When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and were cast out of the garden, they transgressed against God. Ever since then, men have sinned. We live in a fallen world where sin is all around us. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"(1 John 1:8). None of us can return to live with God in our fallen and sinful state. That is why our loving Heavenly Father provided a Savior for us. It is all part of His merciful plan.
Jesus Christ was sent to the Earth to do the will of the Father. He was the only perfect man to walk this earth. He served others and performed miracles and forgave sins and established His church. The most important thing He did was the Atonement.
After the Last Supper, Jesus took His disciples with him to the garden of Gethsemane. There He left them and went a little bit off and prayed to the Father. Jesus knew what was going to happen. He knew that He was going to have to endure excruciating pain that would destroy any other mortal man. He prayed to Father "Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done"(Luke 22:42). Heavenly Father knew that it had to happen and so did Jesus. An angel was sent to strengthen Jesus as He underwent the first phase of the Atonement.In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus suffered for the sins, pains, and sicknesses of every single person who had or would ever live upon the Earth. "And his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground"(Luke 22:44). No one can understand the pain He felt. No one can ever possibly understand the agony. I don't know how long it lasted, but in that moment He felt every single thing you or I have ever felt.
One woman said it very well:
"We know that Jesus experienced the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane. It's our faith that He experienced everything - absolutely everything. Sometimes we don't think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don't experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means He knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer -how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced Napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism.
"Let me go further. There's nothing you have experienced as a [human] that He does not also know and recognize. His last recorded words to His disciples were, "And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." (Matthew 28:20) He understands your pain when your five-year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth grader, when someone gives your thirteen-year-old drugs. He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quiet apartment where the only children are visitors, when your 50th wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years. He knows all that. He's been there. He's been lower than all that"(Chieko N. Okazaki, Lighten Up, Preface, p.147).
After Jesus went through that, He came back to His apostles to find them sleeping. Shortly after He was betrayed by His disciple and friend, Judas. From there "He was arrested and condemned on spurious charges, convicted to satisfy a mob, and sentenced to die on Calvary's cross"(The Living Christ). I always wonder what He must've been thinking as He was betrayed and then mocked, whipped, beaten, and nailed to a cross by men whose sins and pains He just suffered for.
Since Jesus was half God (His mother was mortal but His father is a God), only He could give up His life. If He wanted to, He could've hung on that cross forever and never died. While on the cross, He comforted His mother and asked the Father to "forgive them; for they know not what they do"(Luke 23:34). Then He gave up the ghost.
Three days later, Jesus rose from the grave. "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept"(1 Corinthians 15:20). He was resurrected with a perfect body. He showed His resurrected body to those at Jerusalem, allowed them to touch Him. He also ate with them to demonstrate that He did, in fact, once again have a body of flesh and bones.
Because Jesus rose from the grave, we will all live again. We will all be resurrected whether we be good or evil and receive perfect, immortal bodies. However, our actions will decide whether we get to live with God again.
The Atonement did not eliminate our personal responsibility. We all have the gift of free agency. It's our choice to accept or reject the Jesus Christ's atonement. Don't get me wrong, we believe "that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do"(2 Nephi 25:23). But we need to do some work to access that grace. We need to have faith in Jesus Christ, repent of our sins, be baptized, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, keep the commandments, and endure to the end. Seems like a list. And now you're all thinking that I believe we're saved by works. Let me explain further.
Nothing we ever do can save us. It is only by grace that we are saved. BUT we are still expected to do our part in order to access that grace. Here's an analogy to help us out:
Say you were a little kid and you want to learn to play the piano. What do you do? You ask your parents to sign you up for piano lessons. They agree and sign you up for piano lessons. Every month, year after year, they pay the piano teacher so you can learn the piano. What do your parents expect you to do in return? Practice the piano. Is practicing the piano ever going to physically repay your parents for all the hundreds (and probably thousands) of dollars that they spent on lessons, books, music, and the piano itself? No. But that's all they ask of you in return. It's the same with Jesus Christ's Atonement. No amount of prayer, scripture study, or church attendance can ever physically repay Him for what He did. He does not expect us to pay Him back. All He asks is that we follow Him and keep His commandments as outlined in the scriptures and given by His authorized prophets. The amazing thing though is that even if you were to never accept Jesus Christ and follow Him, He would have still atoned for yours sins so that you could always have the choice. He's that loving and merciful.
"He's not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don't need a Savior. He came to save His people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He's not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief"(Okazaki).
"And now, behold, I will testify unto you of myself that these things are true. Behold, I say unto you, that I do know that Christ shall come among the children of men, to take upon him the transgressions of his people, and that he shall atone for the sins of the world; for the Lord God hath spoken it
"For it is expedient that an atonement should be made; for according to the great plan of the Eternal God there must be an atonement made, or else all mankind must unavoidably perish; yea, all are hardened; yea, all are fallen and are lost, and must perish except it be through the atonement which it is expedient should be made"(Alma 34:8-9).
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment