Scriptural Highlights

• The Savior takes upon himself our sins and infirmities.
• We need the atonement of Jesus Christ

A study of this lesson should strengthen our testimonies that we can receive forgiveness, peace, and eternal life because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. .

The Garden Of Gethsemane

1. James E. Talmage: "Jesus and the eleven apostles went forth from the house in which they had eaten, passed through the city gate, which was usually left open at night during a public festival, crossed the ravine of the Cedron, or more accurately Kidron, brook, and entered an olive orchard known as Gethsemane, on the slope of Mount Olivet." (Jesus The Christ, p566)
2. Matthew 26:36-39: "Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.
        "And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy.
        "Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.
        "And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed..."
• Luke says: "And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed" (Luke 22:41).
• Mark recorded: "And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed..." (Mark 14:35).
3. Bruce R. McConkie: "We cannot recount with surety the order in which each thing happened, nor reconstruct with certainty the sequence of Jesus' spoken words, this night in this garden in this 'other Eden, in which the Second Adam, the Lord from heaven, bore the penalty of the first, and in obeying gained life.' (Edersheim 2:534.) What has been preserved for us is only a sliver from a great tree, only a few sentences of what was said, only a brief glimpse of what transpired. It would appear that Jesus and the disciples spent some hours there in Gethsemane; that one (or many!) angels were present; and that Jesus poured out his soul in agony as he interceded for the faithful and felt the weight of the world's sins upon his own sinless soul. There is no mystery to compare with the mystery of redemption, not even the mystery of creation. Finite minds can no more comprehend how and in what manner Jesus performed his redeeming labors than they can comprehend how matter came into being, or how Gods began to be. Perhaps the very reason Peter, James, and John slept was to enable a divine providence to withhold from their ears, and seal up from their eyes, those things which only Gods can comprehend." (Mortal Messiah, 4:124)
4. Even as the Lord approached Gethsemane, Mark records that he "began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy" (Mark 14:33).
• Feeling the weight of that burden he prayed: "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Matt. 26:39).
5. After a time the Lord returned and found that even his three faithful brethren were asleep. He said to Peter: "What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matt 26:40-41).
6. Matthew 26:42: "He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done."
7. Mark 14:41: "And when he returned, he found them asleep again, (for their eyes were heavy,) neither wist they what to answer him."
• As one reads of Peter, James, and John sleeping, one wonders if this was more than natural fatigue. I think the Master had to carry the burden himself. He must of returned to them feeling the heaviness of the burden, hoping that they might ease it in some small way, but such was not the case.
8. Matthew tells us (26:44) that he went away a third time and repeated the same words.
• WHAT WAS THE CUP THE LORD DID NOT WISH TO DRINK FROM?
• The sins of the world.
• We see in this sacred moment the mortality of the Lord. Like all of us, he shrank from the burden of pain. But his love for the Father and for each of us was so great, that he willingly took on that burden.
9. Luke 22:43-44: "And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
        "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."
• In this verse we begin to catch a glimpse of the heaviness of the burden.
• READ D&C 19:16-18. Christ suffered for us.
• It is a sobering thing as we ponder the sacrifice of the Savior. This burden, this suffering, this agony, came upon the Jesus because of the sins that we have committed.
• He made this sacrifice because of his love for each of us. Do these thoughts create within you a greater desire to repent and more fully follow the Master?
10. Consider the words of these modern Apostles:
• John Taylor: "Jesus had to take away sin by the sacrifice of himself.... And as he in his own person bore the sins of all, and atoned for them by the sacrifice of himself, so there came upon him the weight and agony of ages and generations, the indescribable agony consequent upon this great sacrificial atonement wherein he bore the sins of the world, and suffered in his own person the consequences of an eternal law of God broken by man. Hence his profound grief, his indescribable anguish, his overpowering torture, all experienced in the submission to the eternal fiat of Jehovah and the requirements of an inexorable law.
