Speaking of Christ’s atonement, Jeffrey R. Holland wrote:
He did not personally experience a broken marriage, but He felt the pain and consequence of those who do. He did not personally experience rape or schizophrenia or cancer or the loss of a child, but He felt the pain and consequence of those who do, and so on and on through the litany of life’s burdens and broken hearts.
That view of how the Atonement works suggests the one true divine example of empathy the world has ever known. Obviously, no word does justice to the universe’s most consequential act, but today I don’t have a better substitute, so I will use it. ("Bearing One’s Another Burdens")
Such shows that it would be an error to read into the atonement a purely forensic/legal dimension—indeed, as with a covenant or marriage, the atonement was legal only in an incidental manner, and largely personal, as seen in the above comments from Elder Holland. Indeed, such is the only way to properly understand the nature, not just of the atonement, but the intercessory work of Christ and its relationship to the atoning sacrifice of Christ (cf. Christ: Our Present High Priest and Heavenly Intercessor)
