What Shall I Do with Jesus?

Much has been said at this conference about the life and mission of the Master. I pray that what I may say will not detract from that which has already been said. ¶

After that long awful night of betrayal and trial, Jesus was brought before Pilate. Pilate believed that Jesus was innocent of any wrong and made a weak attempt to try and save his life by taking advantage of one of his privileges as Roman governor to release a prisoner to the Jews at the time of the Passover. Pilate had in his custody a noted insurrectionist and murderer by the name of Barabbas, and probably relying upon the sense of fairness of the Jews that certainly they would not consent to the release of this notorious criminal and punish an innocent man, Pilate said, "Whom shall I release unto you — Barabbas or Jesus which is called Christ?" (See Matt. 27:21.) ¶

And Pilate must have been startled to hear them say, "Barabbas." He said, "Then what shall I do with Jesus?" And the Jews replied, "Let him be crucified." Pilate said, "Shall I crucify your king?" And they said, "We have no king but Caesar." Then Pilate took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, ". . . I am innocent of the blood of this just man: see ye to it." And the Jews said, ". . . His blood be upon us and on our children. Then Barabbas was released and Jesus was delivered to be crucified." (See Matt. 27:24-26.) ¶

We might safely assume that both Pilate and the Jews felt that they had permanently settled any question which may have arisen in connection with the life of Christ — Pilate by merely washing his hands, and the Jews by putting to death the very Son of God. But there is a peculiar relationship which exists between the life of Jesus Christ and every other soul born into the world. In that great period of our pre-existence, Jesus was appointed and ordained to be the Savior of the world and the Redeemer of men, and there is no other name given by which man can be saved. What Pilate and the Jews did to Jesus did not alter that relationship in the slightest degree, either for them or for us. For Jesus also bore our sins, and we are therefore party to his suffering and his atonement. ¶

In our lives we are forced to make many decisions. By our answers to life's questions, we determine our own destiny. James Russell Lowell wrote some significant lines entitled, "The Present Crisis." He says — ¶

Once to every man and nation / Comes a moment to decide / In the strife of truth and falsehood / For the good or evil side. / Some great cause, God's new Messiah / Offering each the bloom or blight / Parts the goats upon the left hand / And the sheep upon the right. / And the choice goes on forever / 'Twixt the darkness and the light. ¶

Certainly the greatest question to be decided by any man during his lifetime is the one suggested by Pilate, "What shall I do with Jesus?" The Jews made their decision. They said, "His blood be upon us and on our children," and so it has been. And so it may be with us because the question is still before us, and each must answer for himself. ¶

For Jesus is standing on trial still. / You may be false to him if you will. / Or you may serve him through good or ill. / What will you do with Jesus? / You may evade him as Pilate tried / Or you may serve him whate'er betide. / Vainly you'll struggle from him to hide / What will you do with Jesus? / What will you do with Jesus? / Neutral you cannot be, / And someday your soul may be asking — / What will he do with me? ¶

One of the best methods for solving a problem is to weigh carefully each of the alternatives. In this case there seem to be three. The first is that we may follow the example of the Jews and reject him and thereby, as Paul says, we crucify unto ourselves the Son of God afresh. Such a course is unthinkable. But much of what the Jews did, they did in ignorance. Upon the cross Jesus said, ". . . Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34.) The Jews didn't really understand what they were doing when they put to death the Savior of the world. Pilate didn't know that this young peasant carpenter standing before him was in very deed the great Jehovah who had created the earth. But we might ask ourselves this question. Why didn't they know? There is probably only one answer: They lacked the honest effort, earnest inquiry, and humble prayer necessary to find the truth. ¶

But in large measure, we make exactly the same mistakes. When we absent ourselves from sacrament meeting, we don't really understand what we are doing. When we fail to pay our tithing or when we are married "until death do us part," we know not what we do. It is our ignorance as well as our sins that stands between us and our salvation. If the Jews suffered so great a penalty for their sins committed largely in ignorance, what about us? We have all of the information that the Jews had, but in addition we have the judgment of time shining upon the life of Christ. We have the testimony of the apostles bearing witness to his divinity and sealing their testimony with their blood. But in addition, a great flood of new knowledge has come into the world. In the early spring of 1820, God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ reappeared upon the earth to re-establish among men a belief in God. Besides this, we have been given three great volumes of new scripture outlining and explaining in every detail the simple principles of the gospel. If we lose our way, it will be by our own choice and not because we can't know the truth, except, if like the Jews, we fail to be sufficiently thoughtful and diligent, thereby exposing ourselves to the risk of "ignorantly" rejecting our personal Savior and with him our chances for eternal exaltation. ¶

The second alternative of this question, "What shall I do with Jesus?" is that we may try to be neutral, and believe neither one thing nor the other. That is impossible, for either God is, or God is not. There is no middle ground. It is all or nothing. We either accept him by design or we reject him by default. For when we fail to decide a question one way, we automatically decide it the other way. That is, when we fail to decide to get on the train, we automatically decide to stay off the train. Yet there is a group of people who insist on trying to maintain this damaging neutrality. It isn't merely that they don't believe; their skepticism goes deeper. They don't give it a thought one way or the other. There is one thing more serious than merely to "not believe," and that is to "not care." It has been said that there is one folly greater than that of the fool who says in his heart there is no God, and that is the folly of him who says he doesn't know whether there is a God or not. Thereby he is guilty of unbelief rather than disbelief, and unbelief is usually a confession that one has not made sufficient honest inquiry necessary to find the truth. ¶

If a man should err in believing the gospel of Jesus Christ to be true, he could not possibly be the loser by the mistake. But how irreparable is his loss who should err in supposing the revelations of God to be false. There are many people who try to dispose of this question, "What shall I do with Jesus?" by saying that he was merely a great teacher. This is certainly a poor substitute for knowing the truth. It is also pretty dangerous, for as has been said: ¶

Suppose there is a Christ, but that I should be Christless; / Suppose there is a cleansing, but that I should remain unclean; / Suppose there is a Heavenly Father's love, but that I should remain an alien; / Suppose there is a heaven, but that I should be cast down to hell. ¶

It has been said that "Man's greatest unkindness to man is not to hate him but to be indifferent to him." "He who is indifferent to his friend is unkind to his friend. But he who is indifferent to his Savior is unmerciful unto himself." ¶

Our third alternative to this question of "What shall I do with Jesus?" is that we may accept him. We may accept him eagerly and enthusiastically. We may fill our minds with his word, and consecrate our lives to his service. We have his own counsel on this question. In our own day he has said, "O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day." (D&C 4:2.) ¶

Each of us has been complimented by being reserved to live upon the earth in this greatest of all dispensations. We live when a great flood tide of wonders and knowledge and accomplishment has been released in the world. Our forefathers lived on a flat, stationary earth and plowed their ground with wooden sticks. But we live on an earth of power steering and jet propulsion. Noah preached the gospel for many years and failed to bring conversion to a single person outside his own family. Even in the dispensation of Jesus, less than one hundred years had passed before the apostles had all been put to death and the world was well on its way into darkness of complete apostasy. But we live in a time when "the field is white already to harvest." We have examples of stake missionaries who have brought conversion into the lives of five or ten or twenty human souls in a single year, and as Samuel Walter Foss cried, "Give me men to match my mountains," so the Church is crying for men to match the great opportunities of the present day. ¶

In 1932 Walter Pitkin wrote a book entitled Life Begins at Forty. But life begins every morning. Life begins when we begin, and our real progress begins when we accept God's answer to that greatest question of our lives, "What shall we do with Jesus?" May our Heavenly Father inspire us to get the right answer before it is too late, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