The law of sacrifice is an eternal law. It has been on the earth from the beginning and will continue forever. One aspect of this eternal law—the sacrificial offering of animals—was performed for centuries to point the minds of the people to the ultimate sacrifice of the Savior, but when Jesus died for us, he adjusted our focus to higher aspects of the law. Now, instead of blood sacrifices, he wants us to sacrifice, or give up, worldliness and dedicate our hearts and spirits to him and his work (see further commentary about sacrifice at 1 Nephi 2:11–24; Omni 1:26; Alma 34:13–14).
Whoever comes unto Jesus “with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost, even as the Lamanites, because of their faith in me at the time of their conversion, were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not” (emphasis added). The last phrase clearly suggests that true conversion is often a calm, quiet, even unnoticeable experience.
President Ezra Taft Benson described the process in these words: “We must be careful, as we seek to become more and more godlike, that we do not become discouraged and lose hope. Becoming Christlike is a lifetime pursuit and very often involves growth and change that is slow, almost imperceptible. The scriptures record remarkable accounts of men whose lives changed dramatically, in an instant, as it were: Alma the Younger, Paul on the road to Damascus, Enos praying far into the night, King Lamoni. Such astonishing examples of the power to change even those steeped in sin give confidence that the Atonement can reach those deepest in despair.
“But we must be cautious as we discuss these remarkable examples. Though they are real and powerful, they are the exception more than the rule. For every Paul, for every Enos, and for every King Lamoni, there are hundreds and thousands of people who find the process of repentance much more subtle, much more imperceptible. Day by day they move closer to the Lord, little realizing they are building a godlike life. They live quiet lives of goodness, service, and commitment… .
“We must not lose hope. Hope is an anchor to the souls of men. Satan would have us cast away that anchor. In this way he can bring discouragement and surrender. But we must not lose hope… . We must remember that most repentance does not involve sensational or dramatic changes, but rather is a step-by-step, steady, and consistent movement toward godliness.”9
It is tremendously significant that Jesus asks all disciples from this point on to offer as a sacrifice to him “a broken heart and a contrite spirit.” By so doing, we emulate the Savior in very deed, for Jesus experienced both a broken heart and a contrite spirit. He died of a broken or ruptured heart, as Elder James E. Talmage indicated: “While, as stated in the text, the yielding up of life was voluntary on the part of Jesus Christ, for He had life in Himself and no man could take His life except as He willed to allow it to be taken (John 1:4; 5:26; 10:15–18), there was of necessity a direct physical cause of dissolution… . The strong, loud utterance, immediately following which He bowed His head and ‘gave up the ghost,’ when considered in connection with other recorded details, points to a physical rupture of the heart as the direct cause of death. If the soldier’s spear was thrust into the left side of the Lord’s body and actually penetrated the heart, the outrush of ‘blood and water’ observed by John is further evidence of a cardiac rupture; for it is known that in the rare instances of death resulting from a breaking of any part of the wall of the heart, blood accumulates within the pericardium, and there undergoes a change by which the corpuscles separate as a partially clotted mass from the almost colorless, watery serum… . The present writer believes that the Lord Jesus died of a broken heart. The psalmist sang in dolorous measure according to his inspired prevision of the Lord’s passion: ‘Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none … ’ (Ps. 69:20, 21; see also 22:14).”10
In addition, a contrite spirit was also the Savior’s experience. Contrite is defined as “crushed in spirit by a feeling of remorse for guilt.”11 This Jesus experienced for all of us as well (Moses 6:54). Mark implied Jesus was crushed in spirit in Gethsemane when he reported that Jesus entered the garden and began to feel “very heavy” and “sorrowful unto death” (Mark 14:33–34). The crushing weight of sin, sorrow, and suffering for the universal family of God progressed to the point where Jesus began to bleed from every pore (Luke 22:44; D&C 19:16–19). And so the great Redeemer asks us, in return for his vicarious suffering on our behalf, to experience vicariously and symbolically what he experienced.