Continuing from two previous posts. . . …’how glorious and wonderful’ and …how glorious and wonderful II, Neal A. Maxwell concludes this chapter:
How privileged we are, therefore, when we have “come to the knowledge of the goodness of God, and his matchless power, and his wisdom, and his patience, and his longsuffering towards the children of men.”
We do not know with any precision exactly what we “brought with us” from being intelligences as, later on, we become spirit sons and daughters of our Father in heaven. But we can scarcely blame God for our untoward propensities, for it is clear that God did not fashion us *ex nihilo. Our intrinsic makeup is not His responsibility: there is no such “easy out” in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Perhaps the input from our intelligence state was a “given” within which God Himself had to work—in which case it would help to explain why this proving state is so vital and why our obedience to God is so important.
We cannot presume to understand Jesus’ relationship with the Father unless we first take account of the fact that Jesus Christ Himself was the great and perfect Emulator, for He “can do nothing of himself, but what He seeth the Father do; . . . for the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth.”(66) With Jesus Himself such a careful and observing follower and student of His Father, it is not surprising to read of His paying such careful attention to His followers and His students.
The Father so schooled His Only Begotten Son that through suffering He learned obedience. He was meek and submissive, though **egregiously abused: “They have done unto the Son of Man even as they listed.”(67) No wonder He made His marvelous petition to the Father: “Glorify thou me with thine own glory which I had with thee before the world was,” which gives us an inkling about how it must have been before—when Jesus served His apprenticeship by observing all things that the Father Himself and done before Him.(68 scroll down)
At a divinely determined developmental point, the Father gave all power unto Jesus because of the latter’s perfectness and proven righteousness; so all things have been given into Christ’s hands. Now He hath “all power according to wisdom, mercy, truth.”(69 scroll down) Even so he reigns with power according to the will of the Father.
This perfect Student became the perfect Teacher. And we are His students! The invitation is as real as it is important:
“Yea, Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is His grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in no wise deny the power of God.”(70)
~Neal A. Maxwell, Even As I Am, (Salt Lake City, Deseret Book Company. 1982), 36-38
*ex nihilo: out of nothing (Oxford-American desk dictionary)
** egregiously: outstandingly bad; shocking (Oxford-American desk dictionary)
