WHAT IS THE ROLE OF JESUS CHRIST?
How is it that even young children can have such inspiring testimonies of Jesus Christ? Their ability to speak compellingly about His divine role in our lives and about the certainty of His existence is beyond anything they could have learned from parents and teachers—adults who sometimes themselves struggle with those same topics.
We each come to this world with the divine Light of Christ inside us, with the innate ability to recognize truth about ourselves and about the Savior. Much like little children, Jesus Christ is deeply empathetic, so much so that He was capable of taking on the anguish and regret and pain of all of our sins. He suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross under that immeasurable weight to ransom us from our mortal burdens. After three days He overcame death, emerging from the tomb resurrected and winning for us that same reward: our own resurrection, the permanent union of our spirit and perfected physical body. Having been sent by His Father to offer eternal life to all of His children, Jesus and His sacrifice empowers the plan of salvation. Indeed, Christ asks us to be like little children, to reclaim the innate faith and unfeigned love of our early youth. Through the simplicity of loving Him, others, and ourselves as little children do, we can begin to understand the complexity of His life.
Jesus Christ was both mortal and divine, being the Only Begotten Son of God, with a body of flesh and bone. He and His Father are one in purpose, but They are two separate beings.
The Only Begotten Son was born to the virgin Mary, and He fulfilled ancient prophecies and covenants between God and His people. During Christ’s ministry, He endowed priesthood and leadership authority upon many of His worthy followers on the earth and taught divine truths that were recorded in sacred scriptures. He administered saving temporal ordinances, such as baptism, which He Himself submitted to though He had never sinned; the Savior did this because He asks us to follow Him in all things. He ministered to the sick and to the sinners with pure love and compassion. That compassion extends to each of us through the Atonement, a gift that satisfies the scales of justice for our transgressions—a gift only Jesus Christ could have given.
By humbling ourselves, repenting, and striving to keep His commandments, we can receive the blessings of the Savior’s atoning sacrifice. Before His ministry began, Jesus Christ was a carpenter, and in many ways He still is. The carpenter considers the wood’s potential, examining its inherent strength, weakness, and grain, recognizing that what some people would see as unusable is actually an opportunity for singular beauty. Christ’s skilled, patient hands can similarly transform us if we remain malleable and teachable, even as little children. In Matthew 18:4, Christ says: “Whosever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” When we become humble and rely on our Savior, we come to understand a great truth about ourselves: we recognize the inherent divinity that is in each of us—the Light of Christ.
That light witnesses to the truthfulness of His gospel, which contains all of the covenants, principles, laws, ordinances, and doctrines we need to become more like our Heavenly Father and to return to Him.
The word gospel literally means “good news,” and how could it be otherwise? The fundamental gospel elements are these: faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, and enduring to the end. Throughout the history of mankind, the gospel has been preached by God’s prophets. In 1830 Jesus Christ restored His gospel through a prophet named Joseph Smith. The Lord instructed Joseph Smith to bring forth and translate the ancient scriptural text known as the Book of Mormon. The Savior also restored the keys of the priesthood and the saving ordinances that are required for His Church to accomplish His work again on earth. The Prophet Joseph Smith received revelation from God, as do his successors, and in their eras they have all taught the gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of their time. They do so today. From each of them we learn what is required of us to become more like God and to prepare to live with Him again.
The five fundamentals of Christ’s gospel are these: first, faith in Jesus Christ. It isn’t enough to believe in Christ; we also have to believe Him—believe that we can be made whole through His Atonement and that we are worthy of such a gift. Through faith, our minds and hearts are opened, and the words of the gospel find room to settle in and imprint on us. Such faith and humility brings about the second step: repentance. We want to correlate our actions with our beliefs, to align our behavior with our thoughts, so not only do we seek sincere forgiveness for previous misdeeds, but we also actively turn toward Christ and a new way of living our lives.
This commitment to a “new normal” way of living is demonstrated through the act of baptism by immersion, the third step in our progression.
Baptism is a symbolic ordinance of cleansing that signifies our rebirth as disciples of Christ, followers of His gospel. We join His Church and make sacred covenants to God. As the fourth step along our path, we then receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and our sins are forgiven. As part of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost is one with God and Jesus Christ in character and in purpose. He is the conduit of their love and knowledge and He is given to us as a constant companion, if we remain worthy—He is a “still, small voice” that enables our thoughts, dreams, and feelings to be aligned with those of God. As was done by the Apostles of Christ, priesthood holders today place their hands on the heads of the newly baptized and confer the Holy Spirit upon them.
While the ordinances of baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost may seem almost momentary in their brevity, the process of following the gospel is actually one of enduring commitment, a promise we make to retain the fresh blush of conversion always and to constantly recommit ourselves. Enduring to the end is the fifth step in this journey that eventually leads to salvation. Taking the sacrament weekly is an important part of this process, and each time we consume the bread and water, we remember Jesus Christ and His Atonement and we remember the gospel He revealed to us—not only in ancient times, but now, for our own dispensation.
Jesus Christ leads His restored Church today, and, indeed, the Church bears His name: it is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He is assisted by earthly Apostles now as He was during His ministry. The Book of Mormon, which was kept and preserved to be brought forth in our day, is another witness of Jesus Christ. It includes teachings of the Savior and clarifies many aspects of the gospel. It also tells of His visit to the Americas, where He taught the people there as He had done in Israel; this is another witness that the Savior’s message is for everyone. Today, around the world, some 80,000 young Mormon missionaries are bringing this testament of Him to all who will reclaim the teachability of their youth, allowing the book’s truth about our Redeemer and about the inherent divinity of each of us to be confirmed by the Light of Christ inside them. That light is in us; it is in others; it is part of what binds us together as a people—His people.
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Key Point
How can I apply the saving grace of Jesus Christ in my life?
- Faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ
- Repentance
- Baptism by immersion
- The gift of the Holy Ghost
WHY IS CHRIST'S ROLE SIGNIFICANT?
Understanding and embracing Jesus Christ’s role as Savior is key to every Christian faith. It is more than a theoretical belief that He lived and accomplished great things. It is having confidence that He was indeed resurrected and that He suffered not only death but also spiritual pain for sins—our sins.
Jesus felt the pain, guilt, and suffering we experience as a consequence to wrong choices. More importantly, He accepted responsibility and paid the price for our wrongdoings on earth—if we in turn sincerely repent and accept His commandments and divine role as Redeemer. When we do so, we are released from our sins. We can be spiritually clean and worthy to enter the presence of God.
That’s a complex concept—one that can be hard to fathom from our earthly perspective. But the sublime peace that our Heavenly Father wants us to have is possible right now because of the sacrifice made by Jesu