Today in church, we were studying the Plan of Salvation, the great work Christ did for us by atoning for our sins and making it possible for us to return to our Father in Heaven. A quote from President Joseph Fielding Smith stood out to me. The driving of the nails into his hands and into the Savior’s feet was the least part of his suffering. We get into the habit, I think, of feeling, or thinking that his great suffering was being nailed to the cross and left to hang there. Well, that was a period in the world’s history when thousands of men suffered that way. So his suffering, so far as that is concerned, was not any more than the suffering of other men who have been so crucified. What, then, was his great suffering? I wish we could impress this fact upon the minds of every member of this Church: His great suffering occurred before he ever went to the cross. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane, so the scriptures tell us, that blood oozed from every pore of his body; and in the extreme agony of his soul, he cried to his Father. It was not the nails driven into his hands and feet. Now do not ask me how that was done because I do not know. Nobody knows. All we know is that in some way he took upon himself that extreme penalty. He took upon him our transgressions, and paid a price, a price of torment. Think of the Savior carrying the united burden of every individual—torment—in some way which I say, I cannot understand; I just accept—which caused him to suffer an agony of pain, compared to which the driving of the nails in his hands and feet was very little. He cried in His anguish, to His Father, “If it be possible, let this cup pass!” and it could not pass [see Matthew 26:42; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42]. Let me read you just a word or two here of what the Lord says in regard to that: “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 the 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 and finished my preparations unto the children of men.” [D&C 19:16–19.] The Saviors trial in Gethsemane is often glossed over. In the movie The Passion of Christ, the scene in Gethsemane is brief, almost dreamlike, with the Lord walking calmly through the garden and then stepping on a snake. The crucifixion scene is prolonged and agonizing to watch. When I first saw that, my reaction was that the scenes were wrong. Yes, what He went through after the Garden was horrible and painful, but in dismissing what happened in the Garden, we risk losing a full understanding of what He did for us. The real heavy lifting of the Plan was done there, before He went to Calvary.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 16:48:17 +0000