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 experienced pain in my life but I cannot fathom such extreme 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)

And here is another horrific thing about it. This excruciating spiritual pain was added to the physical pain of the crucifixion as He hung on the cross: “Again, on Calvary, during the last three hours of his mortal passion, the sufferings of Gethsemane returned….if we interpret the holy word aright, that all of the anguish, all of the sorrow, and all of the suffering of Gethsemane recurred during the hours when darkness covered the land….could it be that this was the period of his greatest trial, or that during it the agonies of Gethsemane recurred and even intensified!” (Elder Bruce R. McConkie, “Mortal Messiah” 4:232, note 22; see also Talmage, “Jesus the Christ” p 661 and Tad R. Callister, “The Infinite Atonement” p 141)

There is another scripture in Section 19 of Doctrine and Covenants 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 worshipped You in heaven

As my Saviour and my King.

I knew Your holy suffering

Would pay for everything.

 

Now I am here in my mortal frame,

I am amazed at the price You paid

For the value of my name!

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Hail King of the Jews by Mindi Oaten)