The following is an excerpt from “Vast and Intimate: The Atonement in the Heavens and in the Heart,” a devotional address given by L. Robert Webb, executive director of strategic planning and assessment. This devotional address was given on Nov. 16, 1998, in the Marriott Center.
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Both Isaiah and Abinadi prophesied that Christ would be “acquainted with grief”–our grief (Isa. 53:3, Mosiah 14:3). According to the Latin cognate, to be acquainted means “to know personally, to know perfectly, to know firsthand.” It was one thing for the Savior empathetically to understand our sins and sorrows; it was quite another actually to experience them, to take upon himself the guilt and pain, the homesickness and loneliness, the failure and disappointment, the hurt and anguish of every one of us as he did, causing him “to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit” (D&C 19:18).
It was not enough for him to know about our infirmities; he had to experience them personally in order that he could reach us in every extremity. There is no place so remote, no condition so dark and despairing, no feeling so helpless, no hurt so deep that the Savior has not already been there and borne those burdens for us. . . .
Through his atonement Jesus experienced every separation that we might suffer: separation from peace of mind, separation from health, separation from our good name and reputation by being falsely accused, separation from another by being wronged or committing a wrong, separation through divorce and loneliness, and separation from joy and happiness. All of these losses were borne by him ahead of time in order that he could reach out to us under every adverse circumstance.