       "The suffering of the Son of God was not simply the suffering of personal death; for in assuming the position that he did in making an atonement for the sins of the world he bore the weight, the responsibility, and the burden of the sins of all men, which, to us, is incomprehensible.
       "Groaning beneath this concentrated load, this intense, incomprehensible pressure, this terrible exaction of Divine Justice, from which feeble humanity shrank, and through the agony thus experienced sweating great drops of blood, He was led to exclaim, 'Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.' He had wrestled with the superincumbent load in the wilderness, He had struggled against the powers of darkness that had been let loose upon him there; placed below all things, His mind surcharged with agony and pain, lonely and apparently helpless and forsaken, in his agony the blood oozed from His pores." (The Mediation and Atonement, pp149-150)
• Bruce R. McConkie: "There is no language known to mortals that can tell what agony and suffering was his while in the Garden. Of it Farrar says: 'A grief beyond utterance, a struggle beyond endurance, a horror of great darkness, a giddiness and stupefaction of soul overmastered Him, as with the sinking swoon of an anticipated death. . . . How dreadful was that paroxysm of prayer and suffering through which He used.' (Farrar, p. 624.)
       "And as to the prayer in the Garden--repeating, as it did, his divine promise made in the councils of eternity when he was chosen for the labors and sufferings of this very hour; the divine prayer in which he said, 'Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever' (Moses 4:2)--as to the prayer in the Garden, "That prayer in all its infinite Reverence and awe was heard; that strong crying and those tears were not rejected. We may not intrude too closely into this scene. It is shrouded in a halo and a mystery into which no footstep may penetrate. We, as we contemplate it, are like those disciples--our senses are confused, our perceptions are not clear. We can but enter into their amazement and sore distress. Half waking, half oppressed with an irresistible weight of troubled slumber, they only felt that they were dim witnesses of an unutterable agony, far deeper than anything which they could fathom, as it far transcended all that, even in our purest moments, we can pretend to understand. The place seems haunted by presences of good and evil, struggling in mighty but silent contest for the eternal victory. They see Him, before whom the demons had fled in howling terror, lying on His face upon the ground. They hear that voice wailing in murmurs of broken agony, which had commanded the wind and the sea, and they obeyed Him. The great drops of anguish which fall from Him in the deathful struggle, look to them like heavy gouts of blood.' (Farrar, p. 624.) And so they were." (Mortal Messiah, 4:126-127)
• James E. Talmage: "Christ's agony in the garden is unfathomable by the finite mind, both as to intensity and cause. The thought that He suffered through fear of death is untenable. Death to Him was preliminary to resurrection and triumphal return to the Father from whom He had come, and to a state of glory even beyond what He had before possessed; and, moreover, it was within His power to lay down His life voluntarily. He struggled and groaned under a burden such as no other being 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. The frightful struggle incident to the temptations immediately following the Lord's baptism was surpassed and overshadowed by this supreme contest with the powers of evil.
       "In some manner, actual and terribly real though to man incomprehensible, the Savior took upon Himself the burden of the sins of mankind from Adam to the end of the world." (Jesus The Christ, pp568-569)
11. PLAY MUSIC: As you listen to this music, consider the burden which the Savior took upon him in your behalf.
• HOW DOES PONDERING JESUS' SUFFERING AFFECT YOU?
• It is humbling and sobering to consider the thought that all our dumb and piddly sins were carried by the Savior in the agony of the Garden. Within me it creates a renewed desire to live more righteously to show some measure of gratitude.
• How true are the words: "I tremble to know that for me he was crucified, That for me, a sinner, he suffered, he bled and died.... I marvel that he would descend from his throne divine, To rescue a soul so rebellious and proud as mine" (I Stand All Amazed, Hymn #193).

