All That is Unfair

In my post yesterday I quoted from a BYU devotional by James Rasband as found here.  He said something else that I’ve been thinking about in addition to what I mentioned yesterday.  After stating that the atonement satisfies the demand of justice when it comes to our sins, he said, “Forgiveness requires us to consider the other side of the Atonement—a side that we don’t think about as often but that is equally critical. That side is the Atonement’s power to satisfy our demands of justice against others, to fulfill our rights to restitution and being made whole. We often don’t quite see how the Atonement satisfies our own demands for justice. Yet it does so. It heals us not only from the guilt we suffer when we sin, but it also heals us from the sins and hurts of others.” 

I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it this way.  When are mistreated or life is not fair to us or we are wronged, the atonement is there to make it right—it satisfies our demands for justice by compensating us and not by punishing those who may have caused us injury.  It reminds me of one of my favorite statements from Preach My Gospel: “As we rely on the Atonement of Jesus Christ, He can help us endure our trials, sicknesses, and pain. We can be filled with joy, peace, and consolation. All that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.”  The atonement promises us to compensate for all the unfairness of our mortal experience.

                As I first considered this I thought that there aren’t really scriptures that talk about this side of the atonement because there are so many that focus on Christ’s power of redemption from the effects of sin and death.  But I was wrong.  The scripture that seems to underscore this idea the best is what Christ quoted in the synagogue in Nazareth pertaining to His mission: “The Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;… to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness” (Isaiah 61:1-3).  Those verses have to be among the most powerful and beautiful about the mission of the Savior, and they testify of this principle that Christ’s mission was not just to overcome sin but to also “take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people” (Alma 7:12).  Isaiah put it another way with these words: “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces” (Isaiah 25:8).  John used some of the same language in his revelation: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (Revelation 21:4).  And besides those verses, we have all four gospels full of stories of the Savior healing those who were suffering due to no fault of their own.  When His disciples asked who had sinned to cause the man to be born blind from birth, the Savior told them, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him” (John 9:3).  Christ healed the man and showed in a clear way that He had come not just to save us from sin but to also from all the injustices of life.