Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, in the Saturday Evening Session of April 2023 general conference said:
It is only in and through our individual loyalty to and love of Jesus Christ that we can hope to be one.
As President Dallin H. Oaks has noted, today is Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week, marking the Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, His suffering in Gethsemane and death on the cross just days later, and His glorious Resurrection on Easter Sunday. Let us resolve never to forget what Christ endured to redeem us.1 And let us never lose the overwhelming joy we will feel once again on Easter as we contemplate His victory over the grave and the gift of universal resurrection.
The evening before the trials and crucifixion that awaited Him, Jesus joined in a Passover meal with His Apostles. At the end of this Last Supper, in a sacred Intercessory Prayer, Jesus petitioned His Father in these words: “Holy Father, keep through thine own name [mine Apostles] whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.”2
Then, tenderly, the Savior expanded His petition to include all believers: “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.”3
Becoming one is a recurring theme in the gospel of Jesus Christ and in God’s dealings with His children. With respect to the city of Zion in Enoch’s day, it is said that “they were of one heart and one mind.”4 Of the early Saints in the primitive Church of Jesus Christ, the New Testament records, “The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul.”5
In our own dispensation, the Lord admonished, “I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine.”6 Among the reasons the Lord gave as to why the early Saints in Missouri had failed to establish a place of Zion was that they “are not united according to the union required by the law of the celestial kingdom.”7 Where God prevails in all hearts and minds, the people are described as “in one, the children of Christ.”8
To read, listen to, or watch Elder Christofferson’s complete talk click: ‘One in Christ’
