Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Forbidden fruit

It pleased God that trials of both men and angels should meet in Christ, i.e. that he should be tried with those temptations which were the trial of their obedience, by which men and the angels that fell were overthrown. 

He was subject to a trial like that which was the temptation of man, and peculiar to him, viz. the importunate desires and inclinations of animal nature. These he was tempted by in the wilderness, when [he] was hungry after his forty days' fast in the wilderness, and the devil tempted him to take an unlawful course to gratify that appetite. 

But above all was he subject to an exceeding great trial from the inclinations of his animal nature,

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and of the whole human nature, which so exceedingly dreaded and shrunk at those torments that it was to undergo, and solicited to be delivered from the bitterness of that cup that was given into Christ's hands to drink, with immensely greater importunity than ever the human nature solicited to taste the sweetness of the forbidden fruit, and which bitterness was represented to Christ in a far more lively manner than the sweetness of the forbidden fruit was set forth to our first parents by Satan, or their own imaginations. 

So also was Christ's virtue tried with that kind of trial that was the temptation of the angels, which was the knowledge of their dignity, for Christ was in immensely higher dignity than they. 

But Christ overcame in both these kinds of trial, that in all things he might have the preeminence, and that he might be honorable in the eyes of men and angels, over both which God had appointed him to be the head. 

Yea, not only was Christ subject to all those kinds of trials that creatures have had while innocent, but also a kind of trials that no other innocent person but he ever was subject to, and the greatest kind that guilty creatures are ever subject to, viz. suffering, and far more extreme sufferings than ever fallen creature that was in a state of trial was subject to; and he conquered in this trial and triumphed over all these temptations, so glorious in all respects was his virtue and obedience.

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"Forbidden fruit" is a nonbiblical Book of Mormon term (used 6 times). 

Compare:

15 And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.

(2 Nephi 2:15)

22 Now Alma said unto him: This is the thing which I was about to explain. Now we see that Adam did fall by the partaking of the forbidden fruit, according to the word of God; and thus we see, that by his fall, all mankind became a lost and fallen people.
(Alma 12:22)



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