Grace and Works: By which cometh Salvation?

 Today as my companions and I were walking into the library, we had the opportunity to talk to some people. They've noticed us coming into the Library everyday this week, and well, I'm sure like any of you, it struck their curiosity. So they asked us what we were doing, having to come to the library everyday.
 I love it when people ask us questions like that! It gives such a great opportunity for us to help them know a little bit more about the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. Well of course we told them who we are.

One of the men told us he was Baptist then asked us what we as "mormons" believe it takes for someone to make it to heaven. This led to a fairly good small discussion, but really nowhere in terms of his true understanding of his question. We let him know that "We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel." Article of Faith 1:3

His response was that in the Baptist church all it takes for someone to be saved it just accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and Redeemer and mean it with all your heart and you'll be saved. He then quoted (sort of) Ephesians 2:8-9 "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast" And went on to explain that we are saved in and only through the grace of Jesus Christ and its a free gift.

This got me really thinking: How is it that someone can be saved, just by "accepting Jesus Christ".

In James 2:17-18 it states "(17) Even so faith if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. (18)Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works."
We also know more about Grace from the Book of Mormon in 2 Nephi 25:23 the prophet Nephi wrote "for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do."
Therefore we know that even though Christ still suffered for us, for our sins, and we need to accept him, but by accepting Christ as your Savior, it means that you are willing to act upon this belief. It is through faith in our Savior, and our works (meaning we follow the example of Jesus Christ in all that we do, we repent, are baptized by the proper authority of God, and endure to the end aka stay faithful, repenting daily, until the end of our lives) that we can recieve salavtion.

We do need to be grateful for the Grace of Jesus Christ in our lives, without Grace we truly will not be able to stand in the presence of God, but we can not forget that we need to do our part in this lifetime in order to truly recieve the Salvation. Therefore it is only through Grace AND Works that we can be saved.