This past week for my Come Follow Christ study I read King Benjamin’s sermon in the Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ, in Mosiah 1-3. Ever since I first read this sermon when I was 12 years old, it has been one of my favorite parts of the Book of Mormon. I love that King Benjamin talks about how important it is as a leader to work alongside the people being led. This has been a fundamental teaching to me to follow as a parent.

This sermon has so many goodies in it! I love Jared Halverson’s explanation of the part in the sermon from Mosiah 1-3 about being indebted to God. He says that this is relational grace. This is the grace I have been learning about for years, ever since one of my neighbors told me that her son had written a book about relational grace. Watch the video below to hear it all! It’s so fabulous!

Brother Halverson explains that when you read these verses you realize that no matter how much work, how much thanks we give God, we are always in His debt, because He blesses us even more, even after we “pay him back” with thanks and praise. It’s like we have a ledger of debts and credits, and we come out still in debt to God.

The above images show the specific verses that he refers to. Based on those verses, Brother Halverson made this chart:

Looking at the above chart of our ledger of debits vs. credits with God, it could be easy to get discouraged, thinking, we will always be in debt to God.

Thankfully, as Brother Halverson explains in the video, we have a second ledger that shows that God is ok with our indebtedness. We can’t ever earn our salvation. He’s OK with giving to us and our “job” is to be OK with all His gifts and not feel we are in debt.

He doesn’t want us to think we earn salvation. He wants us to surrender to His grace and love, to gratefully accept His gifts of love, most especially the incomparable gift of His Son Jesus Christ’s atoning grace. He wants us to feel motivated to love Him. “I am not earning anything, I am learning everything,” as Jared said in the video. He likens it to the character of Daniel in the movie Karate Kid, and Daniel’s relationship to Mr. Miyagi, his mentor. You will have to watch the video to learn more!