the context of all three pillars, what is sin?
If we view creation itself as the fundamental expression of God’s grace, then the relationship between sin and grace gets inverted. Sin and grace are reordered, cause and effect are clarified.
In the context of all three pillars, grace rather than sin, comes first. And when grace comes first, sin is revealed as my failed response to that original gift. Sin is my rejection of God’s original offer of grace and partnership. It’s my refusal to love what God has created. It’s my running from my nothingness and hiding from the impossibility of ever deserving anything. It’s my trying desperately to cobble together, through any means necessary—Idolatry, vanity, theft, adultery, violence, deceit—some bundle of good things that more closely matches what I wanted than what God gave. It’s me wanting to win more than to love.
If grace comes first and sin comes second, then it’s obvious why I can never save myself from sin with my own works. It’s obvious why I can never be saved from sin without grace. I
I can never be saved from sin without grace because being saved from sin means no longer rejecting God’s original grace. It means no longer rejecting God’s original offer of grace and partnership. It means no longer rejecting this created world with all grace offers and all the grace it needs—my own created self included.
In the thick of life, I’m reconciled to God’s original grace when I’m reconciled to His glorious but difficult work of creation. I’m reconciled to God when, as a covenant partner, I stop running from my nothingness and join him in his creative work. And I join him in the work of creating a just world by embodying the logic of grace. I love my enemies. I forgive those who harm me. I return good for good and good for evil. I surrender my bid to win God’s love and, instead, lose myself in the work of loving others. I stop using God’s law to judge what’s deserved, and instead, fulfill that law by judging what’s needed.
No longer seeing life in terms of punishment and rewards, I wake up to grace. I wake up to the fact that all things testify of His grace, “even the earth and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form” (Alma 30:44). I wake up to the divine light that infuses the whole of creation, that “proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fulfill the immensity of space—the light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things”and see, finally, this governing light is God’s grace, and see, finally, that Elder Busche’s sacred place of fire and burning is this place—this life, this earth and sky, this created and passing world (Doctrine and Covenants 88;11-13). Awake to grace, all things shine with the light of grace. ~ Adam S. Miller, Original Grace (Salt Lake City, BYU Maxwell Institute, 2022) p.82-84
