Lifted Up Upon the Cross

In the most recent general conference Elder Holland spoke about why Latter-day Saints do not generally use the cross as a symbol of their faith like other Christians. He related how he once answered a question about this to a fellow student: “I immediately told him that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints considers the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ to be the central fact, the crucial foundation, the chief doctrine, and the ultimate expression of divine love in God’s grand plan for the salvation of His children. I explained that the saving grace inherent in that act was essential for and universally gifted to the entire human family from Adam and Eve to the end of the world. I quoted the Prophet Joseph Smith, who said, ‘All … things which pertain to our religion are only appendages’ to the Atonement of Jesus Christ.” Indeed, the fact that the cross itself is not generally a symbol that we use to represent us does not in any way suggest that the Savior and His atoning sacrifice are not at the very center of our faith. In fact, the symbol the Church uses to represent ourselves is a statue of the “resurrected Christ emerging in glory from the tomb with the wounds of His Crucifixion still evident,” Thorvaldsen’s marble statue the Christus. Thus what took place on the cross is indeed a part of the symbol that now represents the Church. President Nelson commented on the relatively new symbol, “We have long identified the restored gospel with the living, resurrected Christ.” We have chosen in this an image to represent us that focuses on both the empty tomb and what happened on the cross. But even that image is not what we want most to help people recognize us. As President Hinckley taught, “The lives of our people must [be] … the symbol of our [faith].” Whether it is the cross or the empty tomb or a statue of the risen Lord that we use to represent our faith, what we do with that faith to follow Jesus Christ in our actions is of far greater importance. How we “take up [our] cross, and follow [Him]” from day to day is what really matters (Matthew 16:24).

                One thing that is clear from modern scriptures, though, is that as Latter-day Saints we do worship at the cross and remember with reverence and awe at what the Savior performed there. The first prophet to write in the Book of Mormon saw this in vision: “I looked and beheld the Lamb of God, that he was taken by the people;… And I, Nephi, saw that he was lifted up upon the cross and slain for the sins of the world” (1 Nephi 11:32-33). King Benjamin also learned that the Son of God would be crucified in these words from the angel: “They shall consider him a man, and say that he hath a devil, and shall scourge him, and shall crucify him” (Mosiah 3:9). When the Savior came among the Nephites He included what happened on the cross as a central part of His mission: “And my Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross; and after that I had been lifted up upon the cross, that I might draw all men unto me” (3 Nephi 27:14). In this dispensation the Savior described Himself in these words that He will one day say to the Jews: “I am he who was lifted up. I am Jesus that was crucified. I am the Son of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 45:52). In four other passages in the revelations to the Prophet Joseph Smith we read that He “was crucified for the sins of the world” (Doctrine and Covenants 35:2, 46:13, 53:2,54:1). In writing about the preaching of the gospel in the Spirit World, President Joseph F. Smith declared that “redemption had been wrought through the sacrifice of the Son of God upon the cross” (Doctrine and Covenants 138:35). In the Pearl of Great Price, we read that Enoch too learned about the cross: “And the Lord said unto Enoch: Look, and he looked and beheld the Son of Man lifted up on the cross, after the manner of men” (Moses 7:55). All of these verses from modern-day scripture affirm the fact and importance of the Savior’s great sacrifice upon the cross, and with all Christians we symbolically worship Him at the cross.