Do you remember me mentioning that Adam and Eve hid in the garden when they heard the voices of God and Jesus Christ? (Gensis 3:8). We don’t have to hide! God has a better plan than our own shame-filled attempts to fix our problems or merely cope with them. “The English word Atonement comes from the ancient Hebrew word kaphar, which means to cover. When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit and discovered their nakedness in the Gardens of Eden, God sent Jesus to make coats of skins to cover them. Coats of skins don’t grow on trees. They had to be made from an animal, which meant an animal had to be killed. Perhaps that was the very first animal sacrifice. Because of that sacrifice, Adam and Eve were covered physically. In the same way, through Jesus’ sacrifice we are also covered emotionally and spiritually. When Adam and Eve left the garden, the only things they could take to remind them of Eden were the coats of skins. The one physical thing we take with us out of the temple to remind us of that heavenly place is a similar covering. The garment reminds us of our covenants, protects us, and even promotes modesty. However, it is also a powerful and personal symbol of the Atonement---a continuous reminder both night and day that because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we are covered” (Wilcox, The Continuous Atonement, 47 & 48).
God anticipated and planned for not only the effects of the Fall on His children collectively, but also the ways it affects us personally! God has made sure we are covered through the Atonement. The Atonement stretches to cover every aspect of our mortal journey. “Faith in Jesus Christ enables us to meet any challenge.” (Carole M. Stephens, source).
Do you believe that? When you read that could you see yourself and your own life in it or does it feel like some vague thought out there that applies to other people, but not to you? We will talk soon about how to let this sink in and truly stick by getting down to the roots. For now, I hope you can simply read with an open heart that maybe, just maybe this wonderful Atonement does apply to you, your life, and the situations in it. Let me just bombard you with a small sampling of what the Atonement can cover. I hope you will allow yourself to plant the seed of hope that can grow into faith that Christ really can cover it all and He can cover it for you.
“The Savior ‘descended below all things’ (D&C 88:6). That is the important doctrinal conclusion. We know the consequence---someday we will know the means. In the interim, that is all we need to know” (Callister, The Infinite Atonement, 150).
“The Savior descended beneath all sins, all transgressions, all ailments, and all temptations known to the human family. He knew the sum total of the human plight, not just because he witnessed it, but because he embraced it...The Savior’s plunge into humanity was not a toe-dipping experience. It was a total immersion. He did not experience some pains and not others. His life was not a random sampling, a spot audit; it was a total confrontation with and internalization of every human experience, every human plight, every human trial. Somehow his sponge alone would absorb the entire ocean of human affliction, weakness, and suffering. For this descent he would fully bare his human breast. There would be no godly powers exercised that would shield him from one scintilla of human pain. Paul knew this: ‘For verily he [the Savior] took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren’" (Hebrews 2:16-17) (Callister, Infinite Atonement, 95-96, emphasis added).
He not only descended below all things, meaning there isn’t a single human experience that we could have on this earth that is out of His reach, but He also ascended as well. “He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:9-10). 2 Corinthians 8:9 explains why the combination of descending below all things and also ascending is important, “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.” He has been through it too, yet He is calling us from higher ground to come and receive the fullness that He offers.
Carole M. Stephens told of three ways the Atonement covers us. “First, the Savior, the Master Healer, has the power to change our hearts and give us permanent relief from the sorrow caused by our own sin...Second, the Master Healer can comfort and strengthen us when we experience pain because of the unrighteous actions of others...Third, the Master Healer can comfort and sustain us as we experience painful ‘realities of mortality,’ such as disaster, mental illness, disease, chronic pain, and death.” Whether we are struggling because of choices we made ourselves, the ways other’s choices have affected us, or these difficulties that come just as part of living in a fallen world and experiencing mortality, we are covered. Because of Jesus Christ, we are covered.
Elder Holland shared the following on his Facebook page. “I’d like to address the topic of the Savior’s Atonement. If I understand the doctrine properly, in the experience of the Atonement, Christ vicariously experienced (and bore the burden of) the sins and sorrows and troubles and tears of all mankind, from Adam and Eve to the end of the world. In this, He Himself did not actually sin, but He felt the pain and consequence of those who did.
