My post on Elder Bednar’s talk sparked a lot of controversy on Facebook, and so I thought I would shift gears today and write about one talk that I really enjoyed with few qualifications at all.

Elder Robert Daines of the Seventy’s talk Sir, We Would Like to See Jesus was a really good one. He used the metaphor of being “face-blind” for how many of us experience our relationship with God as one primarily categorized based on rules rather than relationship. He also analogized to how he used to see his mom only as “She Who Must Be Obeyed” and never really noticed her sacrifice or saw her as a real person.

I could really relate to both of these examples, especially the second one. I had the most amazing mother, but I took her for granted as most kids do. It was only when I was in high school and she was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer that I really began to learn about her as a person and to appreciate all of her sacrifices for me. I wish I could go back and appreciate her sooner than I did.

Elder Daines talked about how we can struggle “to see God as a loving Father.” We “may look heavenward and see not the face of love and mercy but a thicket of rules through which [we] must wend [our] way.” Even when we obey God, we can think “more about getting into heaven than being with [our] Heavenly Father.”

The answer to this problem as Elder Daines put it “is always Jesus.”

To this I resolutely say Amen. Looking to Jesus is what most clearly shows us the perfect and infinite love of God. Jesus voluntarily condescended from his status as God to be born a human child and suffer humiliation on the cross for our sake. This is truly incredible. And it shows us how fully God loves us One of my absolute favorite passages in the New Testament is Paul’s ode to the humility and love of Jesus in Philippians 2:

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

Phil 2:5-11 (NIV)

For me, the past year has been so incredible because as I have come to more fully recognize the glory and majesty of God, I have been filed with an ever greater desire to worship and express my gratitude for him.

I also really loved what Elder Daines wrote about studying the Gospels “not to extract rules but to see who He is and what He loves.” I agree with Elder Daines that if you “Open the Gospels at random; on almost every page we see Him caring for people who suffer—socially, spiritually, and physically. He touches people considered polluted and unclean and feeds the hungry.” His “kind of grace is amazing.”

This has been one of my most precious discoveries over the past year as I have been able to see the Gospels not as a collection of sayings, but as examples of Christ’s pure grace in action. Like Elder Daines I have been “swept away by the river of love that flowed from Him.”

I even liked what Elder Daines said about covenants as being primarily “about reationships” and not about “rules to earn His love.” The way that LDS leaders have talked about covenants has often encouraged this kind of mechanical and contractual view of covenants. I am happy to see this emphasis on covenants as an expression of God’s. I also hope that those hearing this talk will take to heart Elder Daines words that God “already loves you perfectly.”

My one objection (unsurprisingly) is that Elder Daines view of Christ’s new covenant of grace does not go far enough. To start, we need to recognize tat we were not only “face-blind” to God’s love, we were actively in rebellion against him and had rejected his love. But Christ nevertheless came and died on the cross to rescue us when we were dead in our sins. Christ paid the full penalty for our disobedience by nailing our sins to the cross. And he offers us his perfect righteousness that allows us to be fully reconciled with God and adopted as heirs in God’s family. God cannot love us more perfectly than that. All that he asks is that we come to Christ and accept him as our Lord and Savior and we can have an assurance of love and reconciliation. When we are part of Christ’s new covenant, we can have perfect assurance that God’s commandments are not rules to condemn us but guidelines to help us to “clear the channel for the river of God’s love to reach His children at the end of the row.”

Elder Daines words are a very positive step towards a biblical understanding of God’s grace. I pray that more LDS leaders will catch his vision and go even further to fully embrace the good news of his “covenant embrace.”