All over the world Christian churches proudly display the symbol of the cross as a physical representation of their faith. Some Christians wear or display the cross as a simple sign of faith, and others wear or display it for even deeper and more significant reasons.
While the Cross is significant symbol for many followers of Jesus Christ, the symbol of the cross appears to be conspicuously absent from buildings built and owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Many within Christianity have even seen fit to exclude Mormons from Christianity because of the "missing cross."
The purpose of this blog post is to explore LDS scripture references to the cross to determine what view the scriptures present relative to the Cross, and to take a look at current LDS practices that may offer insight into the Cross in light of LDS theology.
It would be important to start in what is labeled as "The crowning event recorded in the Book of Mormon," since the Book of Mormon itself is "the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of [the] religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”
"The crowning event recorded in the Book of Mormon is the personal ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ among the Nephites soon after His resurrection." In 3 Nephi 27:13-14, Jesus teaches the following to these remnants of Israel:
13 Behold I have given unto you my gospel, and this is the gospel which I have given unto you—that I came into the world to do the will of my Father, because my Father sent me.
14 And my Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross; and after that I had been lifted up upon the cross, that I might draw all men unto me, that as I have been lifted up by men even so should men be lifted up by the Father, to stand before me, to be judged of their works, whether they be good or whether they be evil. (DC 76:40-41 teaches the centrality of the Cross clearly as well)
Note the centrality of what happened on the cross. It isn't a sidebar, but rather a central feature in the message of "the gospel of Christ." Paul speaks in similar language in 1 Corinthians 15.
1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures
17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
I would invite every reader to consider this important question: What is it that happened on the cross that would make Paul say that it represents the power of God?
Other places in the Book of Mormon also speak of the cross and what happened there. For example, in 3 Nephi 6:20, preachers are sent who "did testify boldly of [Jesus'] death and sufferings." In addition, Helaman 8, 1 Nephi 17 and Alma 37 all speak to the great symbol of the cross in the Old Testament: the brazen serpent. This brazen serpent in the time of Moses was something that when looked to brought hope and healing. It is apparent from the multiple Book of Mormon references to the brazen serpent (Christ on the Cross) that this symbol is important and meaningful.
One of the most interesting examples of the cross as a symbol of hope is located in Moroni 9. This is a letter from Mormon to his son Moroni as they watch the Nephite and Lamanite civilizations self destruct. Mormon wants his son to have hope despite the destruction and death going on around him. Verse 25 reads as follows:
"My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever."
Of all the things that Mormon could have focused on, he wants his son to think of the sufferings and death of Christ. Certainly thinking of the empty tomb and the marvelous gift of the resurrection is hopeful, but Mormon seems to believe that something happened with Christ's sufferings and death that would bring Moroni hope and peace.
These passages also show an important connection between Jesus' sufferings (primarily in Gethsemane) and His death (on the cross).
What could that connection be?
The New Testament is particularly enlightening on this issue. We will start in 2 Corinthians 5:21. Paul is speaking to the Corinthian saints about how the Savior not only reconciles us to God through His Grace and mercy but that He also can change us into new creatures in Him (verse 17). Verse 21 is the one that helps us make the connection between the sufferings and death of Christ.
God "hath made him (meaning Jesus) to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
In other words, Jesus Christ became sin for us or in other words He became our sins! This crucial doctrine is also taught in Colossians 2:13-14 where Paul uses the imagery of the cross and the placard above it. A New Testament commentary explains it as follows:
"The imagery that Paul used in Colossians 2:14–15 emphasizes how Christ’s Atonement makes it possible for our sins to be forgiven. In Paul’s day it was customary for Romans to write on a placard the crimes committed by a condemned person. When the wrongdoer was crucified, the placard was also nailed to the cross for all passersby to see (see John 19:19–22). Paul used this imagery in verses 13–15 to teach the Colossians that they had been forgiven. It was as though a list all of the spiritual charges and accusations against the Colossian Saints, including their sins and infractions against the ordinances of the law of Moses, were placed on a placard and nailed to the cross. Through the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, these were erased or blotted out."
This idea is further clarified by connecting the events from Gethsemane to those on Calvary. The Savior was praying to the Father and said, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt."
In 3 Nephi 11, the Savior confirms that He drank the cup (verses 10-11).
So what is in the cup?
Elder James E Talmage said that, "Christ’s agony in the garden is unfathomable by the finite mind, both as to intensity and cause...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...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."
Alma discourses on this important subject as well in the seventh chapter of the book that bears his name:
11 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.
12 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.
To put it plainly and simply, the cup contained the sins, transgressions, pains, sicknesses, etc of the entire world.
The apostle Peter added to this important understanding in 1 Peter 1:21-24...
"Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed."
