The Book of Mormon's Teachings on Christ's Atonement

I sought to answer this question as I studied in the Book of Mormon today: What would I know about the atonement if the Book of Mormon was my only source of information?  As President Nelson pointed out in a talk many years ago, the Book of Mormon uses the words atone or atonement 35 times.  Using those references as my guide, I sought to find answers to some of the basic questions about the atonement of Christ in the Book of Mormon.  These answers are not found in concise dictionary like phrases but are seen woven throughout the teachings of multiple prophets.

The most basic question to ask is this: what is the atonement?  The first usage of the word in Lehi’s teachings to his son Jacob speaks of the “ends of the atonement” but doesn't define it, so we to look further to understand how the Book of Mormon defines the word.  Amulek described the “infinite atonement” as the “great and last sacrifice” of “the Son of God, yea, infinite and eternal” (Alma 34:14).  Thus the atonement involves a great sacrifice from the Son of God, and in the context of Alma 34, the sacrifice clearly involves His death.  More specially, Book of Mormon prophets taught us that the atonement is the shedding of the blood of Christ.  For example, Alma spoke of “the death and sufferings of Christ, and the atonement of his blood” (Alma 21:9).  Anti-Nephi-Lehi spoke of the atonement in terms of being “washed bright through the blood of the Son of our great God, which shall be shed for the atonement of our sins” (Alma 24:13).  The atonement was for them defined as the offering of the blood of Christ.  King Benjamin emphasized that “his blood atoneth for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam” and that “the blood of Christ atoneth for their sins” (Mosiah 3:11, 16).  This reference to atoning blood came just after King Benjamin had taught that “blood cometh from every pore” of the Lord Omnipotent when he would come among men, and so he connected the atonement not just with a metaphor of death—which we might at first glance consider the term “shedding of blood” to be—but of a literal bleeding from every pore (which of course we know from the New Testament to be His experience in the garden of Gethsemane).  Synthesizing these descriptions then, the Book of Mormon teaches us that the atonement of Christ is His great sacrifice of giving up His life and the shedding of his blood.      

A second question about the atonement that the Book of Mormon answers is this: when was the atonement planned for?  King Benjamin taught, “the atonement which has been prepared from the foundation of the world, that thereby salvation might come to him that should put his trust in the Lord….  The atonement which was prepared from the foundation of the world for all mankind, which ever were since the fall of Adam, or who are, or who ever shall be, even unto the end of the world” (Mosiah 4:6-7).  The atonement therefore was planned for from the very beginning, and Alma’s teaching shows us that it had power even in the premortal realm: “Or in fine, in the first place they were on the same standing with their brethren; thus this holy calling being prepared from the foundation of the world for such as would not harden their hearts, being in and through the atonement of the Only Begotten Son, who was prepared” (Alma 13:5).  The atonement of the Savior was no last-minute addition to the Father’s plan—it was prepared for and operative from the beginning.