One of the biggest questions religion seeks to answer is: “How can a person be right with God?” This is the question of salvation. As we consider what Mormonism teaches about salvation in comparison to historic, biblical Christianity, remember what is at stake: a person’s eternal destiny.
In Mormonism, immortality means that every human being will be resurrected to life after death. LDS apostle Russell M. Nelson taught, “To be saved—or to gain salvation—means to be saved from physical and spiritual death. Because of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, all people will be resurrected and saved from physical death.” This promise applies to all people regardless of what they believe or how they live. The LDS Gospel Principles manual says, “Because of His Atonement, everyone born on this earth will be resurrected…. This condition is called immortality.”
Exaltation, on the other hand, is limited to those who fulfill a rigorous set of requirements, who will thus attain the highest level of heaven. In his address, Russell Nelson continued:
People may also be saved from individual spiritual death through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, by their faith in Him, by living in obedience to the laws and ordinances of His gospel, and by serving Him. To be exalted—or to gain exaltation—refers to the highest state of happiness and glory in the celestial realm.
Only the most worthy Latter-day Saints - those who keep all their covenants and complete all the required ordinances - will qualify for exaltation. Thus Mormonism blends universalism and exclusivism. One on level, all people are saved. But only the elite are exalted.
By contrast to this, the Bible envisions only one salvation. This salvation has many elements: forgiveness of sins, regeneration to a new life, reconciliation with God, adoption into God’s family, a glorious future resurrection, and more. But the Bible never suggests different kinds of salvation, based on different requirements, for different kinds of people. Jesus said, in Matthew 7:13-14:
You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.
Only one gateway leads to salvation. As we will see, the few who find it are not those who work the hardest to be worthy.
Latter-day Saints value God’s grace. But they believe people are saved - in the highest sense - by God’s grace plus their own good works. The Book of Mormon outlines this in 2 Nephi 25:23:
For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.
According to this, people are saved by grace, but not by grace alone. Grace only takes effect “after all we can do.” The Pearl of Grace Price makes this clear (Articles of Faith 3): “We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.” In other words, Jesus’ atoning work is a necessary precondition for salvation, but it does not actually save anyone from their sins unless they live the right kind of life. Grace merely gives Mormons the opportunity to add the needed good works to obtain forgiveness of sins and eternal life with God.
However, the Bible teaches that grace is the unconditional gift of God to meet our needs. We can be right with God by his grace alone, not by the addition of any good works. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” Because our sin renders us incapable of proving ourselves worthy, eternal life in God’s presence cannot be based on our good works. It can only be a free gift of God. The only basis for our salvation is Jesus’ death on the cross, where he paid the full penalty for our sin.
The very nature of grace makes it impossible for salvation to be a combination of grace and works. Romans 11:16 explains, “And since it is through God’s kindness, then it is not by their good works. For in that case, God’s grace would not be what it really is—free and undeserved.” Grace and works are mutually exclusive. As soon as you add an element of good works to the equation, you lose grace. Think about the nature of gift. If you pay even a small amount for something, it is not a gift, but a purchase.
True salvation is a divine act that makes a person new. So while obedience cannot earn our salvation, it is the natural outcome of being saved, as Ephesians 2:8-10 explain:
God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
This passage doesn’t fit with the LDS concepts of immortality or of exaltation, because salvation requires faith, but it is “not a reward.” Once we are saved by grace, through faith, we become new creations who begin to do good things - not as the reason for our salvation, but as the result of it.
Finally, Latter-day Saints believe that a person can receive salvation after they have died. In a manual for LDS college students called Introduction to Family History, we read:
Between the death and the resurrection of the physical body, the spirit lives in the spirit world and has the opportunity to continue to progress toward perfection. Jesus Christ initiated the preaching of the gospel to those in spirit prison. Many in the spirit world anxiously await the blessings of gospel ordinances.
Certain ordinances are required for exaltation, including baptism, temple initiation, and temple marriage. Mormons perform these acts to secure their own exaltation. They also perform them by proxy for people who have died without the opportunity to do so, in hopes that those people will convert to Mormonism in the spirit world and accept the ordinances done on their behalf.
Yet the Bible teaches that this life is the appointed time to get right with God. Hebrews 9:27 says, “...each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment...” This means our eternal destiny is fixed at death. This is why biblical Christians are eager to help our friends and family understand the wonderful grace of God in Jesus Christ. Our sins can be forgiven and we can have eternal life with God based on what Jesus did for us, not because of any good or worthy deeds we do. But we only have this life to place our faith in him.