During the years leading up to what would become World War II, the leading governments of several nations practiced a doctrine of appeasement with the increasingly aggressive Germany. The horrors of the “War to end all wars” still fresh in their minds, these leaders were determined to pursue “peace at any price.” Many of us are sometimes tempted to believe that achieving peace is worth any price. In fact, there is a price for peace, and it turns out it is much higher than any of us could possibly dream of. In his April 2023 talk “Finding Personal Peace”, President Henry B. Eyring said, “ it is clear that the Lord loved us enough to pay the price of our sins so that we can—through our faith in Him and our repentance, through the effects of His Atonement—have the gift of the peace that “passeth all understanding,” in this life and with Him eternally.” And what did paying that price look like? “How sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not. For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I; Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink— Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men.” (D&C 19:15-19). As Isaiah says, “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:3-5). Jesus Christ suffered in both body and spirit the pains of every living creature, and bled from every pore, and shook and trembled from the unbearable burden. He paid the ultimate, infinite price for our peace. We are born into war and chaos. We are given the light of Christ and yet we must also pass through the veil of forgetfulness. We are made up of eternal souls stuffed into mortal bodies, our Spirits are willing, but our flesh is weak. We crave the companionship of the Holy Ghost, and we also follow after the lusts of the flesh. We feel an urgent need to assert our independence and stand upon our own two feet, but we must yield and submit our will to our Heavenly Father’s and acknowledge our daily dependence on His grace and mercy. We come from beyond time and we are destined to continue existing for all of eternity, and yet every thought we experience in this life is colored by the fact that we are all going to die someday. We are blessed with one of the most complex visual processing systems of all of God’s creatures, and yet we are told that we must relinquish our reliance on our sight and live by faith. Our mortal, fallen body and our divine, eternal Spirit are in their nature constantly in conflict with each other. They are two parallel lines that never intersect. Well, almost never. If you take two parallel lines all the way out to infinity, then can actually meet and cross each other. This is the price that our Savior paid to put an end to the conflict between our flesh and our spirit. “But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” (Ephesians 2:13-18). The cross is the point at the edge of infinity where the spirit and the body meet and become one. It was in Christ’s own flesh, and in His own spirit, that the enmity was abolished between the divine and the mundane, between the celestial and the telestial, between the eternal and the temporal, between the spiritual and the carnal, between righteousness and wickedness. Thanks to the price Jesus paid, we can have peace. We can walk by faith not knowing beforehand the things that we should do and we can have peace that it will all work out. We can feel the fear and do the hard thing anyway and have peace that the Lord will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able. We can feel anger and even hatred for those who have deeply hurt and betrayed and traumatized us and we can have peace as the overwhelming power of our Savior’s Atonement gives us the strength to forgive and keep moving forward. The Peace that Jesus Christ gives us is not the victory of the conqueror over the conquered. It is not that good triumphs over evil, that faith defeats doubt, that love casts out fear. Christ carried all of these warring factions out to infinity and nailed all of them, along with Himself, to the cross, and made in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace. We are not meant to eradicate the natural man or natural woman within us but to integrate the natural with the spiritual. When Christ was resurrected, He did not fashion for Himself a newer, more perfect, more celestial body. He kept His old body. In fact He kept His old body and left all of the holes from His wounds still in it. He showed us that true, everlasting peace and joy is only possible when spirit and body are completely together. “For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy” (D&C 93:33). I hope that we can all have the humility and the courage to allow Christ to break down the middle wall of partition between our spirit and our body, between our faith and our doubt, between our selflessness and our selfishness, between our pride and our humility. It may sometimes seem a high price to pay for peace, but our Savior has already paid the ultimate price, and I know that whatever our individual price, whatever we must sacrifice to allow the healing power of Christ’s Atonement to unite in one every warring faction inside of us, the peace that we shall receive passeth all understanding and will be worth it at any price.
