The Unfathomable Suffering

After being sick recently and getting a very painful shot today for strep throat, I thought about how unfathomable the pain and suffering that the Savior endured was.  We know that He suffered unimaginable pain in the Garden of Gethsemane and then in the scourging and crucifixion that followed.  In the garden, we read that He “being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44).  This is also mentioned in King Benjamin’s address: “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).  The Savior Himself bore witness of the fact that He bled from every pore in a revelation to Martin Harris: “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“ (D&C 19:18).  The idea of bleeding from every pore is, I think, impossible for us to have any idea what that would have been like.  

                Other scriptures attest to the intense and all-encompassing nature of His suffering.  We read that “he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death” (Mosiah 3:7).  Alma told us, “And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind….  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” (Alma 7:11-12).  In Isaiah we have this mention of the suffering of the Savior: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).  Christ Himself after the scourging and crucifixion was in so much anguish that He “cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46)  The destruction around the world that accompanied the Savior’s suffering and death would be so intense that “many of the kings of the isles of the sea shall be wrought upon by the Spirit of God, to exclaim: The God of nature suffers” (1 Nephi 19:12).  We’ll never know the full extent of His suffering, but we do know that it was out of His perfect love and obedience that He did not shrink.  It should fill us all with deep humility to know that He had such superhuman strength to be able to endure as He did through it all.