It is the Sabbath day, and we have gathered to speak of Christ and Him crucified. I know that my Redeemer lives.

This statement perhaps takes on additional resonance following Elder Holland’s recent ‘near-death experience’.

Consider this scene from the last week of Jesus’s mortal life. A multitude had gathered, including Roman soldiers armed with staves and strapped with swords. Led by officers from the chief priests who had torches in hand, this earnest company was not off to conquer a city. Tonight they were looking for only one man, a man not known to carry a weapon, receive military training, or engage in physical combat at any time in His entire life.

As the soldiers approached, Jesus, in an effort to protect His disciples, stepped forth and said, “Whom seek ye?” They replied, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said, “I am he. … As soon … as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground.”

To me, that is one of the most stirring lines in all of scripture. Among other things, it tells me straightforwardly that just being in the presence of the Son of God—the great Jehovah of the Old Testament and Good Shepherd of the New, who bears no weapons of any kind—that just hearing the voice of this Refuge from the Storm, this Prince of Peace, is enough to send antagonists stumbling into retreat, piling them in a jumble, making the whole group wish they had been assigned kitchen duty that night.

Try to imagine yourself there that night. How would you feel if you were one of the soldiers? How would you feel if you were one of the apostles?

Just a few days earlier, when He had entered the city triumphantly, “all the city was moved,” the scripture says, asking, “Who is this?” I can only imagine that “Who is this?” is the question those muddled soldiers were now asking!

The answer to that question could not have been in His looks, for Isaiah had prophesied some seven centuries earlier that “he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.” It certainly wasn’t in His polished wardrobe or His great personal wealth, of which He had neither. It could not be from any professional training in the local synagogues because we have no evidence that He ever studied at any of them, though even in His youth He could confound superbly prepared scribes and lawyers, astonishing them with His doctrine “as one having authority.”

The Saviour did not come to the earth in the pomp and glory and majesty that the Jews expected of their Messiah. Instead he was born into humble circumstances – but with divine power and authority. Why is it that God’s concept of ‘greatness’ so often differs from man’s?

From that teaching in the temple to His triumphant entry into Jerusalem and this final, unjustifiable arrest, Jesus was routinely placed in difficult, often devious situations in which He was always triumphant—victories for which we have no explanation except divine DNA.

What examples can we find in the New Testament of these ‘difficult, often devious situations’?

Yet down through history many have simplified, even trivialized our image of Him and His witness of who He was. They have reduced His righteousness to mere prudishness, His justice to mere anger, His mercy to mere permissiveness. We must not be guilty of such simplistic versions of Him that conveniently ignore teachings we find uncomfortable. This “dumbing down” has been true even regarding His ultimate defining virtue, His love.

During His mortal mission, Jesus taught that there were two great commandments. They have been taught in this conference and will forever be taught: “Love the Lord thy God [and] love thy neighbour as thyself.” If we are to follow the Savior faithfully in these two crucial and inextricably linked rules, we ought to hold firmly to what He actually said. And what He actually said was, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” On that same evening, He said we were to “love one another; as I have loved you.”

What is the relationship between the two great commandments?

Elder Howard W Hunter in General Conference in April 1965 taught: 

“The love of our neighbor springs from the love of God as its source.”

In those scriptures, those qualifying phrases defining true, Christlike love—sometimes referred to as charity—are absolutely essential.

What do they define? How did Jesus love?

First, He loved with “all [of His] heart, might, mind and strength,” giving Him the ability to heal the deepest pain and declare the hardest reality. In short, He is one who could administer grace and insist on truth at the same time. As Lehi said in his blessing to his son Jacob, “Redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth.” His love allows an encouraging embrace when it is needed and a bitter cup when it has to be swallowed. So we try to love—with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength—because that is the way He loves us.

What do you understand by the phrase ‘full of grace and truth’?

The second characteristic of Jesus’s divine charity was His obedience to every word that proceeded from God’s mouth, always aligning His will and behavior with that of His Heavenly Father.

When He arrived on the Western Hemisphere following His Resurrection, Christ said to the Nephites: “Behold, I am Jesus Christ. … I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, … in the which I have suffered the will of the Father … from the beginning.”

In the Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon (by Joseph Fielding McConkie, Robert Millet and Brent L Top) we read:

‘The bitter cup – which is the symbolic representation of the painful demands of justice that had been met in order for the infinite and eternal sacrifice to be fulfilled – had been drunk.’

Of the myriad ways He could have introduced Himself, Jesus did so by declaring His obedience to the will of the Father—never mind that not long before in His hour of greatest need, this Only Begotten Son of God had felt totally abandoned by His Father. Christ’s charity—evident in complete loyalty to divine will—persisted and continues to persist, not just through the easy and comfortable days but especially through the darkest and most difficult ones.

Jesus was “a man of sorrows,” the scriptures say. He experienced sadness, fatigue, disappointment, and excruciating loneliness. In these and in all times, Jesus’s love faileth not, and neither does His Father’s. With such mature love—the kind that exemplifies, empowers, and imparts—ours will not fail either.

The Saviour experienced the ultimate loneliness when, while bearing the infinite load of mankind’s sins, pains, illnesses and afflictions, His Father withdrew so that the Christ could complete that mission for which he had been foreordained.

So, if sometimes the harder you try, the more difficult it seems to get; if, just as you try to work on your limitations and your shortcomings, you find someone or something determined to challenge your faith; if, as you labor devotedly, you still feel moments of fear wash over you, remember that it has been so for some of the most faithful and marvelous people in every era of time. Also remember that there is a force in the universe determined to oppose every good thing you try to do.

Can you think of any scriptural accounts that exemplify that opposition?

Have you experienced that force that opposes the good you try to do?

So, through abundance as well as poverty, through private acclaim as well as public criticism, through the divine elements of the Restoration as well as the human foibles that will inevitably be part of it, we stay the course with the true Church of Christ. Why? Because as with our Redeemer, we signed on for the whole term—not ending with the first short introductory quiz but through to the final exam. The joy in this is that the Headmaster gave us all open-book answers before the course began. Furthermore, we have a host of tutors who remind us of these answers at regular stops along the way. But of course, none of this works if we keep cutting class.

What is the spiritual equivalent of ‘cutting class’?

“Whom seek ye?” With all our hearts we answer, “Jesus of Nazareth.” When He says, “I am he,” we bow our knee and confess with our tongue that He is the living Christ, that He alone atoned for our sins, that He was carrying us even when we thought He had abandoned us. When we stand before Him and see the wounds in His hands and feet, we will begin to comprehend what it meant for Him to bear our sins and be acquainted with grief, to be completely obedient to the will of His Father—all out of pure love for us. To introduce others to faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and receiving our blessings in the house of the Lord—these are the fundamental “principles and ordinances” that ultimately reveal our love of God and neighbor and joyfully characterize the true Church of Christ.

Brothers and sisters, I testify that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the vehicle God has provided for our exaltation. The gospel it teaches is true, and the priesthood legitimizing it is not derivative. I testify that Russell M. Nelson is a prophet of our God, as His predecessors were and as His successors will be. And one day that prophetic guidance will lead a generation to see our Messenger of Salvation descend like “lightning … out of the east,” and we will exclaim, “Jesus of Nazareth.” With arms forever outstretched and love unfeigned, He will reply, “I am he.” I so promise with the apostolic power and authority of His holy name, even Jesus Christ, amen.

This was a powerful and heart felt address from Elder Holland. What did you take away from it?

NB: Passages in italics are direct excerpts from Elder Holland’s address.

You can watch Elder Holland’s talk here.

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