Friday, December 15, 2017

Shalissa Lindsay On the Personal Nature of Christ's Sacrifice

The following, written by a Latter-day Saint author in a book I read today, really captures the personal nature of Christ’s atoning sacrifice:

At some point, it dawned on me that I could speak of the Atonement in present rather than past tense. True, that victory is 100 percent complete, finalized, an absolute historical fact. Christ said, “It is finished.” Yet Christ also says “time only is measured unto men” and “all things are present with me, for I know them all.” (Alma 40:8; Moses 1:6) Because Jesus remembers all things as present, He can still be in the very thick of our experiences, swallowing the pain with us, here and now, whatever we are suffering. He says, “Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; they walls are continually before me.” (Isaiah 49:16)

In this verse, the words thee and thy are singular terms (not the plural terms, ye and your). Here, the Lord is not talking collectively to a group of people. He is talking to every one of us as an individual, one at a time.

Just as easily as I call to mind a remembered melody, Jesus can and does have wholly present in His mind and heart the full import of whatever troubles I’m living through. His knowledge is not just intellectual or sympathetic but rather graven on the cells and sinews and spiritual depths of His own soul in a permanent ownership kind of way.

He doesn’t just watch our pain. It is continually before Him. He aches with it. He weeps with us. He bleeds with us. He reels with the fears and the confusion. He throbs with the hurt we feel. Even when we are angry at Him.

He sees, from our viewpoint, the intellectual walls that block our understanding. He sees the physical limitations that keep us from activities we desire. He sees the social and cultural walls we put up between people. He sees them from our side of the wall. He feels our pains and limited understanding. We literally cannot suffer anything alone, no matter how victimized we may try to feel in our weak moments . . . Whenever Christ has given a commandment that demanded suffering or sacrifice (from self-denial to imprisonment to martyrdom), He has taken that painful trouble upon Himself as well . . . In Gethsemane, Jesus walked in the shoes of each black child of God withheld from priesthood and temple blessings. He knows the humiliation of segregation and discrimination from the inside out, not only in these cases but in slave galleys and gas chambers and every other case throughout human history. (Shalissa Lindsay, Answers Will Come: Trusting the Lord In the Meantime [American Fork, Utah: Covenant Communications, 2017], 23, 25)

Another aspect of the personal nature of Christ's work of redemption is that of His High Priestly intercession. On this, see Christ: Our Present High Priest and Heavenly Intercessor







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