“ Behold the wounds which pierced my side, and also the prints of the nails in my hands and feet; be faithful, keep my commandments, and ye shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. Amen.” (D&C 6:37). It is perfectly natural to look at all of the tragedy and malevolence and cruelty that abound on every side and conclude, as did Friedrich Nietzsche, with utter despondence, “God is dead.” It can be hard to maintain faith in the moral arc of the universe when even innocent children are dying from leukemia, or being sold into slavery, or swept away by hurricanes, or burnt to a crisp by wildfires, or starving, or choking on tuberculosis. It’s not even untrue that God did die. Of course He died. Dying was always part of the plan. He then was resurrected and is once more living, never to die again. But when we examine our own lives with a clear and painfully truthful eye and accept without a hint of self-deception all of the ways in which we have done irreparable harm to ourselves and to others by thoughtless and foolish and occasionally deliberately evil choices, it can be hard to accept the reality of Jesus Christ’s Resurrection, or, at least, His redemptive power when applied to our own case. If by our own actions we have crucified our Lord and killed Him dead, who then is left to be wounded for our transgressions? As it turns out, even after Jesus Christ had at long last and at the utter end of His strength declared, “it is finished” and then gave up the ghost, He was not quite done. After He had died, a soldier pierced His side with a spear. Even after He had already died, Jesus was still taking shots for us. We can’t cancel out the power of Christ’s Atonement. If we want to bite the hand that feeds us, if we want to kick against the pricks, if we want to pierce the side of our God even after we have killed Him, then so be it. Christ was willing to be wounded for our transgressions even after He had already given up the ghost because He believes that we can and we will still choose to come back to Him, covered in His blood as we are. Indeed, how else could we be covered with His blood if we did not drive in the spear ourselves? Christ tells us that when we Have done it unto one of the least of these, we have only done it unto Him. With every sin we commit, we are driving a nail into the flesh of our Lord and spattering ourselves with His precious blood. As we repent and turn to Him, His blood, the evidence of our sins that is staining our souls, can now start to wash away our sins. We are all so convinced that it is absolutely useless to beat a dead horse that we have a cliche phrase about it. Let’s stop trying to pierce the heart of our God even after He has died for our sins.
