Friday, June 17, 2022

George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl on 3 Nephi 9:17 and our Adoption as Sons of God

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)