I was recently asked to give a talk in church about the Pre-Mortal Christ and wanted to share it with you.
Let’s go back.
Let’s go back before the creation of the world. Before oceans, mountains, or stars. Before the Earth was formed. Even before matter was organized.
Keep going back. Millennia upon millennia.
Until we arrive at Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, perfected and glorified, with bodies of flesh and bone. Around Them we see countless intelligences. With Their divine power and love, This Godly couple begins to organize those intelligences into spirit children.
Billions. Trillions. As the Lord tells Abraham, more than the sands of the sea. That’s a ton!
And among all of those spirits, the very first spirit, or as the scriptures would title, the Firstborn, was named Jehovah.
Jehovah, the Firstborn of the Father. Jehovah, The God of the Old Testament. Jehovah, who would one day come to earth as Jesus Christ.
Today, I want to talk about the premortal Christ.
Before we ever took a breath on this earth, we lived as spirits. And Jehovah was there with us. He was our older brother.
And not just any older brother. He was the perfect older brother.
I like to imagine Him gathering all of us together. Maybe to play a giant game of kickball. Jehovah as the pitcher, throwing the perfect pitches to the littles and then some tricky throws to the older siblings. He knows exactly what each of us needs.
Then a couple innings in, He notices one sibling sitting off to the side, more interested in coloring than playing. So He hands the ball to another sibling He knows would love to pitch, and He goes to sit beside that child. He colors with them. He laughs with them. He notices their effort and tells them how beautifully they are doing.
Then He notices someone else all alone. And He goes there next, puts his arm around them, makes a funny comment to put a smile on their face, and then pulls out their favorite treat from His pocket. This gets an even bigger grin.
That was Jehovah. Always aware. Always loving. Always lifting.
As we grew and learned in that premortal life, we looked to Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother and wanted to become like Them. One day, our Heavenly Parents called us together.
I do not know what that meeting looked like. There were so many of us. Maybe it was a vast stadium. Maybe we gathered around a mountain. But They called us together and explained Their plan.
They told us we were made for so much more than our current state. More than praising God for eternity. We could inherit all that They had.
To do that, we would go to earth. We would receive physical bodies. We would gain experiences we could not have here. We would learn, grow, choose, and progress.
And we were thrilled. We wanted bodies. We wanted to live. We wanted to become like Them.
Then Heavenly Father explained something more.
“This life will be beautiful, but it will also be hard. There will be joy, love, and light. But there will also be pain, sorrow, and darkness. Your choices will separate you from Our presence, and on our own, you will not be able to return home to us”.
"But" God continued, "there is a way."
Someone would need to pay the price. The law of justice demands punishment, Someone would willingly need to suffer that punishment so the law of mercy can step in and only then can everyone have a chance to come home.
And then came the question.
“Whom shall I send?”
I imagine a brief moment of silence. And then, without hesitation, Jehovah stands up.
“Father, Thy will be done, and the glory be Thine forever.”
Our perfect, loving older brother volunteered.
Jehovah agreed to become our Savior. Our way back home.
And we had no doubt He would do it.
And He did it!
Because He loves us.
Not an abstract love. Not an arbitrary love because He created the world or our bodies. But a deep, personal love formed over millennia. A love built through laughing with us, crying with us, playing with us, and fighting alongside us in the battle against the adversary.
This is one of the restored truths I love most. Our relationship with God and with Christ extends far beyond that of a distant, omniscient being.
In Jesus the Christ, there is a beautiful passage about our relationship with God. And because the Father and the Son are one in purpose, I believe it also helps us understand our relationship with Jesus Christ.
“Our Heavenly Father has a full knowledge of the nature and disposition of each of His children, a knowledge gained by long observation and experience in the past eternity of our primeval childhood; a knowledge compared with which that gained by earthly parents through mortal experience with their children ... He knows what each will do under given conditions, and sees the end from the beginning. His foreknowledge is based on intelligence and reason. He foresees the future as a state which naturally and surely will be; not as one which must be because He has arbitrarily willed that it shall be.”
I love this quote because it helps me understand what it truly means when we say, “God knows me.”
It is not only that He knows what events are happening in my life right now.
He knows my spirit. He knows my strengths. He knows my weaknesses. He knows that I am a little slow to act sometimes, and that I might need a few gentle promptings before I listen. And somehow, He makes that work for somebody's good.
He knows what makes me laugh or smile, and He sprinkles those moments throughout my days. He knows the trials I need to develop certain traits that will bless me later in my life and to bless His other children, too.
Jesus Christ knew us then. He knows us now. His willingness to be our Savior was not based on obligation, but on love. A love formed long before Gethsemane. A love that began when He was Jehovah, our older brother.
I testify that Jesus Christ lives. That He loves us. That He chose us. And that through Him, we will all have the opportunity to go home.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.