According to John Welch, building upon the foundational testimony of Christ, each Book of Mormon prophet distinctively accented certain attributes of Jesus Christ. Judging simply from the names and titles that they used in referring to the Lord, we can see that each Book of Mormon prophet related to and testified of Jesus in his own personal ways, revealing to us things about Jesus Christ and also about the prophets who knew him.
Jacob was called as a young man to serve the Lord as a priest; Lehi set him apart and blessed him to spend all his days in God's service (2 Nephi 2:3), and Nephi consecrated him to be a priest (2 Nephi 5:26). Jacob officiated in delivering the great covenant speech around the time of Nephi's coronation (see 2 Nephi 6-10); he spoke to his people from the temple (Jacob 2-4); and he and his lineage had the sacred obligation of keeping the religious records on the small plates of Nephi. To a remarkable degree, Jacob's priestly functions are reflected in the testimony that he bears of Christ.
Jacob introduced the word Christ (or its Hebrew equivalent) into broad Nephite usage (see 2 Nephi 10:3). That word in Greek or Hebrew derives from a word whose meanings include "anointed." To the extent that he himself was a "consecrated" priest, who both proclaimed the eternal gospel of Christ and performed atoning sacrifices in the temple of Nephi pursuant to the law of Moses (2 Nephi 5:10, 16), Jacob would have identified personally with the fact that Jesus was anointed too perform his holy and eternal atoning mission.
Indeed, Jacob is the first in the Book of Mormon to expound on the atonement of Christ. He told how Christ would suffer and die for all mankind so they might become subject to him through his "infinite atonement," which overcomes the Fall and brings resurrection and incorruptibility (2 Nephi 9:5-15). He spoke repeatedly of such things as uncleanness, guilt, robes (2 Nephi 9:14), flesh being consumed by fire (2 Nephi 9:16), shaking one's garments (2 Nephi 9:44), and fatness (2 Nephi 9:51). Whatever else these words might mean, they evoke priestly images of temple sacrifice and ritual (for example, the forbidden fat belonged to the Lord; see Leviticus 7:3-31). Jacob thus saw Christ in connection with traditional atonement imagery drawn from Israelite temple practices.
Jacob is unique in both the Book of Mormon and the Bible in referring to the Lord as "the all-powerful Creator" (Jacob 2:5). Jacob also saw fit to refer to Christ as the "great Creator" three times (2 Nephi 9:5,6; Jacob 3:7) and the "Maker" twice (2 Nephi 9:40; Jacob 2:6). Jacob has more to say about Christ as creator than any other Book of Mormon prophet, and in this connection it is significant that the creation account was an integral part of typical ancient temple worship.
The purpose of temple sacrifice in ancient Israel was to purify the people. The objective of their temple service was to become "holy men unto me" (Exodus 22:31), "for I the Lord, which sanctify you, am holy" (Leviticus 21:8). Indeed the main body of laws of priestly sacrifice in Israel came to be known as the Holiness Code. This is consistent with the fact that Jacob, of all Book of Mormon prophets, strongly prefers to call Christ "the Holy One of Israel" (seventeen times) or simply "the Holy One" (once). During the time of Jacob is the only time the Lord is referred to as "the Holy One of Jacob" (2 Nephi 27:34). Lehi and Nephi account for the other fourteen times the designation "Holy One of Israel" appears; but after the time of the small plates this title drops out of Nephite usage--perhaps because the temple-service declined in prominence as people knew that its sacrifices merely typified the only meaningful sacrifice of Christ, or perhaps because the Nephites, over time, became less inclined to identify personally with a remote and now unfamiliar land of Israel. [John W. Welch, "Ten Testimonies of Jesus Christ from the Book of Mormon," F.A.R.M.S., 1994, pp. 7-8]