“As Latter-day Saints, many of us, not all of us, but many of us are inclined to insist on the law and do so in an unloving way.
“I receive many letters from people who are devastated by the choices being made by someone in their family. And they say, ‘What are we to do?’ And the first thing I always suggest is keep loving them. In the end, that is something you can always do. We have to have in mind the commandments of the Lord, which I’ll refer to as the law, and also the great commandment to love one another. And those will come into conflict when someone we associate with is not keeping the commandments, not keeping the law. And that makes it harder for us to associate with them and to love them. And yet if we love the individual and, at the same time, keep a tight hold on what we know to be our responsibilities to the law, it is possible to do so.
“We should not start off our interaction with people who are making different choices than we desire by arguing about their choices. It’s better for us to talk about, “Where are you coming from? What are your basic values? What do you want to accomplish?” And then in that context we can explain that we are concerned about the Lord’s commandments because what’s important to us is to stay on the path to eternal life.
“We’re given commandments. When we obey those commandments, we are obedient. The consequence of being obedient to commandments is to put ourselves in harmony with the eternal law that permits us to grow and progress toward eternal life. The Savior commanded His followers to ‘love one another, as I have loved you.’ So we look at how He loved us. He sacrificed Himself for us. He was concerned always with the individual. He had a wonderful outreach for people. I think those are all indicators of how we can love one another like He loved us. If we make Him our role model, we should always be trying to reach out to include everyone.” —President Dallin H. Oaks
Divine love does not excuse sin—“I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance”—but is anxious to forgive—“nevertheless, he that repents and does the commandments of the Lord shall be forgiven” (
Doctrine and Covenants 1:31–32). In like manner, we should yield no ground in living and defending the commandments of God, but to mirror fully the love of God, we must also love one another so openly and completely that no one can feel abandoned or alone or hopeless.