The Visiting Teaching message for April is about Jesus Christ's role as our Savior and Redeemer.
Here are just a few thoughts I had as I was putting together a message to share with the women I visit teach.
“Among the most significant of Jesus Christ’s descriptive titles is Redeemer,” said Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. “Redeem means to pay off an obligation or a debt. Redeem can also mean to rescue or set free as by paying a ransom. … Each of these meanings suggests different facets of the great Redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ through His Atonement, which includes, in the words of the dictionary, ‘to deliver from sin and its penalties, as by a sacrifice made for the sinner.
What did Jesus Christ rescue us or set us free from?
2 Nephi 9 is one my favorite chapters of scripture. Jacob talks to the Nephites about the plan of salvation. He talks about the fall of Adam, and how, as a result, we are subject to both physical and spiritual death, which he refers to multiple times as “that awful monster, death and hell.” Without our Savior, “this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more” (v.7). Our bodies and spirits would be permanently separated, and “if the flesh should rise no more our spirits must become subject to that angel who fell from before the presence of the Eternal God, and became the devil, to rise no more” (v.8). Not only would we be subject to Satan, but “our spirits must have become like unto him, and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies, in misery, like unto himself; yea, to that being who beguiled our first parents, who transformeth himself nigh unto an angel of light, and stirreth up the children of men unto secret combinations of murder and all manner of secret works of darkness.” (v.9)
When we think about that—how not only would we be forever separated from our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ but that we would actually become like Satan, devils who beguile and lie and make people miserable and stir up secret combinations and murder and darkness—I think we can understand better why Jacob spends so much time in 2 Nephi 9 praising the Lord’s greatness, goodness, mercy, wisdom, etc. Instead of being endlessly tormented by our sins and becoming like Satan, we can be saved through our Savior and Redeemer. Indeed, “O how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster,” (v. 10).
