Divine Inheritance

This past week in my Doctrine and Covenants class we talked a lot about exaltation and what it means to receive it. Exaltation is different than salvation and eternal life. While everyone can receive salvation from their sins and be resurrected to an eternal being, exaltation takes you even further. Everyone in this life makes mistakes--with the exception of Jesus Christ--and with those mistakes we lost our divine inheritance. Jesus, being the firstborn and only begotten son of our Heavenly Father, is really the only one who ever had full rights to exaltation. When we become members of the church and remain faithful and persevere, striving to become perfect, we can become like adopted sons and daughters of Christ and enter into the "Church of the Firstborn" where we become "partakers of the glory of the same that I have" and essentially are the firstborn. Through Christ's atonement we can actually receive a higher degree of glory than we would have before the fall of Adam. Without the atonement Christ alone would hold the role of the firstborn and we would be excluded from the blessings of exaltation. God the Father couldn't die for us and give us this gift on his own because he is an immortal exalted being already. Christ took on the role of our savior and for that His father says of him, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." A Greek translation of this sentiment is "This is my Son, my Son whom I lovest." He loves His son and is so well pleased in Him because of the love He shows for us in doing what His father couldn't--of course, on top of the great love He already had for His Son. With this divine action, we can all receive exaltation and our divine inheritance.