Neal A. Maxwell in his book, “The Process of Discipleship,” wrote: “We see each other in process of time, which means we see each other in process of discipleship. This process includes the faultering, the stumbles, the triumphs, the enduring well, and so many other commendable things. Still, given the significance of discipleship, efforts to measure it are difficult, because so many important things are unmeasurable to us.
With regard to our physical health, there are some vital signs, such as pulse, blood pressure, respiration, and temperature. Measuring may seem routine but can be a valuable diagnostic tool and provide crucial indicators. So far as our spiritual health is concerned, there are some vital signs which, over the years, have proved to be significant indicators. Do we engage in personal prayer, search the scriptures regularly, and pay tithing, all the while becoming more like Jesus? Yet some resent the simplicity!
As to the latter, the Holy Ghost testifies of the Father and the Son and glorifies Christ (John 16:14). Using whatever gifts and talents we have, we should do likewise!
Christ has told us a major way of glorifying and magnifying Him: “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Implicitly, we love Him but falter in keeping His commandments, we are to love Him enough to repent! Hence, repenting and improving are actually ways in which we truly glorify Christ!
Christ’s atonement, being the central act of human history, benefits super sinners, sinners, and all of us as the makers of mistakes. Taking up the cross daily (Luke 9:23), rather than quarterly or semiannually, helps us in the isometrics of discipleship: the new man labors and struggles to put off the old, or natural, man, who will not go quietly, easily, or suddenly (Mosiah 3:19). Therefore, taking up the cross daily develops within us the extra strength we need to put him off with finality.
Actions that lie at the very center of Christ’s atonement gives us immense clues in terms of our own daily discipleship. Jesus was at His perfect best during the Atonement when things were at their very worst. Yet when He entered Gethsemane, He “fell on his face” (Matthew 26:39). Further, we are told, He “poured out his soul unto death” (Isaiah 53:12; Mosiah 14:12). Moreover, He let his own will be ‘swallowed up in the will of the Father” (Mosiah 15:7). The imagery is staggering, made more so by His own words after the Atonement, when He said He had felt “the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God” (Doctrine and Covenants 76:107).
The Atonement would not have been valid, however, if Jesus, standing in for us, had merely been sorry in our behalf. His atonement required infinite suffering in order to be an infinite atonement: vicarious and superficial suffering would not have been enough! He revealed His awareness of the agony which lay ahead of him when He said, “Would that I might not drink the bitter cup and shrink” (Doctrine and Covenants 19:18). For Him to have recoiled, pulled back, or failed to go through with the Atonement would, of course, have stranded all of us.
Pondering Christ’s deep, deep devotion gives us crucial insight for our own discipleship. What are a few of the common mistakes we make in failing to apply the Atonement to our discipleship? Interestingly, God leaves us free to make these mistakes, and all of these mistakes reflect the need on our part for greater submissiveness to the Lord (Mosiah 3:19).
Perhaps our first mistake is to think that we own ourselves and blocks of time. Of course, we have our agency and an inner sovereignty, but disciples are to sacrifice themselves to Jesus’ bidding with enough faith in God’s timetable to say, in effect, “Thy timing be done.”
To be continued. . .
from “The Process of Discipleship” p.86-88, Deseret Book 2001
