Man of Sorrows
In the manual: Come, Follow Me lesson 41, “He Hath Borne Our Griefs, and Carried Our Sorrows,” on Gospel Library
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Isaiah described the Savior more than 700 years before he was born. The Book of Mormon prophet Abinadi later recited this whole chapter to King Noah’s priests (Mosiah 14).
Read Together
The Lord calls him “my servant” (Isaiah 52:13). He would grow up plain and ordinary, “as a root out of a dry ground,” with nothing in his looks to make people want him (Isaiah 53:2).
3He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. 6All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
What It Teaches
Read verse 4 slowly. “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.” The people who watched him suffer thought God was punishing him. Isaiah says the pain he carried was ours.
Verse 5 says “with his stripes we are healed.” Stripes are the marks a whip leaves. Before Jesus was crucified, Pilate had him scourged, or whipped (Matthew 27:26). Verse 6 includes everyone. “All we like sheep have gone astray,” and the Lord laid on him “the iniquity of us all.”
Alma taught that Jesus would take upon himself the pains and sicknesses of his people, so that he would know how to help us (Alma 7:11–12). His Atonement covers our sins. It also covers grief, loneliness, and sickness that are nobody’s fault.
Elder David A. Bednar taught what that means for each of us. “There is no physical pain, no spiritual wound, no anguish of soul or heartache, no infirmity or weakness you or I ever confront in mortality that the Savior did not experience first.”
Elder David A. Bednar, “Bear Up Their Burdens with Ease,” General conference, April 2014
Talk About It
Which of the griefs and sorrows in these verses have you felt? How does it help to know the Savior has already carried them?
Take to Church
Isaiah 53:4 says, “Surely he hath borne our griefs.” That includes the grief any of us is carrying this week.