I assumed for years that hosanna and hallelujah both meant essentially the same thing—"praise God" or something close to that. That is what hallelujah means, but the meaning of hosanna surprised me.
Imagine you are lost in the wilderness, and you hear a helicopter coming toward you. You take off your white t-shirt, and begin to wave it frantically, and begin to scream. What do you scream? "Here I am—save me!" That is the sense behind the word hosanna: "[Here we are,] rescue us."
When Jesus entered Jerusalem the week He was crucified, the celebrating crowd grabbed palm branches and waved them, shouting "Hosanna!" Here we are. Rescue us. Get us out of this mess. We use the word "Savior" to refer to Jesus Christ so often that its meaning has become dilapidated in our minds. It means "Rescuer." It is more than a title; it is a verb turned into a description of Jesus' role in our salvation. He does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
Are His commandments important to Him? I mean, is it important to Him that we keep His commandments? Even a cursory leafing through the Gospels will reveal an avalanche of directions of how to behave, to act, what to do, and even how to feel and think. If the point of Jesus' arrival was to relieve us of the burden of rules, why did He spend His ministry dispensing rule after rule after rule? Some of them are difficult to keep; others are impossible to keep, at least without divine assistance. And I believe that assistance is part of salvation that He offers. We are all familiar with the concept of being excused for something we have done that is wrong. But there are other things Jesus provides for us besides forgiveness.
Grace is often thought of as the forgiveness I have mentioned above. It may be, but it is something far more three-dimensional. Grace is the enabling, strengthening power of Christ, given to us mortals so that we can do things beyond our normal capacity. Peter walking on the water is a good example of grace. Being enabled by God to forgive someone who has hurt you tremendously is grace. Being strengthened by the Lord to carry any burden beyond your own ability is grace. I take the examples of grace in my own life as proof that yes, God DOES care about what we do, about whether we keep the commandments or not.
In addition to grace, God also grants another miracle—sanctification. Grace might include receiving strength to resist some temptation, but sanctification implies the removal of the temptation from your heart. Imagine a smoker waking up one morning to find that she no longer craved tobacco. Sanctification is like suddenly craving broccoli and feeling apathetic about chocolate cake. And no amount of effort on our part can secure this "mighty change of heart" (Mosiah 5:2). The effort we exert to experience this change is to overcome our pride, and submit our whole selves to God. When we genuinely feel that we belong to Him, when we acknowledge our dependence on Him, when we toss away the weapons of our rebellion and trust that He will catch us as we fall into His arms, THEN we are displaying the kind of humility necessary to enjoy sanctification at His hands. In John 3 this is called being "born of the Spirit."
The real heavy lifting, then, is faith, trust, and humility. Getting our pride out of the way so God can change us from the inside. Once this change has taken place, good desires displace bad ones, and we naturally do what is good and right. And the enabling power of grace makes us able to perform miracles if need be. This is my view of what Jesus was teaching and talking about in the New Testament. He did not come to release everyone from work—rather, He came to enable everyone to do good works, to change their hearts so that such behavior was desirable instead of a chore. "I am able to make you holy," Jesus tells Joseph Smith in D&C 60:7.
Yes, there are about eleven scriptures that say "sanctify yourselves," but I do not believe they mean that the power to change our hearts is in us. I think of it as an instruction to get a tan. Grab your beach towel, stereo, sunscreen lotion, and head up on the roof, lie down, and get a tan. Oh, wait, it won't work until the sun comes up. Similarly, our attempts to sanctify ourselves depend on the presence of Jesus in order to succeed. We do not tan ourselves; we expose ourselves to a source of energy that causes the desired effect. Repentance does not do much good unless there is a Savior to validate it.
Realizing and admitting we need help is probably the first step in receiving all the blessings I have been describing, and more.
The general view of heaven is that it is the environment that can make anyone happy, like Disneyland. When outside, you are not as happy, and when inside, you are happy. Heaven is different than Disneyland in that respect. You must be of the same quality or essence as everything else there, otherwise it will not be a pleasant experience to be there. "Behold, I say unto you that ye would be more miserable to dwell with a holy and just God, under a consciousness of your filthiness before him, than ye would to dwell with the damned souls in hell" (Morm. 9:4). In the story of the three little pigs, each built houses of different qualities of materials—brick, sticks, and straw. To enter heaven AND be comfortable there, we must be made of the same quality of people that God is. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3:2-3). This is impossible without His help, but possible with it, and essential. If we were not like Him, we would feel ashamed to be in heaven: "For our words will condemn us, yea, all our works will condemn us; we shall not be found spotless; and our thoughts will also condemn us; and in this awful state we shall not dare to look up to our God; and we would fain be glad if we could command the rocks and the mountains to fall upon us to hide us from his presence" (Alma 12:14).
Repentance includes more than a change of behavior; it also entails this mighty change of heart. Those who have experienced it are filled with the characteristics of Christ (if in their beginning stages).
Many talk about being saved, but saved from what? Not just the perils of justice and death, but the perils of our own monstrous nature, our bad desires. Jesus can resurrect us from the grave, and stave off justice without our cooperation. But since God respects free will, He will not overstep the threshold of our heart and mind without permission. That permission takes the form of our submission and humility before Him. That is part of what hosanna means, in my opinion—save us from ourselves, from our corrupt nature.
