Jesus Christ: The Only Begotten Son of God

Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. Like us, He is a spirit Son of our Heavenly Father and as such is our brother. He is the firstborn in the spirit and was able to attain a much higher degree of glory in the premortal existence than anyone else. While we all lived in the premortal existence, Heavenly Father proposed His plan to allow all of His children the opportunity to become perfect like He is. This plan required that we obey every law that He set forth. He knew that we would not be able to live up to this high standard, so He asked for one to go down and be a Savior for the rest of us. Our older brother, Jesus Christ, volunteered to do the job.

He then became the executor of the creation of the earth and of all things that live thereon, including all of mankind. We were all created spiritually and physically in the image of God the Father and His son, Jesus Christ. Adam was the first man and Eve was the first woman on the earth and all mankind are physical descendants of them. Adam and Eve transgressed the law that God had given them and as a consequence they were cast out of the His presence. This fall of Adam brought about spiritual death due to sin and physical death due to being mortal and imperfect.

In God’s great love for us He provided a savior for mankind. This savior was Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God. Known as Jehovah in the Old Testament, Christ came down to earth and took a mortal body having a mortal mother in Mary, but retained His divinity by having a literal physical father in God the Eternal Father. With this dual nature, Christ was able to live a perfect and unspotted life and thus was able to appease the demands of justice in the great plan of our Heavenly Father by taking the payment for the sins of all mankind upon His own shoulders. Our Savior did not stop there though, He also took on Himself every pain, affliction, temptation, or trial whether emotional, physical, or spiritual upon Himself. He did this because He loves us and wanted to be able to comfort us in our mortal lives. He has felt every possible feeling and knows what it takes to get through it. He is there to comfort us and help us along the path of life, but we must first seek Him out if we want His help.

In the garden of Gethsemane Christ was able to overcome the spiritual death through accomplishing the great Atonement for sin, and on the cross He died that He might be able to overcome the physical death. Three days after He was crucified and laid to rest, Christ’s spirit once again united with His body and the first resurrection took place. Because Christ was able to overcome death, He has opened the door for all of the descendants of Adam and Eve to do the same. At the right time, all men, whether good or evil will rise again. Our bodies will be made perfect and all of our mortal frailties will be taken away. Our bodies will become immortal, just like our Heavenly Father’s body and our older brother Jesus Christ’s body. This gift of immortality is freely given to all men, but the gift of spiritual life with God, or exaltation, is reserved only for those who have faith in and follow the teachings of the one with power to overcome this death, Jesus Christ.

The teachings of Christ are clear and easy to understand. He was the master teacher and provides a clear path for us to follow. The basic steps are first, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, second, repentance, third, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and fourth, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost. If we do these things and faithfully endure to the end of our mortal lives, we are promised to be saved from our spiritual death or separation from God. Christ taught these things to Adam and Eve, He taught them to Moses, He taught them to his disciples in Jerusalem, and He has taught them to us in our day through a living prophet. Christ loves us just as much as anyone who has lived and continues to provide the same blessings as He always has. Every man woman or child who has lived or ever will live will have the opportunity to learn of the gospel of Jesus Christ and accept it or reject it according to their own agency. Christ has established His church upon the earth in our day and provided the way for us to learn of His gospel. We live in a time when the entire and full gospel has been given and are entitled to a fullness of the blessings that go with following that gospel.

I know that Christ is the literal Son of God and that He has power to do all that He said He could do. I know that He took upon himself the sins of the entire world and overcame death by being resurrected. I know that He lives today and speaks to man just as he always has. I know that if we choose to listen intently to his word with a desire to know if they are true and right, He will let us know. If we do this we can develop the faith necessary to bring us to change through the process of repentance that has been given to us because of the Atonement. If we do this and make the sacred covenants with God that Christ has asked us to make, we can return to live with our Heavenly Father and our brother, Jesus Christ.