His Intimate Atonement

He has felt it all, for all

The first thing is always to repent.

Each time I face another empty page, the question is the same: Is my heart pure?

The answer doesn’t change. “Not quite. Not yet. Much work yet remaining.”

But there is also something else…something more. Something…

The whole work of the plan of salvation, culminating in the great atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, is to enable us to become beings of love in the deepest form of connection with others. The celestial sphere is a place of profound intimacy where we will “see as [we] are seen, and know as [we] are known, having received of his fulness and of his grace” (D&C 76:94). 

Jenet Erickson

This is a photo of Michelangelo’s Moses. It was completed in 1515 when the sculptor was 38 years old and is considered to be one of the greatest pieces of sculpture ever carved.

A few months ago I learned about a stunning detail of this statue that is quite powerful. If you look closely, you’ll notice that Moses’s right pinky finger is raised just slightly. If you look at his right arm, you can see that there is a small muscle that can only be seen when the pinky finger is raised in a certain way.

What makes this small detail so impressive? To me, it reflects the artist’s extraordinary attention to something that might easily be overlooked. In order for Michelangelo to create such a detailed and accurate masterpiece, he needed to have a remarkable understanding of the human body and how each bone and muscle function when a person moves. This understanding would have taken him years to develop and would have required countless hours of study and practice to master.

In short, he had to have a profoundly intimate understanding of the body in order to portray Moses so perfectly. He needed to know in order to understand.

Imagine being sick or injured in some way and visiting your doctor’s office to get treatment, but before you even open your mouth to describe what you are suffering, the doctor gives a perfect diagnosis of your condition along with a treatment regimen that is guaranteed to bring relief and healing. Even more astonishing, the doctor proceeds to share that he has also experienced the exact same condition and knows perfectly what you are feeling. While you try and absorb this information, the doctor then shares the most remarkable truth of all: Everything you ever have or ever will suffer, he has already suffered so that he can empathize with you AND help you to overcome your illness or injury, no matter how painful or severe it may be.

The word “intimate” has many different meanings, but in essence, they all refer to the same idea: Knowing something or someone in a deeply personal and vulnerable way.

When I think about what the Savior experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross for me, I sometimes “turn away,” not wanting to think long enough and specifically enough about what that suffering was like for Him. But this isn’t what He wants me to do.

I believe I’ve referenced Brother Tyler Johnson’s article Empathy and the Atonement in previous posts. It is one that has greatly impacted my understanding of and gratitude for what the Savior suffered for me. Here are just a few of the many paragraphs that have impacted my feelings about His Atonement:

The nails at Calvary did not glance off impenetrable wrists. Nephi wants us to understand that those weapons—and many others—found their marks in skin every bit as fleshy, fragile, and thin as ours; Christ’s searing pain raced across nerves and synapses with the same lancing speed with which pain arcs toward our brains. Nephi’s repetitive insistence that Christ did not merely pass through pain as an abstraction but suffered it in all its messy furor—just like we do—seems almost a calculated reaction against the idea of an unfeeling God.

King Benjamin goes further still: “[Christ] shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish” (Mosiah 3:7). Here, the prophet king is at pains to assure we understand that Christ did not just suffer these things as deeply as we do, but much, much more deeply still. Death is a blessed boundary, King Benjamin suggests, which separates even the world’s most beleaguered from even greater suffering.

How such a thing could have been accomplished, we do not know. Certainly, to fully realize such a vision must have involved some violation of the laws of space and time as we understand them. Nonetheless, Alma connotes an image of Christ learning to succor each person one at a time. Alma suggests a personal encounter wherein Christ invites me to lay my burdens at his feet and then, surveying my particular allotment of betrayals, illnesses, sadness, and sin, the Savior offers to suffer through all of it at my side. He repeats this process over and over again with each person in the whole human family until he has “descended below all things” (D&C 88:6) and, having “trodden the wine-press alone” (D&C 76:107), can offer with perfect understanding to succor each of us in our most desperate moments. Viewed in this light, the Atonement’s most meaningful balm is that it assures there is never a time when the Savior cannot say with genuine integrity, “I know just how you feel.” Jesus is, as Elder Neal A. Maxwell once beautifully put it, “a fully comprehending Christ.”

“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 7:12

“And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people.”

Mosiah 3:7

And he cometh into the world that he may save all men if they will hearken unto his voice; for behold, he suffereth the pains of all men, yea, the pains of every living creature, both men, women, and children, who belong to the family of Adam.

2 Nephi 9:21

We refer to the Atonement of Jesus Christ as being “infinite,” meaning its efficacy and potency have no beginning and no end. I know this to be true.

But I also believe that His Atonement is profoundly intimate and personal and individualized to each of us. He knows what divorce and abuse and gas-lighting feel like. He knows the pain of childbirth and terminal illness and the terror of the phone call no one ever wants to receive. He knows loneliness and grief and PTSD. He knows the dark of the darkest depression. He has felt it all, for all.

I’ve shared this remarkable quote from Sister Chieko N. Okazaki before, but it’s one that probably can’t be shared too often

“On a profound level, he understands the hunger to hold your baby that sustains you through pregnancy. He understands both the physical pain of giving birth and the immense joy. He knows about PMS and cramps and menopause. 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." (Matthew 28:20)

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.”

What I’m trying so hard to say here is this: We are not alone. As real and intense and terrible as our suffering can sometimes be, there is One who is can empathize with us in ways that no one else can. His name is Jesus Christ. I love Him. I want to know Him better. I want to be better at helping God’s children to know and feel succored by the Savior.

His intimate Atonement is available to all.

This is ever before me. It is the deepest part of my deepest places. It is the finest thing I can know and want and struggle for. I wish for words I don’t have to say “the smallest part which I feel” for Him (Alma 26:16.)

Let Him have you. All of you. Let Him know you. All of you. Let Him succor you.

Let Him.