An Early Resurrection

by Adam S. Miller

If we confess that God is all powerful, then traditional ideas about his omnipotence don’t go nearly far enough. They limit that power. They allow for God to have only one kind of power, the power to act. But they deny him what Enoch’s vision reveals: that God also possesses the power to be acted upon. Christ, empowered by love, is capable of suffering. He is capable of loss. He is capable of sorrow. He can mourn. The world thinks that this kind of power is just weakness, but they’re wrong. “The world, because of their iniquity, shall judge him to be a thing of naught; wherefore they scourge him, and he suffereth it; and they smite him, and he suffereth it. Yea, they spit upon him, and he suffereth it, because of his loving kindness and his long-suffering towards the children of men” (1 Nephi 19:9). This power to be acted upon by life and time and choice—this power to “long-suffer”—is another name for Christ’s power to care.