Such then is our need for a Redeemer
For a few moments, as we contemplate our need for a Redeemer and Jesus Christ’s suffering for each of us, I hope we can feel the Spirit giving hope and peace to our hearts and understand even more deeply how to know and worship our Savior.
Before we came to earth, we lived as spirit children with our Heavenly Parents. Our Heavenly Father wanted us to be able to progress and become like Him, so a big meeting was held and a plan was presented. He told us that we could come to Earth and gain mortal bodies. He promised that agency, one of His greatest gifts to us, would continue on Earth. The time on Earth would be a test to see if we would use our agency to follow Father’s plan and commandments.
He taught us that we must have faith in Jesus Christ, repent, be baptized, receive the Holy Ghost, and continue making covenants in the Temple to live forever in His presence. He taught us that after we die, and our bodies are buried in the ground, our spirits go to the spirit world where we await resurrection. Father knew that not everyone would have the chance to hear of His plan and of Jesus Christ while alive on this earth, and so provided a way for the Gospel to be preached in the spirit world.
Father’s plan provided a very just and merciful way for all of his children to hear and accept the Gospel, or to hear and reject the Gospel. He taught us that after we were resurrected, we would go to one of three heavens or degrees—the Celestial Kingdom, the Terrestrial Kingdom, or the Telestial Kingdom—based on our commitment to follow His plan. Because He honored our agency, Heavenly Father knew that we would make mistakes on this journey. He knew that not all of His children would return to live forever in His Presence.
Satan opposed that plan and said he had a better plan whereby he would control all of us and compel us to keep every commandment. According to Satan’s plan, we all had to follow his plan to return back to God. Oh, and Satan wanted God’s honor and power. Jesus Christ stepped forward in support of the Father’s plan and, using His agency, volunteered to be our Savior and pay the atoning price to overcome sin and death.
Satan was cast down from heaven for rebelling against the Father and the Father’s plan commenced! This beautiful world was created. Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden and realized that to multiply and replenish the earth, they had to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, causing the paradisiacal world to fall. After the Fall, Father’s spirit children began coming to Earth, obtaining bodies and using their agency to accept or reject His Gospel. Mankind began to sin.
Brigham Young taught that
Every person who desires and strives to be a Saint is closely watched by fallen spirits that came here when Lucifer fell, and by the spirits of wicked persons who have been here in tabernacles and departed from them. Those spirits are never idle; they are watching every person who wishes to do right, and are continually prompting them to do wrong.
To answer this dilemma, James E Talmage wrote
Such then is the need of a Redeemer, for without Him mankind would forever remain in a fallen state, and as to hope of eternal progression, would be inevitably lost. The mortal probation is provided as an opportunity of advancement; but so great are the difficulties and the dangers, so strong is the influence of evil in the world, amd so weak is man in resistance thereto that without the aid of a power above that of humanity no soul would find its way back to God from whom it came. The need of a Redeemer lies in the inability of man to raise himself from the temporal to the spiritual plane, from the lower kingdom to the higher.
The Savior testified
To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world.
Of the Savior’s mission, Elder Holland taught
I speak of the loneliest journey ever made and the unending blessings it brought to all in the human family. I speak of the Savior’s solitary task of shouldering alone the burden of our salvation. Rightly He would say: “I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me. … I looked, and there was none to help me.”
I want to highlight some of the scriptures describing how the Lord suffered for you and for me, and the effects of His Atonement.
He did not only suffer in Gethsemane and on Golgotha, but His life was filled with persecution and sorrow. Satan opposed the Savor at every turn, but the Savior prevailed triumphant.
He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him;
And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, Being forty days tempted of the devil. . . And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.
And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in him. And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.
And thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Son to the Father, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation, but suffereth himself to be mocked, and scourged, and cast out, and disowned by his people.
For we have an high priest which was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.
They stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head
Luke 23:33
And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots
Mark 15:29-31
And they that passed by railed on him, wagging their heads, and saying, Save thyself, and come down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests mocking said among themselves with the scribes, He saved others; himself he cannot save. Let Christ the King of Israel descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe
He cometh unto his own, that salvation might come unto the children of men; and even after all this they shall consider him a man, and say that he hath a devil, and shall scourge him, and shall crucify him.
From Elder Holland’s “None Were with Him“
Now I speak very carefully, even reverently, of what may have been the most difficult moment in all of this solitary journey to Atonement. I speak of those final moments for which Jesus must have been prepared intellectually and physically but which He may not have fully anticipated emotionally and spiritually—that concluding descent into the paralyzing despair of divine withdrawal when He cries in ultimate loneliness, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The loss of mortal support He had anticipated, but apparently He had not comprehended this. Had He not said to His disciples, “Behold, the hour … is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” and “The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him”?
I testify that He did please His Father perfectly and that a perfect Father did not forsake His Son in that hour. Indeed, in all of Christ’s mortal ministry the Father may never have been closer to His Son than in these agonizing final moments of suffering. Nevertheless, that the supreme sacrifice of His Son might be as complete as it was voluntary and solitary, the Father briefly withdrew from Jesus the comfort of His Spirit, the support of His personal presence. It was required, indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind—all of us—would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.
John 17:1
These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.
Matthew 26:36-39 and Luke 22:41-43
Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane…and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.
And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and he sweat as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
Leviticus 17:11
For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
Hebrews 13:12
Wherefore Jesus, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered
For behold his blood atoneth for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam, who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them, or who have ignorantly sinned.
Wherefore, may God raise you from death by the power of the resurrection, and also from everlasting death by the power of the atonement, that ye may be received into the eternal kingdom of God
Isaiah 53:5-12
The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter. He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. He made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death. He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many
Doctrine & Covenants 19:16-19
For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; but if they would not repent they must suffer even as I; which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink-Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook
Doctrine & Covenants 38:4
Verily, even as many as have believed in my name, for I am Christ, and by the virtue of the blood which I have spilt, have I pleaded before the Father for them.
What is it that ye shall hope for? Ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal
What think ye of Christ? He promises all of us that we can turn and find Him from this very hour. Despite our weaknesses and sins, none of us are beyond His atoning love. His very death provides life and beginning for each of us. Paul taught “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
So, it’s time for each of us, as the prodigal son, to ‘arise and go to our Father’.
I know that Jesus Christ is the Risen Messiah. His Atonement broke the bonds of sin and burst the shackles of the grave. His Atonement provides Resurrection to all born into mortality. He is our Advocate with the Father, enabling us to gain eternal life as families. He is the Bread and Water of Life. He is the Way. I know that He suffered for my sins, pain, grief, injustices—and for yours.
Such then is our need for a Redeemer…
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