Continuing from a previous post “Nothingness”, and his book ‘Original Grace’, Adam S, Miller wrote:
In Mosiah 2:16, Benjamin reminds his people that he deserves no special thanks from his people for his service as their king. His service hasn’t earned him anything. He only did what needed to be done. He only loved as the law required. And this same law applies to his people: “If I whom ye call your king, do labor to serve you, then ought ye not to labor to serve one another?” (Mosiah 2:18).
Moreover, Benjamin continues, this same logic applies universally. Life itself is a grace. It’s a gift that cannot be earned or deserved or controlled. And every attempt to capture that gift within a logic of punishments and rewards will prove vain. It won’t work no matter how hard you try. Even if “you should labor to render all thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept you and preserved you, and has cause that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another, still this would not be enough. (Mosiah 2:20). Thanks and praise cannot balance the books.
And even if ye “should serve him who has created you form the beginning, and is preserving you form day to day, by lending you breath that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants” (Mosiah 2:21). No amount of service would suffice either.
Life’s equation cannot be balanced—grace cannot be canceled—because life is a grace. Creation is itself God’s original grace. The fact that I am alive is a grace. The fact that I have air to breathe is a grace. The fact that I have food to eat water to drink is a grace. Even the fact that I live and move according to my own will is a grace and the fact that I can love and serve and obey and give my whole soul back to God, keeping nothing for myself—-all this is grace.
If I try to use God’s law to make myself profitable and deserving and get from under grace, I will only dig my hole deeper. Profitably is a dead end. Grace cannot be avoided because, “in the first place, he hath created you and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him” (Mosiah 2:23). This, all by itself, is more than can be repaid. But, “secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you” (Mosiah 2:24). And if I do as commanded? “For which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are and will be forever and ever” (Mosiah 2:24).~~Adam S. Miller, Original Grace (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, BYU Maxwell Institute, 2022) 68-69
