Saving Grace

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are in a unique position regarding their beliefs. For those of you unfamiliar with LDS Theology, we believe that God has restored the fulness of his gospel to the earth through a living prophet and that the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints today is the same church as that originally organized by Jesus Christ while he walked the earth; it's built on a foundation of Prophets and Apostles, with Jesus Christ at the head.
As a church, we want people to see that we do believe in and worship Jesus Christ as our Savior. Assuming the definition of a Christian is one who believes in Jesus Christ, then we are Christian, and want others to understand that. However, we also want people to understand the uniqueness of our message which is The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So, in that regard, we want people to understand how we're different from other Christian religions.
Sometimes, however, I think in our efforts to show how we're different we miss part of the larger picture of our own theology. I might come back to this idea later, but I think for today I'll just discuss one example of this.
Many Christian religions believe that we are saved by grace alone, while Latter-Day Saints believe that it is by grace we are saved after all we can do. (2 Nephi 25:23, James 2:24) We believe that it's spiritually problematic if there's no emphasis on work and being held accountable for what we do in this life. And, it's not without moral and logical reasons either. Personally, it's never made sense to me that a murderer or child molester can confess his belief in Jesus at the end of his life and still get into heaven.
Yet, as important as this is, I wonder if we emphasize it so much that we forget that we still do, in fact, believe in grace as a church. Just as Stephen E Robinson teaches, too many members try to become perfect and gain eternal life on their own without believing Christ and relying on the enabling power of His Atonement. While it's important to distinguish our beliefs, we should not be doing so to the detriment of our beliefs either.
I'm just grateful that I do have a Savior I can rely on. Eternal Life wouldn't mean anything if there wasn't some work involved on our part. But I know that I can't get it on my own, either. It's only through Him with a capitol "H."