His Sons and His Daughters

The truth, stated

Through covenant with Jesus Christ, a human being is reborn — not improved, not upgraded: begotten — and receives a new identity with a family name attached. The Book of Mormon records the moment a whole people received it at once, and the king's sentence that conferred it is the plainest statement of Christian identity in scripture:

"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; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters." (Mosiah 5:7)

His sons. His daughters — both named, out loud. Begotten — not hired, not certified: born of him, by covenant and a changed heart. And because identity conferred is identity secure, this doctrine answers the two lies that take turns wrecking religious people — that you are a worm, and that you must manufacture your own worth. This essay walks the truth from the Bible's adoption texts, through the centuries that could never hold nothingness and royalty in one hand, to the tower sermon that holds both on purpose.

The standing grain

The new birth is the Bible's own vocabulary, from the Lord's lips: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3) — the word that bewildered Nicodemus and named the doctrine forever. John's prologue states the transaction: "as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God... which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12–13). Paul supplies the family law: "ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father... and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ" (Romans 8:15–17); "thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ" (Galatians 4:7). John marvels at it: "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God" (1 John 3:1). And — beautifully, for this essay's title — the Lord himself names both halves of the family through Paul: "ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty" (2 Corinthians 6:18), echoing Isaiah's gathering cry: "bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth" (Isaiah 43:6).

So the grain stood tall: birth, adoption, heirship, the double-gendered family. What the centuries tangled was the relation between the new identity and human worth — and the tangle produced two opposite piities, both of which you have met. One tradition, guarding grace's glory, ground the believer's self-assessment down to permanent wormhood — hymns and confessions in which even the redeemed remain primarily wretched, worth crushed so grace could tower — a piety that produced real humility and real casualties: generations of tender consciences who heard "child of God" on Sunday and believed "worthless" the rest of the week. And the modern world, recoiling, built the inversion: worth without covenant — self-esteem as birthright, identity as self-declaration, the child-of-God language kept as warm mist with the begetting removed — a gospel of worth that must be self-manufactured daily, which is why its adherents are so tired. Worm or self-made — the centuries oscillated, because nobody had the sermon that teaches both truths in order, on purpose: that you are nothing, and that you are royalty, and exactly why those two sentences never touch.

The plain harvest

The sermon exists. The setting: king Benjamin — the beloved Book of Mormon monarch who farmed with his own hands so his people wouldn't be taxed — old, near death, summoning his nation to the temple for a farewell. Families pitched their tents facing the temple, and the king spoke from a tower; and what he delivered, across three chapters, is the paradox of human identity, resolved by sequencing it.

First, the nothingness — stated at maximum, without anesthesia. Serve God with your whole soul, Benjamin says, and you remain "unprofitable servants" — because he immediately blesses every act of obedience, "therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him" (Mosiah 2:21–24). And then the famous floor: "ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth" (2:25 — the dust at least obeys its Creator without arguing). Nor is this a phase to grow out of: Benjamin prescribes it as a permanent spiritual practice — "always retain in remembrance... your own nothingness" (4:11). Read carefully what the nothingness is about, because this is the tangle's cure: every clause concerns merit — profit, debt, claim. You generate no claim on God; the ledger cannot be run in your favor even by total obedience, because the Blesser out-gives every payment. Nothingness, in Benjamin's mouth, is an accounting fact, not a value judgment: you cannot earn this family. It says nothing yet about what you are worth — only about what you can bill.

And then, in the same sermon, to the same people, the conferral. The people, pierced by the angel's message Benjamin relays, cry out for mercy, and the change comes: "the Spirit of the Lord... has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually" (5:2) — the birth event, occurring live, in a tent city — and the king, hearing it, pronounces the sentence at the top of this essay: this day he hath spiritually begotten you; ye are born of him; his sons and his daughters. Then he does what fathers do at births: he gives the name. "There is no other name given whereby salvation cometh; therefore, I would that ye should take upon you the name of Christ... And I would that ye should remember to retain the name written always in your hearts... that ye hear and know the voice by which ye shall be called, and also, the name by which he shall call you" (5:8–12). The identity comes with a surname, and the surname comes with two promises almost too tender to read quickly: the name written in your heart — identity inscribed on the inside, where circumstances can't reach it — and a voice that calls you by it: the Shepherd, calling his own by the family name, expecting them to know the sound. And the sermon's last sentence completes the birth certificate with a seal: "be steadfast and immovable... that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his" (5:15).

Now the resolution the centuries lacked, visible in the sequence: nothingness is about merit; the sonship and daughterhood are about relation — and they do not compete, because they answer different questions. What can you claim? Nothing — dust, unprofitable, beggared (and Benjamin universalizes it in the sermon's most leveling question: "are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being... for all the substance which we have?" 4:19). What are you? His — begotten, named, sealed, called by voice. And here is why conferred identity is the only restful kind: what you did not earn, you cannot un-earn. Worth that is self-manufactured lives one failure from bankruptcy; worth that is bestowed by covenant is held in the Bestower's hand — vulnerable to covenant-breaking, yes, but never to inadequacy, because adequacy was never its currency. The worm-piety was half right (no merit) and the self-esteem gospel was half right (real worth) and both were wrong about the source: the worth is real because it is his to give and he gave it — which the sermon then converts, immediately, into the family's economics: since all are beggars fed by one Being, "ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain... For behold, are we not all beggars?" (4:16–19) — the conferred family has no rank, and the beggar at the gate is a sibling whose petition rehearses your own. Alma, a generation later, states the whole doctrine as the universal requirement: "all mankind... must be born again; yea, born of God... and thus they become new creatures; and unless they do this, they can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God" (Mosiah 27:25–26). Born, named, sealed, and set to feeding the other beggars: that is Christian identity, whole, from one tower.

The truth at the table

Now the table, where the two old lies still take turns. To the one crushed by religious wormhood — the tender soul who absorbed the nothingness and never received the name: go back to the tower and notice that the same sermon that said dust said begotten — the nothingness was Benjamin's accounting lesson (you can't bill God), never his appraisal of you; and the appraisal is on the record: sons, daughters, name written in the heart, sealed his. If your inner monologue quotes Mosiah 2 and never Mosiah 5, you are reading half a sermon, and the missing half is the half about you. To the one exhausted by self-made worth — performing adequacy daily for an audience that never signs off: the conferred identity is the rest you're looking for. You were never supposed to manufacture what a King stands ready to bestow; receive it once, by covenant, and spend the energy you've been burning on self-justification loving the other beggars instead. For the practice of it: the name-retention has a weekly appointment — the sacrament's own prayer asks exactly Benjamin's asking, that we are "willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him" — every Sunday's bread a re-signing of the birth certificate; and between Sundays, learn the voice: he calls his own by the family name, and the name is retained by hearing it. And for the parents: notice how the King made children — not by auditing them into worthiness but by naming them into identity — and go and do likewise at your own table: children largely become what they are lovingly called; confer, don't merely correct; bless the identity and watch the behavior follow it, which is how the Father has been raising all of us from the start. The doctrine in one breath, then, for the mirror on hard mornings: you can claim nothing, and you are his — dust by merit, royalty by birth, named in the heart, called by voice, sealed by covenant. This day he hath spiritually begotten you. The birthday stands. Answer to the name.

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Ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you.