But Nephi seems to believe it’s our responsibility to reconcile “ourselves” to God.

It may be tempting to say at this point something like, “even belief in Christ and reconciliation to God are His gifts.” For whatever reason, some people have a problem with the notion that there are things that God cannot give us or do for us.

And, as we’ll explore later… are “ all we can do.” “Reconcile Yourselves to the Will of God” – 25:49 These are the “works” of the gospel that only we can do. Our willingness to believe and our will to obey God is a voluntarily sacrifice. Nephi is talking about works here, in addition to grace. Belief is a choice, just like our efforts to reconcile ourselves with God. There’s no amount of God’s grace that can violate your agency and transform a willful unbeliever into a reconciled saint. Both items on the list always fall within our own power, control and initiative. However, these two things must come first, before we can rightfully assume that saving grace works.

Nephi focused his works (quite the “to-do list” I’m sure) on the goal of getting his people to do those two simple things. In that last verse, Nephi states that everything he and the prophets do is in hopes that we (his audience) will do two things: 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.

What does saved by grace mean