From an evangelical’s perspective in the LDS corridor, this title is my honest perception of the message preached by Joseph Smith at Kirtland, Ohio on May 6, 1833.

The content of D&C 93:2-11 is familiar because of my current study in John 1. For two months, I have been hunkered down, spiritually feasting on the first thirty-four verses of John’s Gospel. So excited by the material, I have been posting clips through banners and yard signs all over town. When approaching the first eleven verses of D&C 93, biblical phrases easily leap out in instant recognition; but the flow of thought sends my mind ricocheting and boomeranging back and forth from verse 9, to 14, to 10, to 14, to 1, to 3, to 4, to 3, and then back to verse 14 of John 1. The latter-day text attempts to dissect the sequential logic of John’s Prologue and then reconfigure the pieces for Joseph’s audience in the early 1830s.

Can I type with candor? D&C 93:11 is an enigma to me, appearing to be the flip-flop of John 1:14 minus the KJV parenthesis and any apparent indication of egenoto. Even the phrase “made flesh my tabernacle” (D&C93:4) seems incongruous with the concise declaration, “And the Word became (came into existence as) flesh and tabernacled among us.”

Yet my biggest flashpoint is the compound sentence in D&C 93:12-14: “And I, John, saw that he received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace; and he received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness; and thus he was called the Son of God, because he received not of the fulness at the first.”

First, only for observation, John 1 (KJV) utilizes the English word, “fulness,” one time: “And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace” (John 1:16). But the same English word explodes everywhere in D&C 93, I think, fifteen times in verses 4-34.

Secondly, here is the jarring disconnect. Rather than Christ’s fulness being the eternal flowing fountain for our reception of “grace for grace,” it is Jesus Christ that at one time needed grace for his eternal progression to fulness. Desiring not to be impertinent, I would simply ask, “Has there ever been a theos who has not required the continual receiving of grace for grace like a mortal creature such as myself?” I propose that John 1 answers the question positively and emphatically with the declaration of the monogeneis theos (John 1:18). Not in his earthly baptism but in his incarnation and possessing fulness, he is the exegesis of the unseen God to all mankind.

And finally, let me slip in just a few more questions, as I am thinking in public of heart issues for LDS friends. I just don’t have the background but would appreciate better understanding to avoid misrepresentation. How did Frederick G. Williams, Sidney Rigdon, Joseph Smith, Jun., and Newel K. Whitney end their religious walks in life? According to LDS belief, if Jesus Christ received “fulness” early on in mortal life, why do most sincere, obedient latter-day saints seem stuck in their upward progression though they are trying really hard? Not enough faithfulness? Not enough keeping the Lord’s commandments?

Fundamentally, is wave upon glorious wave of “grace for grace” based on this?

And I would really love to hear an LDS friend’s interpretation of monogenous para patros (John 1:14).