No other man has lived without sin, and therefore wholly free from the domination of Satan. Jesus Christ was the one Being to whom death, the natural wage of sin, he was not due. Christ’s sinlessness rendered Him eligible as the subject of the atoning sacrifice whereby propitiation could be made for the sins of all men.
No other man has possessed the power to hold death in abeyance and to die only as he willed so to do. We accept in their literalness and simplicity with the scriptural declarations to the effect that Jesus Christ possessed within Himself power over death. “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” we read (John 5:26); and again “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” (John 10:17, 18).
This unique condition was the natural heritage of Jesus the Christ. He being in His embodied state the Son of a mortal mother and of an immortal Sire. No mortal man was His father. Form May He inherited the attributes of a mortal being, including the capacity to die; from His immortal Father he derived the power to live in the flesh indefinitely, immune to death except as He submitted voluntarily thereto. (James E. Talmage, The Philosophical basis of “Mormonism”: An Address Delivered By Invitation Before the Congress of Religious Philosophies Held in Connection with the Panama-pacific International Exposition, July 29, 1915, p. 13)