“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 only divine example of empathy the world has ever known. Obviously no word does justice to the universe’s most consequential act, but I don’t have a better substitute so I will use it.
“Empathy is defined as ‘the action of understanding … and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present.’ As already noted, that is actually a reasonably good statement of the atoning process, especially if we add ‘future’ to ‘past’ and ‘present.’ To feel what He felt, to walk where He walked, to face what He faced and care the way He cared is the only kind of discipleship I understand. May we strive to be such disciples.” (posted on July 7, 2017, emphasis added)
“If the totality of human suffering and anxiety could be categorized, it might be broken down as follows: first, suffering caused by sin; second, suffering that flows from innocent transgression of the law; third, suffering related to infirmities, weaknesses, inadequacies, or trials that have nothing to do with sin or transgression; fourth, suffering incidental to our confrontation with the temptations of the word; and fifth, suffering or anxiety necessitated by the exercise of faith” (Callister, The Infinite Atonement, 97).
“...the Savior voluntarily took upon himself not only the cumulative burdens of all sin and transgression, but also the cumulative burden of all depression, all loneliness, all sorrow, all mental, emotional, and physical hurt, and all weakness of every kind that afflicts mankind. He knows the depth of sorrow that stems from death; he knows the widow’s anguish. He understands the agonizing parental pain when children go astray he has felt the striking pain of cancer and every other debilitating ailment heaped upon man. Impossible as it may seem, he has somehow taken upon himself those feelings of inadequacy, sometimes even utter hopelessness, that accompany our rejections and weaknesses. There is no mortal condition, however gruesome or ugly or hopeless it may seem, that has escaped his grasp or his suffering. No one will be able to say, ‘But you don’t understand my particular plight.’ The scriptures are emphatic on this point---’he comprehended all things’ because ‘he descended below all things’ (D&C 88:6; see also D&C 122:8)” (Callister, The Infinite Atonement, 104).
President Nelson gave a masterful talk in General Conference where He discussed the joy that comes from and because of our Savior. “Just as the Savior offers peace that ‘passeth all understanding,’ He also offers an intensity, depth, and breadth of joy that defy human logic or mortal comprehension. For example, it doesn’t seem possible to feel joy when your child suffers with an incurable illness or when you lose your job or when your spouse betrays you. Yet that is precisely the joy the Savior offers. His joy is constant, assuring us that our ‘afflictions shall be but a small moment’ and be consecrated to our gain...As our Savior becomes more and more real to us and as we plead for His joy to be given to us, our joy will increase...If we focus on the joy that will come to us, or to those we love, what can we endure that presently seems overwhelming, painful, scary, unfair, or simply impossible?” (emphasis added)
Listen to how powerfully sister Chieko N. Okazaki describes what is covered by Jesus Christ, "It's our faith that he experienced everything- absolutely everything. Sometimes we don't think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don't experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually.
"That means he knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer -- how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced Napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism.
"Let me go further. There is nothing you have experienced ... that He does not also know and recognize. He understands about rape and infertility and abortion. His last recorded words to his disciples were, "And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." He understands your mother-pain when your five-year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth-grader, when your daughter calls to say that the new baby has Down Syndrome. He knows your mother-rage when a trusted babysitter sexually abuses your two-year-old, when someone gives your thirteen-year-old drugs, when someone seduces your seventeen-year-old. He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quiet apartment where the only children are visitors, when you hear that your former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week, when your fiftieth wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years. He knows all that. He's been there. He's been lower than all that. He's not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don't need a Savior. He came to save his people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He's not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief."
Although we didn’t discuss the entire depth of how we are covered here, I hope you have caught a tiny glimpse of the depth and breadth of what the Savior can do for us and allow the Atonement to start becoming personal. Because of who He is, the way He lived His perfect life, what He experienced during mortality, and because of the Atonement and the surrounding events of His death, we are completely and entirely covered!
There is not one experience of mortality, one sin, one heartache or the details of any of what we can or will pass through that is somehow beyond His loving reach. He has the power and the authority. All that is missing is our permission. And if Christ can do all of this for us personally, why would He somehow be unable to do these things for those we seek to minister to as well? The Atonement is available to all. Christ can grant power not only for our own personal lives and situations, but also for the details of our loved ones if we allow Him to as well.
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