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Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Grandeur of God,” October Conference 2003 …one great aspect of that mission often goes uncelebrated… …the Savior Himself spoke of it repeatedly and emphatically. …He was showing us who and what God our Eternal Father is like… …how completely devoted He is …
…Jesus was trying to reveal and make personal to us the true nature of His Father, our Father in Heaven.
Christ in the dual roles of Father and Son (Mosiah 15)

Obedience-The Key to Faithful Fathering
Christ, in addition to being both the spiritual and physical Son of God (which in and of itself gave him unarguable, rightful claim upon his Father’s virtues), and in addition to acting with divine investiture of authority (both to speak and act in his Father’s stead), claimed a major portion of this divine, fatherly power through the fundamental gospel principle of obedience. By his obedience Christ showed the way to godhood to those of us who, although spirit children of God, are not physically begotten of Him and are not invested with the totality of his divine power. By this doctrine Christ teaches us as mortal men and women that we can be one with the Father in a crucial, fundamental, eternally significant way: We can obey him. We can subject the flesh to the spirit. We can yield our will as children to the will of our Heavenly Father.
So must we all bend “the will of the flesh” to the “will of the Holy Spirit,” to use Lehi’s language. Because that same issue faces each mortal being and is with everyone throughout mortality, it should not be surprising that it would be among Christ’s most exemplary moments.
Christ’s final triumph and ultimate assumption of godly powers on the right hand of his Father came not because he had a divine parent (although that was essential to the victory over death) and not because he was given heavenly authority from the beginning (although that was essential to his divine power) but ultimately because he was, in his own mortal probation, perfectly obedient, perfectly submissive, perfectly loyal to the principle that the spiritual in his life must rule over the physical.
That was at the heart of his triumph, and that is a lesson for every accountable man, woman, and child who ever lives. It is a lesson for which Abinadi-and Christ-were willing to die. It is the lesson for which virtually every prophet has given his voice and his life: spirit over flesh; discipline over temptation; devotion over inclination; “the will of the Son being swallowed up in the will of the Father.” (Jeffrey R. Holland, Christ and the New Covenant: The Messianic Message of the Book of Mormon, p.192-193)
Becoming Sons and Daughters of Christ
• Ether 3:14
• Mosiah 15:10-13; 16:17
• Mosiah 5:7, 15
• Mosiah 27:25
• Moroni 7:19

Elder Holland, The Grandeur of God, October Conference 2003 …this was Christ showing us the way of the Father…
…Christ was declaring, “This is God’s compassion I am showing you, as well as that of my own.” …in Their mutual suffering and shared sorrow…
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:16-17) Copyright BYU–Idaho
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