As is taught in the temple, the Lord has always required his people to offer sacrifice, from the time of our first parents onward. The type and place of sacrifice have changed over the ages, but the fundamental principles undergirding the doctrine of sacrifice have not. Righteous sacrifices are really symbols of our obedience to the Lord, of Jesus Christ and His atonement, of our desire to imitate the Savior and live as He does. Our offering of sacrifice demonstrates our commitment to follow the Lord above anyone or anything else.
The word sacrifice comes from two Latin words put together: sacer ("sacred") and facere ("to make or do"). Thus, sacrifice literally means "to make sacred." When we sacrifice what the Lord asks, we are making our lives sacred by our actions—as did the Savior, in whose holy house we are worshipping when we covenant to offer sacrifices in His name and for His kingdom.
Two Changes to the Law of Sacrifice
In the period from Adam to Christ, the formal, required sacrifices designated by the Lord were "the firstlings of their flocks" (Moses 5:5). . . .Under the ancient sacrificial system, animal sacrifices were symbols of the Atonement, pointing the offerer (and the observers) to the future shedding of Christ's blood in Gethsemane and on the cross. Not only were the animals themselves a type, shadow, and similitude of the bodily sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but they were also a vicarious substitute, a proxy, standing in the stead of the person making the sacrifice (again, a modeling of both the Savior's sacrifice as well as our own proxy service in the temple). The offerer, through the symbolic substitution of an animal, was giving himself wholly to God. The person making the sacrifice was making or declaring his life to be sacred or holy through the offering of a proxy. . . .
With the coming of Jesus Christ in mortality and the actual shedding of his blood as the "great and last sacrifice" (Alma 34:14), at least two fundamental changes ensued, though sacrifice remained the premier symbol of the Atonement. First, animal sacrifice and the shedding of blood were discontinued, and something else was required as an offering: "Ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit," as the resurrected Christ said to the Nephites (3 Nephi 9:20).
Second, an intermediary was no longer required, as in the days of the Mosaic dispensation when the Aaronic priest conducted the actual slaughter of the animal within the tabernacle or temple precincts. Under the new order, every man and woman was empowered to approach God directly and offer his or her own broken heart and contrite spirit.
Broken Heart and a Contrite Spirit
The symbolism of the Atonement, however, still undergirds the sacrifice. A broken heart and a contrite spirit are a similitude or perfect likeness of Jesus' atoning experience. The word contrite comes from a Latin root meaning "to grind." To be contrite is to be "crushed in spirit."1 In Gethsemane, Jesus' spirit was crushed by the weight of the sins and sorrows of the world (he said he felt "very heavy," or weighed down; Mark 14:33). And on Golgotha's cross, "Jesus died of a broken heart," the consequence of infinite suffering for infinite sin and sorrow.2
In the period from Adam to Moses, the designated locations for formal sacrifices were specially constructed altars in various places. In the period from Moses to Christ, the designated locations for formal sacrifice were the specially constructed altars within, first, the Mosaic tabernacle, and, later, Solomon's, Zerubbabel's, and Herod's temples. In our day, the designated locations for making formal covenants of sacrifice are before the sacrament table on the Sabbath and at the altar in the Lord's temples. In the Lord's plan, altars have always been the center of sacred actions. Around the altars in the temples today, the most important and sacred activities occur: the making of covenants, the offering of prayers, the establishment of eternal marriages and families, and the promises of sacrifice and consecration.
Get more fascinating insights from Andrew C. Skinner in Temple Worship: 20 Truths That Will Bless Your Life.
Temple Worship eloquently describes the joys and blessings of temple worship — and how we can get the most out of our temple experience. In this inspiring, practical book, Andrew Skinner shows how the temple represents the "ultimate" in our worship, how temple ordinances are tied to the Atonement, how temple blessings apply to all — especially to those who walk life's road alone — and how the temple prepares us for exaltation. Weaving in personal experiences and statements from modern prophets, he bears witness that the sealing ordinances are a source of great comfort and security, that temples are places of personal revelation, and that unseen beings attend us there. This book will permanently change your feelings about the temple.
The Significance of Altars
The ancient Hebrew language offers some insight into the significance of altars. The word for "sacrifice" is zebakh; the word for "altar" is mizbeakh, meaning "(place of) sacrificing." At the altars in the Lord's temples today, worshippers covenant to sacrifice all they possess for the sake of the Lord's kingdom. At the heart of this kind of all-encompassing sacrifice is eternal life, as the Lectures on Faith explains:
Let us here observe, that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation; for, from the first existence of man, the faith necessary unto the enjoyment of life and salvation never could be obtained without the sacrifice of all earthly things. It was through this sacrifice, and this only, that God has ordained that men should enjoy eternal life; and it is through the medium of the sacrifice of all earthly things that men do actually know that they are doing the things that are well pleasing in the sight of God. When a man has offered in sacrifice all that he has for the truth's sake, not even withholding his life, and believing before God that he has been called to make this sacrifice because he seeks to do his will, he does know, most assuredly, that God does and will accept his sacrifice and offering, and that he has not, nor will not seek his face in vain. Under these circumstances, then, he can obtain the faith necessary for him to lay hold on eternal life.
It is in vain for persons to fancy to themselves that they are heirs with those, or can be heirs with them, who have offered their all in sacrifice, and by this means obtain faith in God and favor with him so as to obtain eternal life, unless they, in like manner, offer unto him the same sacrifice, and through that offering obtain the knowledge that they are accepted of him.3
Thus, the closer we come to God, the more we desire to do what He desires, the more nearly our prayers become "I don't care what I want, Lord; I only care what Thou wants." The nearer we approach God through mighty faith, the more desirous we are to give him everything we possess, every-thing we own and everything we are—time, talents, and resources—until we arrive at the point where we will give him the ultimate thing we have to give, the one and only thing that is truly ours (because everything else is already his): our individual agency, our will, our thoughts and desires, as Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught:
The submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. The many other things we 'give,' brothers and sisters, are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us. However, when you and I finally submit ourselves, by letting our individual wills be swallowed up in God's will, then we are really giving something to Him! It is the only possession which is truly ours to give!
Consecration thus constitutes the only unconditional surrender which is also a total victory!4
Here is the great irony of this doctrine (and only in the temple do we get the complete picture): in the giving of everything we have, or may have, to God, we receive everything He has to give to us. That is hardly an even exchange. But that is the sure promise when our hearts and minds are of a celestial order.
Get more fascinating insights from Andrew C. Skinner in Temple Worship: 20 Truths That Will Bless Your Life.
Temple Worship eloquently describes the joys and blessings of temple worship — and how we can get the most out of our temple experience. In this inspiring, practical book, Andrew Skinner shows how the temple represents the "ultimate" in our worship, how temple ordinances are tied to the Atonement, how temple blessings apply to all — especially to those who walk life's road alone — and how the temple prepares us for exaltation. Weaving in personal experiences and statements from modern prophets, he bears witness that the sealing ordinances are a source of great comfort and security, that temples are places of personal revelation, and that unseen beings attend us there. This book will permanently change your feelings about the temple.
^1. Webster's New World Dictionary, s.v. "Contrite."
^2. Talmage, Jesus the Christ, 669.
^3. Smith, Lectures on Faith, 6.7–8.
^4. Maxwell, "'Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father,'" Ensign, November 1995, 24.