We Need The Atonement Of Jesus Christ

1. WHY DO WE NEED THE ATONEMENT OF JESUS CHRIST?
• Because of the Fall of Adam and Eve, we are subject to physical death, which is the separation of the body and the spirit.
• "Because that Adam fell, we are; and by his fall came death; and we are made partakers of misery and woe" (Moses 6:48).
• When we sin, we bring spiritual death upon ourselves because we separate ourselves from God. Our sins make us unclean and unable to dwell with God.
• "Wherefore, if ye have sought to do wickedly in the days of your probation, then ye are found unclean before the judgment-seat of God; and no unclean thing can dwell with God; wherefore, ye must be cast off forever" (1 Nephi 10:21).
• Because we cannot overcome physical or spiritual death by ourselves, Heavenly Father sent his Only Begotten Son to offer the Atonement.
• "And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil. And the law is given unto men. And by the law no flesh is justified; or, by the law men are cut off. Yea, by the temporal law they were cut off; and also, by the spiritual law they perish from that which is good, and become miserable forever.
       "Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth.
       "Behold, he offereth himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the law, unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit; and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered.
       "Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the earth, that they may know that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise.
       "Wherefore, he is the firstfruits unto God, inasmuch as he shall make intercession for all the children of men; and they that believe in him shall be saved." (2 Nephi 2:5-9)
2. WHAT BLESSINGS ARE AVAILABLE TO US BECAUSE OF THE SAVIOR'S ATONING SACRIFICE?
• Because the Savior submitted to death and was resurrected, we will all be resurrected, overcoming physical death.
• "And if Christ had not risen from the dead, or have broken the bands of death that the grave should have no victory, and that death should have no sting, there could have been no resurrection.
       "But there is a resurrection, therefore the grave hath no victory, and the sting of death is swallowed up in Christ." (Mosiah 16:7-8)
• Because he took upon himself our sins, we can repent of our sins and be forgiven, making us clean and worthy to dwell with God.
• "Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance; and now behold, this is the testimony which is in me.
       "Now I say unto you that ye must repent, and be born again; for the Spirit saith if ye are not born again ye cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven; therefore come and be baptized unto repentance, that ye may be washed from your sins, that ye may have faith on the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world, who is mighty to save and to cleanse from all unrighteousness." (Alma 7:13-14)
• Because he took upon himself our infirmities, he understands our difficulties and knows how to help us.
• "And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.
       "And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities." (Alma 7:11-12)
• We receive peace in him as we humbly follow him.
• "Learn of me, and listen to my words; walk in the meekness of my Spirit, and you shall have peace in me." (D&C 19:23)
• Marion G. Romney: "It took the atonement of Jesus Christ to reunite the bodies and spirits of men in the resurrection. And so all the world, believers and non-believers, are indebted to the Redeemer for their certain resurrection, because the resurrection will be as wide as was the fall, which brought death to every man.
       "There is another phase of the atonement which makes me love the Savior even more, and fills my soul with gratitude beyond expression. It is that in addition to atoning for Adam's transgression, thereby bringing about the resurrection, the Savior by his suffering paid the debt for my personal sins. He paid the debt for your personal sins and for the personal sins of every living soul that ever dwelt upon the earth or that ever will dwell in mortality upon the earth. But this he did conditionally. The benefits of this suffering for our individual transgressions will not come to us unconditionally in the same sense that the resurrection will come regardless of what we do. If we partake of the blessings of the atonement as far as our individual transgressions are concerned, we must obey the law.
       "...When we commit sin, we are estranged from God and rendered unfit to enter into his presence. No unclean thing can enter into his presence. We cannot of ourselves, no matter how we may try, rid ourselves of the stain which is upon us as a result of our own transgressions. That stain must be washed away by the blood of the Redeemer, and he has set up the way by which that stain may be removed. That way is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel requires us to believe in the Redeemer, accept his atonement, repent of our sins, be baptized by immersion for the remission of our sins, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, and continue faithfully to observe, or do the best we can to observe, the principles of the gospel all the days of our lives." (CR, Oct 1953, pp35-36)
3. HOW CAN WE SHOW OUR GRATITUDE FOR HIS SUFFERING?
• READ D&C 18:10-16. The worth of souls is great.
• We show our love and gratitude for the Savior by repenting of our sins and leading others to do the same.

Summary

No man can comprehend or describe the agony which the Savior passed through on our behalf. There are no words in any language to adequately describe this scene and convey the depth of suffering of the Savior. He passed through a valley deeper than any known in human experience. He did it for us. He is the Infinite and Eternal sacrifice that makes immortality and eternal life possible for us. Does he ask us to pass through the same suffering? No. He simply asks that we repent of our sins and follow him. Let us show our gratitude for him by repenting, living a good life, and sharing the message of the gospel.

Next Week

Lesson 26: Matthew 26:47-27:66; Mark 14:43-15:39; Luke 22:47-23:56; John 18-19

Additional Reading: Isaiah 53; Mark 15:39-47; John 3:16; 15:13; 1 Nephi 11:32-33; 19:7-9; 2 Nephi 9:21-22; Bible Dictionary, "Crucifixion," 651