Models of Christ’s Atonement

Christ’s atonement is too deep a subject for us to fully comprehend, but there is much that we can understand. The benefits of the atonement are gloriously real, and had there been no atonement, the consequences would have been tragically real. Nevertheless, the atonement is still an abstract concept. One way to understand abstract concepts is to relate them by analogy to things we are familiar with.

We explored Models 1-5 in part one, which you can read by CLICKING HERE.

Model 6. The Veil Model

The ancient Jewish temple had a veil, through which only the Aaronic High Priest could enter, and then only once per year, on the day of atonement. Inside the veil was the Holy of Holies, and the Ark of the Covenant, which represented God’s presence. This veil, then, symbolically separated the people from God. Among other things it represents the twin obstacles of sin and death, which block our way into the celestial kingdom. However, upon Christ’s death, the veil of the temple was rent (Matthew 27:50-51). Thus, by removing the obstacles that stand in our path, the completed atonement allows us access to God. This rending of the veil at Christ’s death, however, did not prevent the continued use of the temple veil as a symbol, although the symbolism may have changed somewhat. Paul said

Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh… (Hebrews 10:19-20; italics mine).

So, the veil also symbolizes Christ, Himself, and the Veil Model illustrates Christ’s position between us and the Father. To pass through the veil into God’s presence, we must pass by Christ.

Interestingly, both the Image and Veil models involve temple and priesthood imagery. In the Image model we discussed garments, and their relation to animal sacrifice. This sacrifice represents Christ’s atonement but is also priesthood-related because performing animal sacrifice was a priesthood function. The veil is another symbol of Christ that was also related to the Old Testament priesthood ordinances. Therefore, animal sacrifice (and the associated garments) and the temple veil both symbolize Christ (or His atonement), and the priesthood. This suggests that the atonement and priesthood are related. In fact, I consider that Christ’s atonement was the greatest priesthood ordinance, upon which all others are based; but unlike other ordinances, it was extremely painful.[i]

Model 7. The Redeemer Model

The apostle Paul informs us that we do not own ourselves; rather, we are “bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20 and 7:23). This is the price of redemption, or in other words, the price of freeing a slave. Having become sinners, we were no longer able to inherit the kingdom of God and would have been cast out as subjects and slaves of Satan. In fact, even without Satan, we were in bondage to sin itself, because sin itself separates us from God; as a perfect being, God cannot allow unclean things to enter His kingdom.[ii] We were also in bondage to physical death.

Just as charitable people in the past and present free slaves by first buying them from their masters, Jesus has paid the price for all of us. This price none of us could pay, since as slaves we had no money, and the cost was infinite. Again, we are saved by the grace of Him who bought us, not because of anything that we did.

When slaves are freed, their status may change from bondage to complete freedom, or it may involve intermediate levels of freedom, in which the freed slaves still lack full rights. By analogy to these different levels of freedom, Christ redeems some to a telestial level, some to a terrestrial level, and some to a celestial level. Even though telestial inhabitants must suffer the penalty for their sins, their telestial glory still depends on Christ’s atonement. Although Christ has redeemed all of humankind (except sons of perdition) from an endless hell, He redeems us to a celestial level only on the condition that we serve Him, receive required priesthood ordinances, and keep His commandments and our covenants.

The Redeemer Model is similar to the Mediator Model, but it emphasizes that although God has given us our agency, we do not just owe our Savior, but we are actually owned by Him. He bought us. This model forcefully reminds us that when we are freed from our bondage, it is not through our own efforts, despite the best use of our agency. Nevertheless, correct use of our agency is to recognize the price that Christ paid for us and treat Him and His commandments accordingly.

Model 8. The Merit Model

We are saved by Christ’s merits, not our own. When Heavenly Father demands justice, He looks at Christ, not at us.

Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the earth, that they may know that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah… (2 Nephi 2:8; italics mine. See also 2 Nephi 31:19; Alma 24:10; Helaman 14:13.)

There is a story of a Union soldier who fell asleep while on guard duty.[iii] He didn’t mean to. But because he did, his fellow soldiers were killed by the Confederate army. He was court martialed and faced execution; it was a just punishment for his crime. However, his mother pleaded with the court, explaining that her husband and all her other sons had been killed in the war, and she needed her last son. So, his life was spared, not because of him, but because of his mother. It is important to note, however, that if this soldier had committed his crime maliciously, he would have been executed despite anything his mother said. In a similar way, we are saved for Jesus’ sake, not ours; however, we aren’t saved in our sins, but from them (see Helaman 5:10-11)—we must repent. If we maliciously sin and don’t repent, we are condemned despite Jesus’ sacrifice; we lose the possibility of eternal life, even though we will still receive immortality.

