“Love One Another, As I Have Loved You” – Scriptures and Quotes

Lesson 23: “Love One Another, As I Have Loved You” – Scriptures and Quotes

Reading 1 – Exodus 12:3,5-8

Exodus 12:11-14

John 13:1

Reading 2 – Luke 22:14-20

Reading 3 - Elder Matthew Cowley said: "The administration of the sacrament...is so essential that the words in the prayer of sanctification have been given by direct revelation from God.... In the blessing pronounced upon the sacred emblems of the Master's great sacrifice, the priest repeats God's own words....

"The Sabbath is the day appointed for sacrament service. In the religious worship of this day every member of the Church is expected to present himself before the sacrament board and renew his covenants with his Redeemer. For those who neglect this duty, there is no covenant renewal, and the Lord will not hold them blameless. The vitality of the Church lies in the obedience of its members to the divine plan, and this vitality comes from...meeting together often, and with contrite spirits, partaking of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper." (Matthew Cowley Speaks, pp191-192)

Reading 4 – Elder Jeffrey R. Holland has said: “Since that upper room experience on the eve of Gethsemane and Golgotha, children of the promise have been under covenant to remember Christ’s sacrifice in this newer, higher, more holy and personal way.

With a crust of bread, always broken, blessed, and offered first, we remember his bruised body and broken heart, his physical suffering on the cross where he cried, “I thirst,” and finally, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (John 19:28; Matt. 27:46.)

The Savior’s physical suffering guarantees that through his mercy and grace (see 2 Ne. 2:8) every member of the human family shall be freed from the bonds of death and be resurrected triumphantly from the grave. Of course the time of that resurrection and the degree of exaltation it leads to are based upon our faithfulness.

With a small cup of water we remember the shedding of Christ’s blood and the depth of his spiritual suffering, anguish which began in the Garden of Gethsemane. There he said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matt. 26:38). He was in agony and “prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44).

The Savior’s spiritual suffering and the shedding of his innocent blood, so lovingly and freely given, paid the debt for what the scriptures call the “original guilt” of Adam’s transgression (Moses 6:54). Furthermore, Christ suffered for the sins and sorrows and pains of all the rest of the human family, providing remission for all of our sins as well, upon conditions of obedience to the principles and ordinances of the gospel he taught (see 2 Ne. 9:21–23). As the Apostle Paul wrote, we were “bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:20). What an expensive price and what a merciful purchase!

That is why every ordinance of the gospel focuses in one way or another on the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, and surely that is why this particular ordinance with all its symbolism and imagery comes to us more readily and more repeatedly than any other in our life. It comes in what has been called “the most sacred, the most holy, of all the meetings of the Church” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols., Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954–56, 2:340). - Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, This Do in Remembrance of Me, Ensign, November, 1995

Reading 5 – Continuing with his General Conference address, Elder Holland suggested some of the things we should remember about the Savior:

i) His love and strength in the Grand Council of Heaven.

ii) That he is the Creator of heaven and earth.

iii) All that he did in his premortal life as Jehovah.

iv) The simple grandeur of his birth.

v) His teachings.

vi) His miracles and healings.

vii) That “all things which are good cometh of Christ” (Moroni 7:24).

viii) The unkind treatment, rejection, and injustice he endured.

ix) That he descended below all things in order to rise above them.

x) That he made his sacrifices and endured his sorrows for each of us. (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, This Do in Remembrance of Me, Ensign, November, 1995 and Lesson 23: “Love One Another, As I Have Loved You”," New Testament Gospel Doctrine Teacher’s Manual)

Doctrine and Covenants 20:77

3 Nephi 26:13

Reading 6 - Pres. J. Reuben Clark, Jr. wrote: It is an interesting reflection that up to the time of Christ, apparently . . . Israel . . . worshiped with the ritual which. . . looked forward to the sacrifice of the Son by substituting animal sacrifices as under the Mosaic Law . . .

The sacrifice was always vicarious. Animals were . . . sacrificed for the sins of the individual and for the sins of the people . . . but it was always a vicarious sacrifice, apparent with little actual sacrifice, except for the value of the animal sacrificed, by the individuals themselves, to cancel the debt, so to speak, against their lives and living in the eyes of the Almighty One. The sinner seemingly, in general, took on no obligation to abandon his sins, but took on only the obligation to offer sacrifice therefor.

But under the new covenant that came in with Christ, the sinner must offer the sacrifice out of his own life, not by offering the blood of some other creature; he must give up his sins, he must repent, he himself must make the sacrifice, and that sacrifice was calculated to reach out into the life of the sinner in the future so that he would become a better and changed man. (Behold the Lamb of God, pp. 107-108)

Reading 7 – John 13:3-5,12-17

Reading 8 – John 13:34-35

Reading 9 – John 15:12,17

John 14:5

John 14:6

Reading 10 – John 15:1-5

Reading 11 – Abide with Me – Hymn 166