Alma 7:11‑12: He Took More Than Your Sins

Ask most members what the Atonement covers and they will say sin. That answer is true and it is incomplete, and the incompleteness has left a great many faithful people carrying things they were never asked to carry. Alma is more specific than we usually are. He lists what the Savior would take upon Him — and sin is not the first thing on the list.

What Alma Actually Says

Alma is describing what the Savior would do, decades before He did it. “And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.”

Then the next verse: “And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.”

Count the categories: pains, afflictions, temptations, sicknesses, death, infirmities. Sin is addressed elsewhere in Alma’s sermon. Here he is deliberately cataloguing everything else.

Why That Distinction Matters So Much

If the Atonement covers only sin, then it has nothing to say to a person who was sinned against.

Think about what that means practically. A woman who was manipulated at nineteen. A man whose father was cruel. A young person who was mistreated by someone who should have protected them. Under a sin-only reading, the Atonement offers them nothing directly — it is a resource for the offender, not the injured.

I have watched people live inside that assumption for decades. They know Christ can forgive what they did. They have no category for what was done to them, so they simply carry it. And because it is not sin, they cannot repent of it, which means there is no established path to putting it down.

Alma closes that gap. Pains. Afflictions. Infirmities. He took those too.

Not Symbolically — Literally

Notice the phrase Alma repeats: according to the flesh. He uses it twice.

This is not a statement about sympathy. Sympathy is understanding from a distance. Alma is describing something else — that the Savior experienced these things in a body, in time, in the specific rather than the abstract, so that His capacity to help would be experiential rather than theoretical.

The word he uses for that help is succor. It is an old word and worth knowing. It means to run to the aid of someone. It carries urgency. It is not a formal offer left on the table; it is movement toward you.

“He took upon Him not only sins, but pains. Pains are not always the result of our choices. Sometimes they are the result of someone else’s. He took those too.”

The Objection: But I Was Not the One Who Did Wrong

People raise this, and it is a fair objection. If I did not sin, why is there something for me to give up?

Because the burden is real whether or not it is deserved. Forgiveness is not a verdict on the other person; it is a transfer of ownership. When you refuse to release what was done to you, you are attempting to collect on a debt that has already been paid — and the collector is the one who is poisoned by the attempt.

This is not a request that you excuse anything. It is not a request that you pretend it did not happen or that it did not matter. Christ does not minimize pain. He heals it. Both require honesty, and honesty means saying plainly that it was wrong.

What changes is who carries it going forward.

What This Looked Like in My Office

A young woman came into my office once wearing black — black hair, dark glasses, black dress. It was not fashion. It was armor.

Some weeks later she left a spiral notebook on my desk. One hundred thirty-six items, numbered, beginning when she was eight years old. I read it and wept. These were not disappointments. They were wounds, betrayals, manipulations — most of them things done to her.

We went one at a time. Some sessions were silence. Some were tears. We did not rush, and we did not skip. She surrendered them one by one, and every one of them was covered by the list Alma gives.

Alma 7:11–12 became real in that room. Not as a doctrine she agreed with. As a transaction that actually occurred.

How to Use This Verse

Reading a verse differently does not by itself unwind anything. Here is the concrete step.

Write down what you are carrying that is not sin. Not the things you did — the things that happened. Be specific enough that reading it back produces the feeling. Vague entries release vaguely.

Then, item by item, name which of Alma’s categories it belongs to. Pain. Affliction. Infirmity. And then give it away deliberately, out loud and in writing. The five surrenders are the mechanism; The Rubber Band Ball walks through the whole process with examples.

You do not need to have caused something to be allowed to put it down. That is the whole point of the list.

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