The Atonement Archive
Easter is coming in just a few days. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a Mormon), Easter means much more to me than spring flowers and chocolate bunnies. I am a Christian, with a deep and abiding love for Jesus Christ. As always at this time of year, I feel both profound sorrow and profound joy as I contemplate the sacrifice of our Savior when He took upon Himself all the sins and evil of the world, suffered, and was crucified. It is almost unbearable to remember His sufferings. Yet my heart is filled with overwhelming joy at His resurrection, which brings with it the incredible promise of eternal life. The Doctrine and Covenants, which contains revelations from God given through modern Mormon prophets, uses a beautiful image to describe Jesus’ atonement. Jesus has “descended below all things, …that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth” (from The Doctrine and Covenants,... Read the rest of this entry »
Believe in Jesus Christ
To believe in Jesus Christ is to trust Him, rely on Him, depend on Him and His grace. The Savior’s grace is His enabling power that flows to us unmerited, and it comes by virtue of the Savior’s solitary, singular, magnificent atonement.
What is His atonement? How does He give His grace? Let’s talk about that for a minute, not comprehensively for that’s impossible in this or any space, but sufficiently to understand the simplicity and profundity of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, death, Resurrection for us.
Jesus died to pay the price of our sins, weaknesses, poor judgments, and to suffer for our pains, sicknesses, injustices, and confusions. He has already finished that atoning sacrifice! He agonized in Gethsemane and on the cross for your sins and mine, to pay the debt that justice asks to erase the full penalty of sin. Through that payment, requiring His life, He met justice fairly and satisfied... Read the rest of this entry »
Why is Jesus Christ called the Son of Man? While others in the Scriptures (particularly the Old Testament) who are called “son[s] of man” (Jeremiah 49:18, Ezekiel 4:16, Psalms 8:4), the word “son” is uncapitalized. Elder James E. Talmage, a Biblical scholar, sheds light on the answer in his renown work, Jesus the Christ. He says,
“In applying the designation to Himself, the Lord invariably uses the definite article. ‘The Son of Man’ was and is, specifically and exclusively, Jesus Christ. While as a matter of solemn certainty He was the only male human being from Adam down who was not the son of a mortal man, He used the title in a way to conclusively demonstrate that it was peculiarly and solely His own. It is plainly evident that the expression is fraught with a meaning beyond that conveyed by the words in common usage. The distinguishing appellation has been construed by many to indicate our Lord’s humble station as... Read the rest of this entry »
Mormon beliefs treat the fall of Adam differently than do most religions, and their teachings about Eve are greater still, an affirmation that God values the wisdom and spiritual contributions of women.
The Fall of Adam refers to the time Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden. God told them they could eat from any tree in the garden except one, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. However, he reminded them they had agency and could decide for themselves, but they must remember they would die if they ate from it. Eventually, they chose to eat from that tree and were cast out of the garden into the mortal world. Death became possible and their bodies became mortal. They had to begin to work for the things they needed. This has been referred to as the fall of Adam. Read the rest of this entry »
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Jesus Christ did not actually use the word grace in His earthly ministry. Only two verses reference this word in the four gospels, and these were both spoken by others. Luke tells us the grace of God was on Jesus as a child. John taught: “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17, King James Version of the Bible). Therefore, our understanding of the word grace comes from others. Read the rest of this entry »
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The evening before the Lamb of God was to be crucified for the sins of the world and hours before He was betrayed, the Lord Jesus was sitting with his Apostles in a “large upper room” (Mark 14:15). It was here that He first instituted the sacrament: “And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples,” (Matthew 26:26). Then He said, “Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me” 1 Corinthians 11:24). Then, “After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:25). Thus, the purpose of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is to look back and remember Jesus the Christ and what He has done for each of us. Everything points “to that great and last sacrifice; and that great and last sacrifice [is] the Son of God, yea,... Read the rest of this entry »
The atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ “embraces, sustains, supports, and gives life to all other gospel doctrines. It is the foundation upon which all truth rests and all things grow out of it and come because of it.”1 “The wondrous and glorious Atonement was the central act in all of human history.”2 Because of these statements, all things also point to Christ and His atonement. Those who lived before Christ looked forward to Him and His infinite and eternal sacrifice. Those who live after Christ look back to this greatest of all events and “remember what was done.”3
There were many different ways in which the blood sacrifices before Christ were types and shadows of the great and last sacrifice. Note a few of the details:
First, like Christ, the [sacrificial] animal was chosen and anointed by the laying on of hands. (The Hebrew title Messiah and the Greek title Christ both mean “the Anointed One.”) Second, the animal was to have... Read the rest of this entry »
The atonement of Jesus Christ is the central doctrine of Christianity, and all other Christian doctrines come out of and are appendages to it.1 Not only can these other doctrines be connected back to the Savior and His Atoning Sacrifice, but if they are not, “there will be no life nor substance nor redemption in them,” to use a phrase by President Boyd K. Packer, an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.2 It is therefore not only important, but necessary, when studying any doctrine or teaching or appendage of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to connect it back to Jesus Christ and His eternal sacrifice.
When Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden, they were commanded “that they should worship the Lord their God, and should offer the firstlings of their flocks, for an offering unto the Lord” (Moses 5:5). Yet M. Russell Ballard, another apostle of the Church, has said that some have wondered, “How could the slaughtering... Read the rest of this entry »
Sometimes some of the simplest questions are also some of the most profound. These types of questions are therefore some of the most difficult to answer. “Why is Jesus called the Son of God?” is one of these questions, simple, profound, and difficult to answer. But as one of my English Professors told me the other day, “The hard questions are really the only questions worth asking.” In that case, Why is Jesus called the Son of God?
In a basic sense, the question is closely related to the question the Spirit of the Lord asked Nephi: “Knowest thou the condescension of God?” (1 Nephi 11:16). Note a definition of “condescend” that the Oxford English Dictionary gives the word, “To depart from the privileges of superiority by a voluntary submission; to sink willingly to equal terms with inferiours.” I feel like I can use Nephi’s response to the Spirit’s question as my own response, “I know that he loveth his children;... Read the rest of this entry »
Because Jesus’ name-titles are symbolic, one might analyze them in order to both gain a greater appreciation of and learn who He really is. One of the titles of Jesus Christ that has a very profound level of symbolism is when he is called “the Lamb of God.” I will attempt a basic explanation of what this name-title means, and why of all creatures, a lamb was chosen to represent the Savior.
Long before the Lamb of God was born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger, Isaiah likened the Savior of all men and women unto a lamb when he wrote, “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). The lamb is therefore a symbol of meekness, humility, and of willingness to submit to the will of the master. It is true that Jesus is all of these (humble, willing to submit to the Father) but the level of symbolism... Read the rest of this entry »