We don’t “deserve” salvation, but Christ deserves, because of His atonement, to be able to save us. Augustus Toplady said it eloquently: “Not the labors of my hands can fill all thy law’s demands; Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears forever flow, All for sin could not atone; Thou must save, and thou alone.”[iv] Like the mother in the story, Christ pleads for us:

Listen to him who is the advocate with the Father, who is pleading your cause before him—Saying: Father, behold the sufferings and death of him who did no sin, in whom thou wast well pleased; behold the blood of thy Son which was shed, the blood of him whom thou gavest that thyself might be glorified; Wherefore, Father, spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have everlasting life (D&C 45:3-5; italics mine).

The Merit Model is similar to the Mediator and Redeemer models in that all three involve a mediator. The difference here is that in the previous models, the debt (or price) was paid with money, which would have benefited the creditor; here, the emphasis is on the fact that only Jesus was perfect, and that redemption comes not only from what the Redeemer did, and how much He paid, but also from who He was. He could not have done what He did, were He not who He was. Unlike the models that deal with money, where the only issue is having sufficient payment, this model emphasizes that only Jesus was worthy to be able to pay our sin debt.

Model 9. The Spiritual Father Model

The scriptures continually teach us that Jesus is not just our “elder brother,” but that He is also the Father. The First Presidency in 1916 described three ways in which Jesus can be referred to as the Father, and in my opinion, the Book of Mormon excels at teaching these three ways:[v] First, by divine investiture of authority. Since God the Father and God the Son are one, the Father has given His Son power to act and speak in the Father’s name, as if He were the Father.[vi] Second, in a phrase exclusive to the Book of Mormon,[vii] Jesus is called the “Father of heaven and earth,” because He created all things. And third, He is a spiritual father to all those who repent and come unto Him by baptism.[viii] This is the most relevant type of fatherhood for this model. Each of us experienced physical birth, and we have parents of our physical bodies. In like manner, each of us must be spiritually reborn, and because that happens through Christ and His atonement, He becomes our father spiritually.

The Spiritual Father Model explains that for Christ to save us in the celestial kingdom, we must enter a covenant relationship with Him; and that He becomes the Father of our salvation. Thus, when we gain Christ’s attributes, and receive the blessings of salvation, we inherit them.

Model 10. The Nail Model

Isaiah’s prophecies were often of dual meaning and dual fulfillment. There was a meaning pertaining to his place and his time, or shortly after his time; and another meaning, more hidden to those of his time, pertaining to Christ’s ministry and atonement, or to events in the latter days. Isaiah 22 provides an example of this:

And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand: and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah. And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house. And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons (verses 21-24; italics mine).

Isaiah 22 contains a message to the apparently wicked and proud Shebna, an officer in King Hezekiah’s court, who oversaw the king’s household (perhaps acting as the king’s “chief of staff”) and who was to be replaced by Eliakim. Shebna’s girdle and robe, which were symbols of his power, were to be given to Eliakim, as well as the “key of David.” David was a powerful and revered king in Israel, and to have his keys to open and shut meant to have great power. Eliakim would become the nail in the sure place, with the honor of the household dependent on him—hanging on him, as from a nail that has been driven securely into the wall—while that which had previously hung on Shebna (see verse 25) would fall when Shebna was removed from his place.

Despite this meaning current to Isaiah’s time, it is his obvious Messianic inference that interests us. Eliakim was a type of the Savior. Jesus was a literal descendent of David and would have reigned on David’s throne had not Rome taken over the Jewish kingdom. Nevertheless, Jesus has the “key of David” (see Revelation 3:7) and was clothed with the robe and girdle—the power of the priesthood. The Savior was like Isaiah’s “nail in a sure place,” and upon Him was hung all the glory of His Father. That glory, we will recall, is the immortality and eternal life of man (see Moses 1:39). In other words, the entire plan of salvation hung in the balance, upon Jesus. Because Jesus was dependable, like the strong nail, He became the Father of our salvation, and (under God and above Adam[ix]), the head of the Patriarchal Order (“patriarch” refers to “father”). It is by His atonement that He became such. Thus, He was the Son of God, and by completing His mission, He progressed from Son to Father.

The Nail Model, therefore, confirms to us that to be our Spiritual Father, Christ had to first be the Only Begotten Son. And that the entire plan of salvation hangs in the balance, as it were, on Christ and His atonement.

This brings us to our last model, meaning the last model we will review, not the last model that exists—there are surely many more models and analogies to the atonement.