Many members of the Church of Jesus Christ speak reverently and hopefully of what happened with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and rightly so. However, without recognizing how Gethsemane connects to Calvary we are missing a major part of the picture. We are missing a major part of the hope of redemption that Jesus provides.
To put it simply:
If, in Gethsemane, Jesus truly became our sins (2 Corinthians 5:21) when He drank the "bitter cup," then our sins were nailed to the cross and died with Him on Calvary (1 Peter 1:21-24). Can you see what we miss when we miss the Cross? We miss the culmination of the Savior’s mission to overcome sin! It’s not just that He took upon Himself/in Himself our sins, it’s that when He willfully gave His life on the cross that sin died with Him, leaving us with a simple choice: will we choose to accept the divine forgiveness He offers because He destroyed sin???
The fact that Jesus was then resurrected on the following Sunday shows us that not only do we have the glorious hope of our sins being dead and completely forgivable, but we also have the promise of a new life and a fresh start because of Him! (2 Corinthians 5:17)
This brief story from an Ensign article shows the importance of teaching Christ crucified:
“ Many years ago, a friend of mine had an interview with Elder Joseph Fielding Smith before being hired to teach in the Church seminary and institute program. When Elder Smith asked what my friend intended to teach, my friend mentioned several important gospel principles. Elder Smith looked at him lovingly but sternly and said, ‘You teach Jesus Christ and him crucified.’”
This whole idea of this is shown in the occurrences on the day of The Crucifixion. That day, a man named Barabbas was to be crucified for sins he was completely guilty of. The sins he was guilty of were punishable by death. However, Jesus ended up taking his place on the cross, which allowed Barabbas to go free.
The name Barabbas is significant to us. It means "son of a father or master." In other words, it is quite a generic name, a name that illustrates that each one of us is truly a Barabbas. Each one of us is guilty of sin (see Romans 3:23). Each one of us has sins that are punishable by death (Romans 6:23). Despite the fact that we are completely guilty and undeserving, Jesus became sin our sins, and then suffered our deserved punishment, which gives each person the opportunity to accept His great gift on our behalf.
C.S. Lewis explained this "exchange" that Jesus offers to all of us: "Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self---in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart."
This is the single greatest message of hope that has ever been, is now, and will ever be.
The symbolism of the Cross has increasing richness when connected with the events in the Garden of Eden.
Note that as a result of the Fall, thorns and thistles came into the world. Then note that Jesus wore this symbol to the Cross, showing us that He was taking upon Himself the results of the Fall and paying for those penalties Himself.
Additionally, in the Garden of Eden right after the decision to partake of the forbidden fruit had been made, God told Satan that Satan would have power to crush Jesus’ heel, but that Jesus would have power to crush the serpent’s (Satan’s) head. Note that archaeological evidence shows that the nails in the feet in crucifixion were run straight through the heel bones, inherently crushing them. Then consider what body part you would use to crush a snakes head… your heel! Although Satan crushed Jesus’ heel on the Cross, in essence, that same act crushed the head of Satan because now Jesus had killed the source of Satan’s power: sin!
Elder Wirthlin says it so well: "How can we ever repay the debt we owe to the Savior? He paid a debt He did not owe to free us from a debt we can never pay. Because of Him, we will live forever. Because of His infinite Atonement, our sins can be swept away, allowing us to experience the greatest of all the gifts of God: eternal life.
Can such a gift have a price? Can we ever make compensation for such a gift? The Book of Mormon prophet King Benjamin taught “that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess … [and] serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.”
What is the result of understanding the message and doctrine of the cross? Harry Emerson Fosdick explained what has happened to me as I have come to understand this doctrine:
“Some Christians carry their religion on their backs. It is a packet of beliefs and practices which they must bear. At times it grows heavy and they would willingly lay it down, but that would mean a break with old traditions, so they shoulder it again. But real Christians do not carry their religion, their religion carries them. It is not weight; it is wings. It lifts them up, it sees them over hard places, it makes the universe seem friendly, life purposeful, hope real, sacrifice worthwhile. It sets them free from fear, futility, discouragement, and sin—the great enslavers of men’s souls. You can know a real Christian, when you see him, by his buoyancy” (Twelve Tests of Character [1923], 87–88).
When we truly understand the Savior's redemption for us, it gives us hope, direction, meaning, peace, and wings rather than weight!
However, understanding these crucial doctrines begs the question: What then is required of us?
C.S. Lewis once said:
"I know the words "leave it to God" can be misunderstood, but they must stay for the moment.
The sense in which a Christian leaves it to God is that he puts all his trust in Christ: trusts that
Christ will somehow share with him the perfect human obedience which He carried out from
His birth to His crucifixion: that Christ will make the man more like Himself and, in a sense,
make good his deficiencies. In Christian language, He will share His "sonship" with us, will
make us, like Himself, "Sons of God"... If you like to put it that way, Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing. In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in accepting that very remarkable offer. But the difficulty is to reach the point of recognising that all we have done and can do is nothing. What we should have liked would be for God to count our
good points and ignore our bad ones. Again, in a sense, you may say that no temptation is
ever overcome until we stop trying to overcome it throw up the sponge. But then you could
not "stop trying" in the right way and for the right reason until you had tried your very hardest.
