The phrase “it must needs be” occurs 35 times in LDS scripture. It is an interesting phrase. If you only take a quick glance at the definitions for “must” and “needs,” you might think that someone is just repeating himself by using it:
MUST, v.i.
1. To be obliged; to be necessitated. It expresses both physical and moral necessity.
2. It expresses moral fitness or propriety, as necessary or essential to the character or end proposed.
NEEDS, adv. Necessarily; indispensably; generally used with must.
I’m going to highlight the first definition for “must” and dig up the definition for “necessitated,” too:
NECESSITATED, pp. Made necessary, indispensable or unavoidable.
“It must needs be” is a very emphatic phrase. It basically says that something is necessarily and indispensably made necessary and indispensable. (Just typing that makes me laugh. ☺️)
In other words, there are conditions that exist that make a certain course of action unavoidable, and using a verb form and an adverb with related meanings drives home the point. What conditions and what course of action are necessitated, and why? Well, that depends a great deal upon the desired outcome. Notice the second definition for the word, “must.”
2. It expresses moral fitness or propriety, as necessary or essential to the character or end proposed.
If there is a good outcome desired, the conditions of any given situation are going to necessitate a certain course of action that is morally fit towards that outcome.
For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. (Moses 1:39)
This is the outcome God desires for us. In it, he finds his greatest joy, because in it we find our greatest joy, and everything He does is done to further that purpose.
More than one Christian has asked the question, “Why did God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden?”—the implication being that God is somehow less than omniscient or somehow doing less than everything He can for the benefit of man, knowing that Adam and Eve would eventually partake of the fruit of the very tree that he put there and commanded them not to partake.
What they don’t realize is that immortality and eternal life are outcomes. They are the result of choices that lead to them. They have opposites, and that is an inescapable fact of reality. Learning how to recognize those opposites—to see them for what they really are—and to choose the better part is the primary purpose of this life. God does this and desires for us to do the same, but that cannot happen if He withholds from us opportunities to make the best choices while being enticed by any and all choices that are less than what is best.
11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.
12 Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God. (2 Nephi 2)
There is a lot more to this, and that is one of the reasons why 2 Nephi 2 is so good. However, a short commentary on these two verses will have to suffice for now.
Every person who has ever lived on this earth, save Jesus Christ, has made some choice that led to death. And yet, in order for us to become righteous, it required us to be given the opportunity to choose a course of action that is righteous, as opposed to one that is not. Without opposition, “there would have been no purpose in the end of…creation.” God ever makes it possible for us to overcome all things. How? —By placing before us the things that currently overcome us because we see them incorrectly and by persuading us to change how we see them, to the point where we overcome them instead.