When commenting on 3 Nephi 9:17, Reynolds and Sjodahl offered the following comments concerning our adoption as sons/daughters of God:
As many as have received Me, to
them have I given to become the sons of God. In spite of
the fact that He was rejected by His Own, and was crucified by them
notwithstanding He sought only their good, Christ foretold of no retaliation
for His evil reception by the Jewish hierarchy, but promised all who shall
believe on His Name that they would become the sons of God.
John, in his Gospel, says:
"But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of
God, even to them that believe on His Name." (John 1:12) Bible
commentators on this important subject say that Christ gave to them that should
believe on His name the right, or privilege, to become the sons
of God. That is true. But not all the meaning of Christ's promise is therein
expressed. Words too often, somehow or other, fail to reveal the real meaning
of a thought; they do not fully elucidate and explain it. They hide the sense
they intend to convey under a mass of verbiage just as a beautiful flower is
sometimes hidden underneath a growth of rank grass. This promise of our Lord is
one of the fair and fragrant flowers of Christianity. It blossoms in our
hearts. We not only have the privilege to become one among the sons of God, but
also through the Atonement of Christ we have restored to us, and that
literally, our rightful inheritance in His Kingdom as a son or daughter of our
Heavenly Father, Who is God.
When we read the above-mentioned
statement of John's, we remember that the power Christ gave to those who
believed on His Name was not like the power of a priest who can make an
ecclesiastic, or the power of man that can make a just and an upright person,
but that only a divine power from Heaven above, can make of a mortal one who is
worthy to be called a son of God.
The best comments on this
wonderful theme are those made by the Savior Himself, and some of His inspired
servants. In the Doctrine and Covenants we read: "I am Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, Who was crucified for the sins of the world, even as many as will
believe on My Name, that they may become the sons of God, even one in Me as I
am one in the Father, as the Father is one in Me, that we may be one." (D.
& C. 35:2) (George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book
of Mormon, 7 vols. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976], 7:117)