23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.
28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
Note that when Paul speaks of the law in verse 28, he is referring to the Law of Moses and the term, “without” in the original Greek is “apart from” or “without intervention of”.
A Christian serves others. He or she does so almost as automatically as they inhale and exhale. They serve others because they remember Christ and they remember what an infinite and eternal service He has done for them through His Atonement.
When we provide Christlike service, regardless of how humble or how unnoticed, we become a better person. With enough humble service, we become great in all the ways that count.
Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. –Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Drum Major Instinct”
Opportunities to serve are everywhere. There will never be a shortage of people to help. All of this service is encompassed in Christ’s commandment to Peter and to us, “Feed my Sheep.” (John 21:15–17)
Our Savior wants us to learn something of what He knows by helping to do His work. Paul urges us to have “the mind of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 2:16) Christ saved the world and everyone in it. He asks us to help save God’s sons and daughters one at a time from loneliness, from suffering, from ignorance, and from the many other afflictions that accompany life in a mortal world. In that process and under His divine influence, our hearts are changed, and we become a little more like our Savior. By our service, we take His name upon us and feel His love for those in need flow through us to them. We cannot be a conduit for His love without being profoundly blessed by that experience. As we communicate His love to others, we understand more clearly how much He loves us.
David P. Vandagriff
portions taken from: I Need Thee Every Hour – Applying the Atonement in Everyday Life
[W]hy not speak of the atonement of Christ, and attain to a perfect knowledge of him, as to attain to the knowledge of a resurrection and the world to come?
Don’t vex your mind by trying to explain the suffering you have to endure in this life. Don’t think that God is punishing you or disciplining you or that he has rejected you. Even in the midst of your suffering, you are in his kingdom. You are always his child, and he has his protecting arms around you. Does a child understand everything his father does? No, but he can confidently nestle in his father’s arms and feel perfect happiness, even while tears glisten in his eyes, because he is his father’s child.
Albert Schweitzer
Reverence for Life