“Not My Will, but Thine, be
Done”
Introduction
This week’s and next week’s lessons
are inextricably linked: the Atonement and the Crucifixion. Together, these two
pivotal events that seal the mortal life of our Savior form the last of what
Bruce R. McConkie called the great pillars—Creation, Fall, Atonement. “God
himself, the Father of us all, ordained and established a plan of salvation
whereby his spirit children might advance and progress and become like him. It
is the gospel of God, the plan of Eternal Elohim, the system that saves and
exalts, and it consists of three things. These three are the very pillars of
eternity itself. They are the most important events that ever have or will
occur in all eternity. They are the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement.”[1] For
this week’s blog entry, I will offer little commentary and mostly bring
together some of the beautiful quotations from Church leaders to help us gain a
personal understanding of what the Atonement means to each one of us as we
strive to increase our discipleship in environments that become increasingly
difficult.
The Garden of Gethsemane: Gat
Shemen means oil press in Hebrew. It is aptly named— “Just as the grape or
olive is pressed and crushed by the heavy stone in the press, so the heavy
burden of the sins of the world that Jesus had to carry would press the blood
out of the body of this Anointed One.”[2]
Luke 22:39–40, “And
when he was at the place, he said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into
temptation.”Question: This was His last
instruction to the disciples before he went to this crushing task. What does
this mean to us? (see also Luke
22:44).
Quote 1: Several years before Elder Orson F. Whitney was
ordained an Apostle, he received a vision of the Savior in the Garden of
Gethsemane.
“I seemed to be in the Garden of
Gethsemane, a witness of the Savior’s agony. I saw Him as plainly as ever I
have seen anyone. Standing behind a tree in the foreground, I beheld Jesus,
with Peter, James and John, as they came through a little … gate at my right.
Leaving the three Apostles there, after telling them to kneel and pray, the Son
of God passed over to the other side, where He also knelt and prayed. It was
the same prayer with which all Bible readers are familiar: ‘Oh my Father, if it
be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou
wilt.’ As He prayed the tears streamed down his face, which was toward me. I
was so moved at the sight that I also wept, out of pure sympathy. My whole
heart went out to him; I loved him with all my soul, and longed to be with him
as I longed for nothing else. Presently He arose and walked to where those
Apostles were kneeling—fast asleep! He shook them gently, awoke them, and in a
tone of tender reproach, untinctured by the least show of anger or impatience,
asked them plaintively if they could not watch with him one hour. There He was,
with the awful weight of the world’s sin upon his shoulders, with the pangs of
every man, woman and child shooting through his sensitive soul—and they could
not watch with him one poor hour! Returning to his place, He offered up the
same prayer as before; then went back and again found them sleeping. Again he
awoke them, readmonished them, and once more returned and prayed. Three times
this occurred” (Through Memory’s Halls
[1930], 82).
Mark 14:33–36. Question: Why do
you think Christ was “sore amazed” (also translated as astonished, surprised)?
Christ had never before experienced sin. Hebrews 4:15, “For we have not an high
priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in
all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”
Quote 2: Neal A. Maxwell, “Imagine, Jehovah, the Creator of this and
other worlds, ‘astonished’! Jesus knew cognitively what He must do, but not
experientially. He had never personally known the exquisite and exacting
process of an atonement before. Thus, when the agony came in its fulness, it
was so much, much worse than even He with his unique intellect had ever
imagined!”[3]
Quote 3: James E. Talmage, “Christ’s
agony in the garden is unfathomable by the finite mind, both as to intensity
and cause. … He struggled and groaned under a burden such as no other being who
has lived on earth might even conceive as possible. It was not physical pain,
nor mental anguish alone, that caused him to suffer such torture as to produce
an extrusion of blood from every pore; but a spiritual agony of soul such as
only God was capable of experiencing. … In that hour of anguish Christ met and
overcame all the horrors that Satan, ‘the prince of this world,’ could inflict.
… In some manner, actual and terribly real though to man incomprehensible, the
Savior took upon Himself the burden of the sins of mankind from Adam to the end
of the world” (Jesus the Christ, 3rd
ed. [1916], 613).
“In other words, in Gethsemane Jesus
became us, each one of us, and we
became Him. Our sins were transferred to Jesus. His perfection was transferred
to us. He was a substitute recipient for our pain and punishment. He acted in
our place to take the consequences and sorrows of wicked behavior, which each
of us deserves, so that we could be free from the devastation effects of sin. . . . The Savior took to himself the full
force of the punishment deserved by each of us. He suffered God’s wrath in our
place. Elder Neal A. Maxwell observed that, ‘Jesus always deserved and always
had the Father’s full approval. But when He took our sins upon Him, of divine
necessity required by justice He experienced instead “the fierceness of the
wrath of Almighty God” (D&C 76:107; 88:106)’ (Lord, Increase our Faith, 13).”[4]
Quote 4: Elder Packer: “He, by choice,
accepted the penalty for all mankind for the sum total of all wickedness and
depravity; for brutality, immorality, perversion, and corruption; for
addiction; for the killings and torture and terror—for all of it that ever had
been or all that ever would be enacted upon this earth. In choosing, He faced
the awesome power of the evil one who was not confined to flesh nor subject to
mortal pain. That was Gethsemane!”[5]
Matthew 26:39: “If it be possible, let
this cup pass from me.” The requirement for this sacrifice was a lamb without
blemish: a man without sin, a willing sacrifice. The foreshadow of this
ultimate sacrifice was Abraham and Isaac, the Akedah, at which time their willingness and total submission to the
will of the Lord was sufficient (Genesis 22). Perhaps the mortal part of
Christ’s being was asking for the same blessing. See D&C 19:16–18.
Nevertheless.
That word never carried so much meaning as it did for mankind at that time in
that place. Joseph Smith taught that the Savior, “descended in suffering below
that which man can suffer; or, in other words, suffered greater sufferings, and
was exposed to more powerful contradictions than any man can be.”[6] Question: What does it mean that the Savior
descended below all things? See
D&C 122:8.
Luke 22:44, “great drops of blood.” As
with other aspects of the Atonement in Gethsamene, Restoration Scripture bears
out what has been disputed in mainstream Christianity. (See D&C 19:18;
Mosiah 3:7.)
Quote 5: Jeffrey R. Holland, “I
testify that He had power over death because He was divine but that He willingly
subjected Himself to death for our sake because for a period of time He was
also mortal. I declare that in His willing submission to death He took upon
Himself the sins of the world, paying an infinite price for every sorrow and
sickness, every heartache and unhappiness from Adam to the end of the world. In
doing so He conquered both the grave physically and hell spiritually and set
the human family free.”[7]
So, knowing all this, has your understanding of the Atonement increased,
and how does this help you approach the Sacrament each Sunday?
Quote 6: Dallin H.
Oaks: “If the emblems of the sacrament are being
passed and you are texting or whispering or playing video games or doing
anything else to deny yourself essential spiritual food, you are severing your
spiritual roots and moving yourself toward stony ground. You are making
yourself vulnerable to withering away when you encounter tribulation like
isolation, intimidation, or ridicule.”[8]
Quote 7: Dale
Renlund: “President Thomas S. Monson has taught, “One of God’s greatest
gifts to us is the joy of trying again, for no failure ever need be final.”
Even if we’ve been a conscious, deliberate sinner or have repeatedly
faced failure and disappointment, the moment we decide to try again, the
Atonement of Christ can help us. And we need to remember that it is not the
Holy Ghost that tells us we’re so far gone that we might as well give up.”[9]
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