70. We Are Bought with a Price

On Sunday morning, December 19, 1993, in a special high council meeting, President F. Michael Watson put aside all regular agenda items and invited the members of the stake presidency and high council to share their thoughts and some favorite scriptures about either the Lord Jesus Christ or the Prophet Joseph Smith. In essence, the following represents a summary of the testimony I shared on that occasion. I was serving at the time as the stake executive secretary.

It is amazing how much buying and selling are a part of the celebration of Christmas in our culture. Indeed, the very health of our national economy is measured largely on how much we buy during the holiday season.

Interestingly, the holy scriptures employ monetary terminology in discussing the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the very heart and soul of our religion. Jesus came to “redeem” us, which means to “pay a price for” us. Peter speaks of the Lord’s people as being “a peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9), which in the original Greek meant “a purchased people.”

I think often we do not appreciate the cost of the Savior’s gift, the price He paid for us, for as the scriptures affirm, we “are bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23; see also 2 Peter 2:1), the price being His own “precious blood” (1 Peter 1:19).

Jacob, the brother of Nephi, taught that “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). That appears to include everyone. If we could somehow remember all the pain and suffering and hurt we have ever experienced personally—mentally or physically or spiritually—and times that by the billions of people that now live or have ever lived on this planet, that might begin to give us an inkling of the price He paid for us. That is a lot of pain!

President John Taylor testified that “in a manner to us incomprehensible and inexplicable, he bore the weight of the sins of the whole world” (Mediation and Atonement, ch. 21). I don’t think we can begin to understand the magnitude of what He went through for us, although the revelations give us glimpses.

Mark records an interesting little detail, not mentioned by the other gospel writers, about the suffering Jesus faced in Gethsemane: “And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy” (Mark 14:33). Sore amazed. The Greek renders this passage as “amazed, awestruck, astonished.” Here was the Savior of the world, knowing full well what He had to face, the cup He had to drink, and yet even He was amazed, awestruck, astonished at the weight of it all, of how terrible it was, of how exquisite it would be.

Some 1,800 years later He would talk of that experience: “Therefore, I command you to repent—repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your sufferings be sore—how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, how hard to bear you know not.

“For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;

“But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;

“Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—

“Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men” (D&C 19:15–19).

That was the price He paid for us, just as similarly the Prophet Joseph Smith gave his life to seal his witness of the reality of the Father and the Son and all that they communicated through him as the Prophet of the Restoration, which “cost the best blood of the nineteenth century to bring them forth for the salvation of a ruined world” (D&C 135:6). There is mention again of the cost.

I am grateful beyond all ability to express for the price that has been paid—not only by the Prophet Joseph Smith, but by all the faithful Saints who have gone before in this dispensation who have made possible what we enjoy here today. I thank the Father and His beloved Son for Their priceless gift, the pearl of great price, that opens the gate to our everlasting salvation in Their presence.