When they left the garden, the Lord directed them to build an altar and offer animal sacrifices. After many days an angel asked Adam why he offered sacrifices.
He said, “I know not, save the Lord commanded me.”
So the angel told him, “This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten.”34 The lambs they sacrificed symbolized and pointed them toward the Father’s future redemptive sacrifice of His Son. The angel then taught Adam and Eve that Christ’s sacrifice and the plan of redemption gave meaning and purpose to all of their opposition—from leaving Eden to Eve’s lamentation over her sons.
Many of us go to the temple today the way Adam and Eve did at first—simply because we are commanded, without knowing why. And simple obedience is certainly better than not performing the ordinances at all. But the Lord, who sent that angel, must have wanted them to know why—and I believe He wants us to know why.
Are today’s temple ordinances also “a similitude . . . of the Only Begotten”? Think of how the temple’s altars are, like the altar of Adam and Eve, altars of prayer, sacrifice, and covenants. Think of the dimensions of sacrifice in all the covenants of the endowment. Since Christ completed His atoning mission, we no longer offer animal sacrifices, but we do covenant to sacrifice. In what way? Christ taught the Nephites, “Ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit.”35
Animal sacrifices symbolized the Father’s sacrifice of the Son, but the sacrifice of a broken heart and a contrite spirit symbolizes the Son’s sacrifice of Himself. James E. Talmage wrote that Jesus “died of a broken heart.”36 In similitude, we now offer ourselves—our own broken hearts—as a personal sacrifice.37 As Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, “Real, personal sacrifice never was placing an animal on the altar. Instead, it is a willingness to put the animal in us upon the altar and letting it be consumed!”38
Marriage, Family Law, and the Temple, Bruce C. Hafen, Emeritus General Authority Seventy
January 31, 2014, Speeches.byu.edu
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