And, in yet another sense, handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that
you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be
no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have
really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.
Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions,
or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem
to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary. A serious moral effort is the only thing that will bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge. Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair at that point: and out of that Faith in Him good actions must inevitably come. There are two parodies of the truth which different sets of Christians have, in the past, been accused by other Christians of believing: perhaps they may make the truth clearer. One set were accused of saying, "Good actions are all that matters. The best good action is charity. The best kind of charity is giving money. The best thing to give money to is the Church. So hand us over $10,000 and we will see you through." The answer to that nonsense, of course, would be that good actions done for that motive, done with the idea that Heaven can be bought, would not be good actions at all, but only commercial speculations.
The other set were accused of saying, "Faith is all that matters. Consequently, if you have
faith, it doesn't matter what you do. Sin away, my lad, and have a good time and Christ will
see that it makes no difference in the end." The answer to that nonsense is that, if what you
call your "faith" in Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what He says, then it is
not Faith at allnot faith or trust in Him, but only intellectual acceptance of some theory about
Him.
The Bible really seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things together into one
amazing sentence. The first half is, "Work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling"which looks as if everything depended on us and our good actions: but the second
half goes on, "For it is God who worketh in you" which looks as if God did everything and we
nothing. I am afraid that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am puzzled,
but I am not surprised. You see, we are now trying to understand, and to separate into
watertight compartments, what exactly God does and what man does when God and man
are working together. And, of course, we begin by thinking it is like two men working together,
so that you could say, "He did this bit and I did that." But this way of thinking breaks down.
God is not like that. He is inside you as well as outside: even if we could understand who did
what, I do not think human language could properly express it. In the attempt to express it
different Churches say different things. But you will find that even those who insist most
strongly on the importance of good actions tell you you need Faith; and even those who insist
most strongly on Faith tell you to do good actions. At any rate that is as far as I go." (Mere Christianity, Ch. 12)
Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf similarly taught that, "Do we understand our indebtedness to Heavenly Father and plead with all our souls for the grace of God?
When we kneel to pray, is it to replay the greatest hits of our own righteousness, or is it to confess our faults, plead for God’s mercy, and shed tears of gratitude for the amazing plan of redemption?
Salvation cannot be bought with the currency of obedience; it is purchased by the blood of the Son of God...
...If grace is a gift of God, why then is obedience to God’s commandments so important? Why bother with God’s commandments—or repentance, for that matter? Why not just admit we’re sinful and let God save us?
Or, to put the question in Paul’s words, “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” Paul’s answer is simple and clear: “God forbid.”
Brothers and sisters, we obey the commandments of God—out of love for Him!... our obedience to God’s commandments comes as a natural outgrowth of our endless love and gratitude for the goodness of God...Grace is a gift of God, and our desire to be obedient to each of God’s commandments is the reaching out of our mortal hand to receive this sacred gift from our Heavenly Father." (April 2015 conference)
I hope that each one of us will feel greater gratitude and love in our hearts for God's greatest gift to us, and that our gratitude will move us to love Him. And when we truly love Him, the natural result is a changed heart and an increased effort to follow and obey Him.
The final message comes from Elder Maxwell:
"each of us “come[s] short of the glory of God,” some of us far short (Rom. 3:23). Even the conscientious have not arrived, but they sense the shortfall and are genuinely striving. Consolingly, God’s grace flows not only to those “who love [Him] and keep all [His] commandments,” but likewise to those “that [seek] so to do” (D&C 46:9)... only by aligning our wills with God’s is full happiness to be found... So many of us are kept from eventual consecration because we mistakenly think that, somehow, by letting our will be swallowed up in the will of God, we lose our individuality (see Mosiah 15:7). What we are really worried about, of course, is not giving up self, but selfish things—like our roles, our time, our preeminence, and our possessions. No wonder we are instructed by the Savior to lose ourselves (see Luke 9:24). He is only asking us to lose the old self in order to find the new self. It is not a question of one’s losing identity but of finding his true identity! Ironically, so many people already lose themselves anyway in their consuming hobbies and preoccupations but with far, far lesser things... In conclusion, the submission of one’s will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God’s altar. The many other things we “give,” brothers and sisters, are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us. However, when you and I finally submit ourselves, by letting our individual wills be swallowed up in God’s will, then we are really giving something to Him! It is the only possession which is truly ours to give!"
May we all truly give our wills to Him in gratitude for "the exchange" that He offers to each of us through His offering in Gethsemane and on the cross is my prayer in His name, amen!