Model 11. The Investment Model

A man buys seemingly worthless stock in a failing company. In fact, he invests all he has into this company. Because he has bought so much of it, two important things happen. First, the man now owns the company. And second, he has invested enough that the company begins making a profit and eventually excels beyond its employees’ wildest expectations. Each of us is that failing company, and Jesus has bought stock in us. This model has two lessons. First, it once again shows that Jesus “owns” us. But the reason I have included it here is that while the other models I have presented address how Christ saves us through His atonement, or help us to understand Christ’s attributes that enabled Him to perform the atonement, this model addresses the question of why. That is the second lesson of this model: Christ invested in us because He and His Father, in their foresight, knew that the investment would pay off. They knew the potential inside of us, and they knew that many of us would take full advantage of the atonement. As human beings, we do not have the immediate capacity that Christ has; but as children of Christ and God, through the atonement, we are given power to eventually gain the same capacity that Christ has.

The Investment Model reminds us that even though we are, in our natural state, “enemies to God” (Mosiah 3:19), “less than the dust of the earth” (Mosiah 2:25; 4:2; Helaman 12:7), and, as Moses put it, “nothing” when compared to God (Moses 1:10), we still have divine potential. We are children of God—again, as Moses put it, “in the similitude of his Only Begotten” (Moses 1:13),[x] and as such, are worth the infinite investment that Jesus put into us—an investment that can ultimately yield salvation and exaltation.

Notes: 

[i] In Richard D. Gardner, Heart of the Gospel Chapter 12, I analyze Christ’s atonement as a priesthood ordinance. Among other things, this chapter discusses that ancient animal sacrificial ordinances symbolized Christ’s atonement—the ordinance that backs up all others. Four beings were involved: The person that offered the animal; the priest who sacrificed the animal; the animal itself; and God, who ultimately accepted the sacrifice. In Christ’s case, He was all four beings: He was the offeror, and the sacrifice, and the priest. And finally, although the Father accepted Christ’s sacrifice, there is a sense in which Christ in his role as Father accepted his own sacrifice. (The mortal Jesus did the will of the premortal Jehovah, since the premortal Jehovah was one with the Father—Elohim). Thus, Abinadi taught that Christ was “the Father and the Son—The Father, because he was conceived by the power of God [Father by divine investiture of authority]; and the Son, because of the flesh.” And that “the will of the Son [would be] swallowed up in the will of the Father” (Mosiah 15:2-3, 7). Abinadi’s statements have dual meaning: his statement that the Father and Son “are one God” could refer either to Jesus and Elohim being one with each other, which They are; or to Jesus (the Son) being the same person as Jesus (the Father). Abinadi’s statements that the Son was subject to the Father, or that the will of the Son was swallowed up in the will of the Father, could refer either to Jesus submitting to Elohim, or to Jesus submitting His mortal will and His bodily appetites to His own divine will. The beauty of this scripture is that both of these meanings are correct. See also 3 Nephi 1:14 and Ether 4:12.

[ii] See 1 Nephi 15:34; Alma 7:21; 3 Nephi 27:19; Moses 6:57.

[iii] There are many stories of Civil War pardons and I have not been able to verify if this story is true in every particular or if the story related here is a composite, but in any case it illustrates my point.

[iv] Augustus M. Toplady, “Rock of Ages,” in Hymns, #111.

[v] The Father and the Son: A Doctrinal Exposition by the First Presidency [Joseph F. Smith, president] and the Twelve, in 1916 (Messages of the First Presidency 5:26-34). This is also available in the April 2002 Ensign, or in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism Appendix 4: Doctrinal Expositions of the First Presidency, pp. 1670-1677. (New York: Macmillan, 1992. Reprinted by permission of The Gale Group. Available at no cost online at http://eom.byu.edu.)

The Book of Mormon excels in describing the ways that Christ is a father, as seen in the next few endnotes.

[vi] See Mosiah 15:1-5; 3 Nephi 1:14; and Ether 4:12.

[vii] See, for example, 2 Nephi 25:12; Mosiah 3:8; 15:4; Alma 11:39; Helaman 14:12; 16:18; Ether 4:7.

[viii] See, for example, Mosiah 5:7; 27:25; Ether 3:14; Moroni 7:19; D&C 25:1; 34:3.

[ix] “Christ is the Great High Priest; Adam next.” (“Discourse, between circa 26 June and circa 4 August 1839–A, as reported by Willard Richards,” p. 65, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed February 3, 2018. OR, Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (selected and arranged by Joseph Fielding Smith. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1985), p. 158.

[x] It is interesting to contrast Moses’ two statements, only three verses apart. First, when compared with God, we are “nothing,” but second, we are definitely worth something, having been created in “the similitude of his Only Begotten.” We should keep both points in mind as we think about our relationship to God.