Christ in Mosiah

King Benjamin's Sermon — Mosiah 2–5

King Benjamin is old. He has been a just king — unusual in any era — and he gathers all his people to a tent city around the temple to deliver what he knows will be his final address. But the content of that address was not his idea.

The night before the sermon, an angel came to him with a specific message to deliver (Mosiah 3:2). What the angel gave him was the name of the Messiah — Jesus Christ — and a detailed prophecy of His coming ministry, more than 100 years before it would happen.

The Name

"And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary." — Mosiah 3:8

This is remarkable. Nephite prophets had spoken of "the Messiah" and "the Lamb of God" and "the Redeemer." Benjamin gives them His name. Mary's name. A human child with a human mother and a divine Father. The specificity is not accidental — it is preparing a people to recognize Him when the signs of His coming appear.

The Suffering

The angel describes Christ's mortal experience in stark terms:

"And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people." — Mosiah 3:7

Blood from every pore. This is not symbolic language. It is clinical description — what doctors today call hematidrosis, rare and associated with extreme physical stress. Benjamin's people are hearing, a century early, that the Son of God is going to bleed in a garden on their behalf.

The Natural Man — Mosiah 3:19

The theological pivot of Benjamin's sermon is Mosiah 3:19 — arguably the most important single verse on spiritual transformation in the Book of Mormon:

"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."

The natural man is not a monster. He is just unreformed human nature — reactive, self-protective, proud, impatient. The transformation from natural man to saint is not achieved through effort alone. It happens through the Atonement of Christ — which is to say, through relationship with Him over time. The destination is childlikeness: not naivety, but the kind of trusting openness that a small child has toward a loving parent.

The Mighty Change of Heart — Mosiah 5

The sermon does something unprecedented. When Benjamin finishes, the people fall to the earth together and declare that the Holy Spirit has come upon them. Their desire to do evil is gone. They have no more disposition to do evil but only to do good continually (Mosiah 5:2).

Benjamin does not claim credit for this. He explains what happened: they entered a covenant with Christ. They took His name upon them. They became — in a spiritually real sense — His children:

"And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you." — Mosiah 5:7

Abinadi — The Testimony That Cost Everything

Several decades later, a different community has forgotten. The people of Limhi — descendants of a Nephite colony — are living under King Noah, who is described with unusual bluntness: he replaced righteous priests with flatterers, taxed his people into poverty to support his lifestyle, and "did not keep the commandments of God, but he did walk after the desires of his own heart" (Mosiah 11:2).

Into this court walks Abinadi.

The Trial

Abinadi is captured, brought before the king and his priests, and given the opportunity to recant. He refuses. The priests try to trap him with scripture — quoting Isaiah 52:7, "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that publisheth peace." They want him to agree that Moses and the prophets are the publishers of peace.

Abinadi turns the question: "Are you priests? And pretend to teach this people, and to understand the spirit of prophesying, and yet desire to know of me what these things mean?" (Mosiah 12:25). Then he asks his own question: "What teach ye this people?"

They have no good answer. Abinadi proceeds to deliver one of the most concentrated Christological arguments in the Book of Mormon. He quotes Isaiah 53 in full — the Suffering Servant — and argues that the servant is Christ Himself, who will be "wounded for our transgressions," who will be "led as a sheep to the slaughter," and who will "make his soul an offering for sin."

Who Is the Father and Who Is the Son?

Abinadi's most theologically dense passage comes in Mosiah 15, where he explains the relationship between Father and Son in Christ:

"And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son — the Father, because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh." — Mosiah 15:2–3

Christ is both: fully divine (Father) and fully human (Son), subject to mortal limitation while being infinite in spirit. This is not confusion — it is the paradox of the Incarnation stated plainly.

One Believer

Abinadi is burned to death. His last words are a prophecy of judgment against Noah and his priests. But before he dies, one man in the court has been moved. Alma the Elder — a priest of Noah — tries to intercede and is driven out. He writes down Abinadi's words. He hides. He teaches. He baptizes a small group in the Waters of Mormon.

One man who believed a dying prophet changed the entire trajectory of Book of Mormon history. Alma's church would eventually become the religious foundation of the Nephite civilization. His son, Alma the Younger, would become one of the greatest missionaries in the record. All of it traces back to one priest who listened.

The Waters of Mormon

Mosiah 18 describes Alma's early church — small, hidden, gathered in a forest around a body of water called Mormon. It is one of the most tender scenes in the Book of Mormon:

"And now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another's burdens, that they may be light; yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places... what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord?" — Mosiah 18:8–10

The covenant described here is not a list of rules. It is a description of community organized around Christlike love: bear one another's burdens, mourn together, comfort the hurting, witness for God. This is what a Christ-centered community looks like at ground level.

When Alma asks if anyone has anything against being baptized, Helam steps forward. Alma baptizes him — and then buries himself in the water and baptizes himself. No one told him to do that. He simply understood that he needed what everyone else needed.

The Be Like Jesus Connection

Mosiah shows Christ-centered transformation at both institutional and individual levels. King Benjamin's people have a corporate change of heart — they covenant together, take Christ's name, and commit to each other's flourishing. Alma's small group in the forest makes personal covenant — they choose to enter the waters of Mormon because they want to bear each other's burdens, not because they were required to.

And then there is Abinadi: alone, facing death, with one person in the audience who believed him. He did not know Alma believed. He did not know what would grow from that single seed. He was faithful anyway. That is one of the most important lessons in the Book of Mormon about what it means to follow Christ: you are often not given the feedback that your witness matters. You do it because it is true, not because it is effective.

Being like Jesus, in Mosiah's terms, means this: you take His name because you mean it, you mourn when others mourn, you bear burdens alongside people, and you testify of what you know even when the court has made up its mind.

Explore the Be Like Jesus thesis →