GODLY SUFFERING

 

 

In Section 19 of Doctrine and Covenants, the Saviour revealed the most personal details of His suffering during the Atonement. Here He dismissed the insinuation that His sweat was ‘like’ drops of blood, as mentioned by Luke in his Gospel, and confirmed that indeed His agony was so great that He sweat actual blood from His pores (v 18; Luke 22:44).

I have been in pain in my life but I cannot fathom such exquisite form of it. This is how Elder James E. Talmage described it:

“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 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.

“No other man, however great his powers of physical or mental endurance, could have suffered so; for his human organism would have succumbed, and syncope would have produced unconsciousness and welcome oblivion. In that hour of anguish Christ met and overcame all the horrors that Satan, ‘the prince of this world’ could inflict….. (Jesus the Christ, p 613)

There is another scripture in this Section which I find most alarming. In His vehement command to us to repent, the Saviour explained that if we would not repent, we must suffer even as He suffered, to pay for our own sins (v 17). This drives fear into me. I have suffered in my life and the last thing I would want is to undergo suffering at such great scale as I have never experienced before.

Herein enters Christ’s unfathomable mercy. Verses 4-12 offer great insight into God’s punishment. Here we are told that the punishment given from God’s hand is ‘eternal and endless punishment’ because Eternal and Endless are two of His names. It does not mean that a sinner is to be eternally and endlessly made to suffer.

I want to end with this thought however….that might propel us all to repentance this day:

“Prophet Joseph Smith has said: ‘David sought repentance at the hand of God carefully with tears, for the murder of Uriah; but he could only get it through hell: he got a promise that his soul should not be left in hell.’ Again we ask: who wishes to spend a term in hell with the devil before being cleansed from sin???” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, 1:74).

Funny and yet NOT….

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Abide With Me by Greg Sargent)