Lamb of God

Yesterday my wife and I were thrilled to be able to see the new concert film for the oratorio Lamb of God by Rob Gardner. This powerful music has played an important role in our lives for many years as my wife has participated numerous times in productions of the music around Easter time. This year with the pandemic those productions are not taking place, and instead a concert film was produced which was fantastic. For me the most moving part of the oratorio is the depiction of Peter—who in the film has a new song—for though he falters yet in the end he declares with absolute certainty his allegiance to the Savior. “But when my eyes are closed in death, these words will hang on my last breath: I know Him.” Like all of us at times he succumbed to weakness and was not faithful for a brief moment to the Lord, but he was thereafter even more firm in his devotion to the Lamb of God who suffered for his sins and for all our failings. Because of this he could later write this praise of the Savior: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” He felt that “abundant mercy” as the Lord still chose him to carry out His work after the ascension, and we all can likewise receive that great mercy even amidst the “trial of [our] faith” and know that our “faith and hope might be in God” (1 Peter 1:3, 7, 21). 

One of the lines that stood out to me as I watched the film last night was this one sung by Martha: “Touch my heart and bid it know that every breath I take is by thy tender grace.” As we come unto the Savior we recognize our complete dependence on Him and know that He has all power over our lives. Our very breath comes from Him as King Benjamin so declared: “I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants…. He hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which we are indebted unto him” (Mosiah 2:41,43). As Jacob declared, “That God who gave them breath… is the Holy One of Israel” (2 Nephi 9:26). He gave us breath and then He literally gave up His own breath for us after the agony of Gethsemane and the cross: “He said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost” (John 19:30). As we truly understand His tender grace and abundant mercy, we recognize His work in the creation and in the atonement and know that without Him, we are nothing. To come unto the Lord we must recognize our complete dependence on Him: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:4-5). He is the vine and we are the branches; He is the Potter and we are the clay; He is the Good Shepherd and we are the sheep—without Him we have and are nothing. Salvation comes “only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent.” As we truly come to believe and know this, we are freed from the pride and sin that hold us back and can truly become “a saint through the atonement of Christ” (Mosiah 3:17,19). And with Peter we can then declare to our last breath that we too know Him.