Van C. Gessel, Dean of the College of Humanities at BYU in Provo, spoke on taking to heart the atonement of Christ at the devotional held on Thursday, October 7.
Speaking of the youth of the church today, Gessel said that "these marvelous young people have an extraordinary intellectual understanding of the Atonement. What they most need is the opportunity to actually experience the Atonement in their personal lives."
Gessel spoke from personal observations of instances where "our knowledge of and feelings about the Atonement do not translate into behavior."
"I am convinced that if we truly grasped the meaning of the Atonement of Jesus Christ," he said, "there would be significant changes in the way we view ourselves, the way we treat ourselves when we make mistakes, and the way we interact with those around us who are less than perfect."
Gessel stressed the significance and importance of our physical bodoes in the way we experience the atonement.
"One of our greatest blessings is that we can experience it in our bodies," he said. "[The flesh] is the only instrument through which we can, to any profound and permanent degree, experience what the atonement truly means to us in our individual lives."
In answer to the difficult question of how this is to be accomplished, Gessel taught that "adequate personal interaction with the Savior will come only in the same way He grew: 'by the things which [we] suffer...'"
However, Gessel qualified this statement by emphasizing that "only by embracing with our entire beings the Atonement offered by Christ can our pain have any positive purpose...'The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His,'" he said, quoting George Macdonald.
"Those very trials themselves are patiently coordinated - though far less often caused - by a God who knows what a powerful tool of instruction they can be," Gessel added.
In addition to growth through our trials, Gessel emphasized the importance of keeping our bodies clean so that we may be worthy receptacles of the sanctifying influence of Christ's atonement.
He illustrated this concept by quoting from Christ's teachings given at a wedding celebration recorded in the testimony of Matthew:
"Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved" (9:17).
Gessel explained that our bodies are made fragile through misuse and transgression, and that they will ultimately break and perish as the old wine bottles spoken of by Christ.
"If we are to be preserved, we must fashion - through our thoughts, our actions, our faith, and our devotion - bodies that are...worthy chalices into which the Savior can pour the healing antidote of His redeeming blood."
For this to happen, the Lord requires of us, in the words of Alma, a "mighty change of heart"; furthermore, "the change of which [Alma] spoke, the only change that makes any lasting difference in our lives, must be not only mighty, but also ongoing," Gessel added.