“And Ye Shall Offer for a Sacrifice Unto Me a Broken Heart and a Contrite Spirit”

Brant Gardner

The Psalmist sang:

Psalms 51:17

17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

This is the message, but with a new emphasis. The sacrifice of the heart was always required of Israel, but they had the additional manifestation of the sacrifice of animals. The Lord declares that the emphasis is now on this internal sacrifice. The Lord God will continue to require the most important of the sacrifices that had been previously required. It was the continual need for redemptive sacrifice of animal blood that had been fulfilled (again see Hebrew 9,10).

The plea of the Lord is for repentance and conversion. The promise is access to an eternal salvation made possible through the infinite sacrifice of the Lord. The blessing is the presence of the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost. In the Book of Mormon this phrase denotes the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Multidimensional Commentary on the Book of Mormon

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