PROVO, Utah — With the onset of the Christmas season, President D. Todd Christofferson, second counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, bore witness “that Jesus was born of Mary, that He lived on earth, that He now lives, the God of our redemption.”
Less than 24 hours after Brigham Young University launched its holiday celebrations with its first Christmas tree lighting ceremony, close to 12,000 students, faculty and staff filled the Marriott Center to hear President Christofferson testify of “the condescension of God” in coming to earth as a helpless baby.
President Christofferson’s address, delivered on a gray winter morning on Tuesday, Dec. 2, came less than two months after his call to the First Presidency.
He and his wife, Sister Kathy Christofferson, who accompanied him to BYU, are both alumni. An audible “Ahh” was heard from the crowd as a photo of the two of them in their BYU graduation caps and gowns was projected over the screens. President Christofferson expressed his love for the university, its president and its students. “There is real momentum happening on this campus, and I hope you can feel it,” he told attendees of Tuesday’s devotional.
In his remarks, President Christofferson invited listeners to “reflect on the mortal life and mission of Jesus Christ, His condescension to save you. I invite you to think of your own condescension, its purpose and how you too, having descended into a fallen world, may with ‘good cheer’ rise above and overcome the world with Christ. I plead with you to ‘take up [your] cross daily, and follow [Jesus]’ (Luke 9:23) faithfully, to the end.”
The Savior’s condescension
The world celebrates a birth that happened more than 2,000 years ago “because it was the beginning of a life and mission that hold ultimate and eternal significance for all of us,” said President Christofferson. “This birth manifested the supreme love of God for all His children, a love that the Book of Mormon calls ‘the most joyous to the soul’ (1 Nephi 11:23).”
Centuries before they happened, the prophet Nephi was given a vision of the Savior’s birth, ministry, death and Resurrection. Nephi was uncertain, however, of the meaning and significance of the term “the condescension of God.” To explain, the angel showed him the young virgin who would become “the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh,” and a scene of her bearing the Christ child in her arms (see 1 Nephi 11:18-20).
“Condescension means to descend voluntarily from a higher rank or dignity to a lower level or status,” President Christofferson explained. “The great Jehovah of the Old Testament, the premortal Jesus Christ, voluntarily condescended to leave His divine throne above to live in a mortal state on the very earth that, under the direction of the Father, He had created.”
It is almost impossible to grasp the magnitude of the Savior’s condescension, President Christofferson said. “Imagine a divine being with intelligence and power sufficient to create this earth, a planet capable of sustaining billions of our Father’s children and many other creatures over many thousands of years. Now He lays aside His glory and powers and descends to His creation, His footstool, as a helpless babe, born in a humble stable, with a manger used for feeding animals as His cradle. He experiences what all of us experience: growing over time in consciousness and capacity, developing from infancy to childhood to youth to adulthood.”
In this state of condescension, Jesus experiences hunger and deprivation, fatigue and pain, persecution and rejection. In the end, He is “led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death” (Mosiah 15:7).
Why this incomprehensible condescension? Could not Jesus have performed His infinite Atonement without also having to experience mortality from birth to adulthood?
“I cannot say,” said President Christofferson, “but surely it is by divine design that the Son of God lived a life and performed a ministry that not merely tell us but show us the way of discipleship, the way to God. … He not only taught but demonstrated what it means to walk the covenant path.”
There is nothing God’s children experience that the Savior does not comprehend and that He does not have power to address and redress, President Christofferson taught. “He knows; He understands; His love is perfect.”
Jesus’ condescension — His willingness to live in this fallen world and show the meaning of His gospel in day-to-day life — is truly an act of genuine love. “We should study His life and model His discipleship,” President Christofferson said. “His condescension, culminating in His Atonement, gives hope, direction and purpose to our lives.”
‘Your personal condescension’
“In a sense, you too are experiencing a personal condescension of your own,” President Christofferson noted.
Prior to birth, individuals lived in a higher state — in the presence of God, their Heavenly Father. “His plan to help you achieve your highest and happiest destiny entailed your voluntary condescension or descent from that ‘first estate’ to a lower, ‘second estate’ (Abraham 3:26),” President Christofferson explained. “Your birth was a spiritual death, removing you from the presence of God. Now, just as Jesus, you are passing through a mortal experience in a fallen world.”
Jesus condescended to experience temptation and pain and overcome sin. He condescended to learn to exercise agency by faith and submit to the will of the Father. Jesus condescended to serve and minister to His brothers and sisters.
“So it is for you,” President Christofferson said, adding: “Above all, the Savior voluntarily condescended to leave His throne on high to rescue mankind from sin and death. You are here, first, to apply His divine gift of repentance in your life and by His grace overcome sin and death, and second, to bring others to Christ to receive this same gift of repentance and life eternal.”
For Jesus Christ’s condescension to achieve its full purpose, He had to endure to the end. “It was supremely difficult for Him, even the great Jehovah, to complete the unimaginably intense suffering and death required to atone for our sins and overcome both spiritual and physical death,” President Christofferson taught.
However, in the end, the submissive Savior declared, “Not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42), President Christofferson noted. “Jesus drank that excruciatingly bitter cup to the last drop — to the end.”
For the condescension of God’s children in mortality to achieve its full purpose, they must also endure to the end. “What is the peculiar significance of enduring to the end? Its significance lies in the need not simply to believe in Christ but to develop the character of Christ if we are to live with Him and the Father eternally. It is about what we are becoming,” President Christofferson explained.
For those who have received the gospel of Jesus Christ in this mortal estate and have entered upon His covenant path, the Final Judgment will measure what they have become and, even more importantly, what they have shown they can yet become, he taught.
“Clearly, perfection is not required for salvation,” said President Christofferson. “What matters is that we enter on the covenant path and remain on the covenant path to the end, and that if we deviated from that path at any point, that we returned to it — that we were faithful to the end and at the end.”
But just like Jesus, “we can count on the Father’s help, His angels and His Holy Spirit,” President Christofferson assured. “And in addition, we have the infinite grace of Christ to forgive and sanctify us from sin.”
President Christofferson told listeners: “We are fully justified in joyously celebrating the birth of Jesus. It is this tender beginning that eventually led to His Atonement, which, in turn, leads to the new beginnings in our lives and faithfulness to the end of our lives.”
Christ’s gift of repentance allows all to begin anew and continue forward each day, to progress from grace to grace, to confidently sacrifice the lesser for the greater, to overcome and with Him gain immortality and eternal life.
“As long as we are serious about it, there is no quota, no limit on the number of times we can repent, seek forgiveness and move forward on His path,” President Christofferson assured.
