Abinadi referred to Jesus Christ as “God himself” (Mosiah 13:28, 34; Mosiah 15:1, Mosiah 17:8). He also called Jesus “the Father and the Son” (Mosiah 15:2). He offered the following explanation for this apparently contradictory title:
The Father, because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and Son—
And they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth.
Mosiah 15:2-3
Jesus also referred to Himself in this way. The night before His mortal birth, He declared to the prophet Nephi, “Behold, I come unto my own, … to do the will, both of the Father and of the Son—of the Father because of me, and of the Son because of my flesh” (3 Nephi 1:14). And thousands of years earlier, He introduced Himself to the brother of Jared with these words: “Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son. In me shall all mankind have life, and that eternally, even they who shall believe on my name; and they shall become my sons and my daughters” (Ether 3:14).
That last quote explains one of the reasons why He is both Father and Son. He is “the Son,” because He submits His will to the will of His Father; He is “the Father” because He gives us new life: we can be “born again” through His atoning sacrifice. (See Mosiah 27:25, Mosiah 5:7.)
Another way He is both Father and Son is that He created this world and then He came to live in it, subject to all of the pains and difficulties of mortal life. He is therefore both “the very eternal Father of heaven and of earth” and the son of Mary, a descendant of David, and more broadly, “the Son of man,” a title He used frequently during His mortal ministry.
A third way that He is both the Father and the Son relates to His complete unity with His Father. “The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one,” He taught; “and I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one” (3 Nephi 11:27). The things Jesus taught are perfectly aligned with the will of His Father. We never need to wonder whether Jesus’s words are consistent with His Father’s will. They always are.
Finally, Abinadi seems to be emphasizing the dual nature of the Savior during mortality. He was both divine and mortal simultaneously, “conceived by the power of God” but born to a mortal mother. Thus, Abinadi equates the title “Father” with His spirit and “Son” with His body:
Thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Son to the Father, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation,
Mosiah 15:5
In that sense, we can all strive to follow the example of the Savior, submitting our will to the will of the Father, by ensuring that our spirits govern our bodies, like a parent governs a child.
Today, I will remember the many ways that the Savior is both Father and Son. I will be grateful for His submission to His Father’s will, for His example of resisting temptation, and for the life He offers to all of us through His atoning sacrifice.
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