Jesus reveals the Father

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Of the many magnificent purposes served in the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, one great aspect of that mission often goes uncelebrated. His followers did not understand it fully at the time, and many in modern Christianity do not grasp it now, but the Savior Himself spoke of it repeatedly and emphatically. It is the grand truth that in all that Jesus came to say and do, including and especially in His atoning suffering and sacrifice, He was showing us who and what God our Eternal Father is like, how completely devoted He is to His children in every age and nation. In word and in deed Jesus was trying to reveal and make personal to us the true nature of His Father, our Father in Heaven. (Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Grandeur of God,” Ensign, Nov 2003, 70)

Properly understood, the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) contain the purest and most expansive accounts of the nature and kind of being that God is that can be found anywhere in the revealed word. All Christians are assumed to know that God, in the meridian day, was in Christ manifesting himself to the world. We know what Christ was like as a mortal, and we know the kind of body he now possesses in glorious immortality. Thus, we are not left in darkness nor in doubt as to the character, perfections, and attributes of the Father, nor as to the kind of body now possessed by the Father of the Son of Man. (Bruce R. McConkie, A New Witness for the Articles of Faith, p.60)

The Lord is our God and it is He whom we serve; and we say to the whole world that He is a tangible Being. We have a God with ears, eyes, nose, mouth; He can and does speak. He has arms, hands, body, legs and feet; He talks and walks; and we are formed after His likeness. The good book-the Bible, tells us what kind of a character our Heavenly Father is. In the first chapter of Genesis and the 17th verse, speaking of the Lord creating men, it reads as plain as it can read, “and He created man in His own image and likeness;” and if He created Adam and Eve in His own image, the whole human family are like Him. (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 13:308-309, November 13, 1870)

 

 

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