Heads up! I’m creating short, fun, Come Follow Me videos each week. Be notified of new videos via email, Facebook, or Instagram.
The below transcript is based on this video.
Have you ever wondered why Christ said he is both the Father and the Son? We gain insight into this topic from the story of the Brother of Jared. The Brother of Jared is building barges, getting ready to go to the promised land when he realizes that he has some problems. There is no air in the boat and no light either. So he prays and says, “What should I do?”
The Lord replies, “Put a hole in the top of the boat and a hole in the bottom and one of those will provide air for you.”
Good idea,” the Brother of Jared responded. “But what about the light thing? Do we have to travel all the way to the promised land in the dark?”
What do you want me to do?” The Lord asks.
So the Brother of Jared thinks for awhile and then prepares sixteen stones and his plan is to ask the Lord to touch the stones. After offering a mighty prayer, the Brother of Jared asks the Lord to touch the stones. To his complete astonishment, he then sees the finger of the premortal Jesus Christ, touch each and every stone.
Eventually, the Savior completely revealed himself to the Brother of Jared, showing him his premortal body. At this point, the Lord said, “I am he who was prepared from the foundation of the world to redeem my people. Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son” (Ether 3:14).
There are so many things we could discuss with respect to this vision, but today I want to focus on Christ’s statement, “Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son.” Isn’t that a little bit confusing? We know from the First Vision and other revelations that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are two separate people. So why does Jesus Christ identify himself as “the Father and the Son”?
Here’s a great scripture tool you can be using if you’re not already. It’s the scripture plus app. It’s got the complete text of the standard works, plus lots of great insight and commentary to help you better understand what you read. If you look in Ether 3:14 in the “insights” tab you can see there’s an explanation from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. He commented as follows:
“Christ was ‘conceived by the power of God’ and therefore has the powers of the Father within him…Christ also acts as the Father in that he is the Creator of heaven and earth, is the father of our spiritual rebirth and… Christ can at any time and in any place speak and act for the Father by virtue of the ‘divine investiture of authority’ the Father has given him.”
That’s really helpful in understanding how it is that Jesus Christ can say, “I am the Father and I am the Son.” In some senses, Jesus can be considered “the Father” – for example, he is the father of our spiritual rebirth.
Maybe some of us spend so much time focusing on how Jesus and Heavenly Father are different that we don’t spend enough time focusing on how they are one. On another occasion, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland wrote,
“Part of the reason we are so misunderstood by others in the Christian tradition is because in stressing the individual personages of the Godhead, we have not followed that up often enough by both conceding and insisting upon Their unity in virtually every other imaginable way. For this we have reaped needless criticism, and we have made our LDS position harder to be understood than it needs to be.” (Ensign, January 2016).
So maybe in addition to remembering that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are distinct personages we can more fully recognize their unity. When Jesus Christ visited his followers in the western hemisphere he taught, “the Father, and I, and the Holy Ghost are one.” (3 Nephi 11:36). As Christ later knelt in prayer with these believers he said, “Father, I pray unto thee for them, and also for all those who shall believe on their words, that they may believe in me, that I may be in them as thou, Father, art in me, that we may be one” (3 Nephi 19:23).
There’s something powerful here. Christ wants us to be unified with him and our Heavenly Father in the same way that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are unified. Maybe as we learn more about how Heavenly Father is in Christ and Christ is in Heavenly Father, the Holy Spirit will whisper to our hearts how we can invite Christ to be in us in the same way that the Father is in him.
I suggest you download the scriptureplus app—it’s free and gives great scriptural insights. In addition follow scripturesplus on Instagram for more great scriptural commentary.
Jesus said that he always did his Father’s will. This is one key way he is one with the Father. Jesus taught, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.” (John 5:19). We can be one with God when we choose to do what he would do.
When Jesus Christ prayed just before entering Gethsemane he prayed for those who believe in him, saying, “[I pray] that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us…that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:21–22). I hope that we will come to better understand that unity of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and that we will become one with them.
