He Suffereth It

While Christ was on the cross, Matthew recorded this: “And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God” (Matt. 27:39-42).  This is in my mind one of the most poignant moments of the atonement and death of the Savior.  The human side of all of us boils with indignation as we consider these self-righteous cowards mocking the very Man who was in the act of rescuing them from death and hell.  A part of us wants to see the Savior “show them” by coming down from the cross and bringing those “twelve legions of angels” in great glory that the Father could send Him (Matt. 26:53).  But He doesn’t—instead, as Nephi had prophesied, “They scourge him, and he suffereth it; and they smite him, and he suffereth it.  Yea, they spit upon him, and he suffereth it” (1 Nephi 19:9).  We want good to triumph and the wicked to suffer, but here, at least in the time frame of the event, that didn’t happen.  The Good suffered, resisting the urge to prove His power to the enemies, and the wicked triumphed. 

                I think in the scriptural stories of the prophets who faced similar opposition from the wicked, the short-term outcome was different.  For example, the plight of Alma and Amulek in Ammonihah has quite a few similarities to the Savior’s final hours.  They were imprisoned wrongly, and the people pass by them as they are bound by strong cords and similarly mock their powerless state: “The chief judge of the land came and stood before Alma and Amulek, as they were bound; and he smote them with his hand upon their cheeks, and said unto them: After what ye have seen, will ye preach again unto this people, that they shall be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone?  Behold, ye see that ye had not power to save those who had been cast into the fire; neither has God saved them because they were of thy faith. And the judge smote them again upon their cheeks, and asked: What say ye for yourselves?”  Others come with similar rantings, saying, “If ye have such great power why do ye not deliver yourselves?”  But in this story our sense of injustice is satisfied, for the great deliverance we want to see happens: Because of their faith, “They broke the cords with which they were bound; and when the people saw this, they began to flee, for the fear of destruction had come upon them….  When they saw Alma and Amulek coming forth out of the prison, and the walls thereof had fallen to the earth, they were struck with great fear, and fled from the presence of Alma and Amulek even as a goat fleeth with her young from two lions” (Alma 14:14-15, 20, 26, 29).  That’s the kind of ending we were hoping for with the Lord showing forth His marvelous power and the scorners silenced.  Other similar stories include Nephi breaking the bands his brothers put on him and showing them (over and over) the power of God to subdue their rantings, Peter and John being delivered miraculously out of prison by the angel in Acts 5, and the Lord saving the Nephites from death by the unbelievers at the moment of His birth.  In these stories and others we see the power of God deliver His Saints from the mocking of their enemies and the wicked are forced to eat crow in the triumph of good over evil. 

                Knowing that God is capable of these kinds of awesome deliverances of His Saints makes the fact that the Savior could suffer the mocking and accusations without deliverance or any attempt to “prove” Himself to His enemies shows us just how great He was.  His only concern was to do the will of the Father, and all of the mocking and scorn of the world could not deter Him from His mission despite His power to save Himself.  So in our lives when it seems that, at least for a time, evil triumphs over good and the proud are “happy” and “they that work wickedness are set up,” we must look to the Lord and hold on our course just like He did in the face of humiliation (Malachi 3:15).  The Father knows our hearts and will reward us in His due time for our faithfulness.  Like the Savior did three days after the taunting at the cross and as He promised to Brother Joseph, “God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes” (D&C 122:8).