One of the things that led me towards Biblical Christianity was reading the New Testament’s repeated claims that Jesus was God before the foundations of the world were laid. My favorite such passage is Col 1:15-17

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. “

Latter-day Saints also claim that Jesus was a God before he was born on this earth. Indeed, they claim that he was THE GOD of the Old Testament Jehovah. But Jesus Christ had not yet accomplished many of the requirements for exaltation and becoming a God that LDS doctrine lays out.

Specifically, Jesus had not yet received a physical body, received sacred ordinances, or been married for time and all eternity.

All three of these are a BIG deal for Latter-day Saints and seen as essential for exaltation.

1) In LDS doctrine, receiving a physical body and eventually receiving a perfected resurrection body is key to becoming like God. Bodies are a source of spiritual and physical power. Joseph Smith famously taught that “[a]ll beings who have bodies have power over those who have not.” But Jesus didn’t yet have a body until he was born in Bethlehem

2) Latter-day Saints take the need for physical ordinances received in the body such as baptism and the endowment ceremony so seriously that they perform proxy ordinances in temples for those who died without them. But Christ could not have received these ordinances because he didn’t have a body yet and was therefore lacking an essential requirement for progression to godhood.

3) Latter-day Saints emphasize that only in the union between a man and a woman is exaltation possible. As President Dallin H. Oaks put it, “Eternal relationship are also fundamental to our theology. Fundamental to us is God’s revelation that exaltation can be attained only through faithfulness to the covenants of an eternal marriage between a man and a woman.” If Jesus was not sealed to a woman in an eternal marriage, then there is no way that he can truly be called a God in LDS theology.

How Can Latter-Day Saints claim that Jesus was God before he was ever born when he did not meet these foundational and essential requirements of exaltation?

It seems to me that at best he was a junior varsity God, an amateur who had yet secured for himself his own exaltation but was sharing in the father’s godhood

But how is that compatible with what the Biblical Jehovah declared?:

· “For I am the Lord, I change not” (Malachi 3:6).

· “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.” (Isaiah 40:28).

· “Before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me.” (Isaiah 43:10).

· “I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another.” (Isaiah 42:8).