I have long loved Christmas and the opportunity to celebrate the birth of Christ. But this year Christmas has been even more meaningful for me because I now understand that God himself came down to redeem a fallen world in a pure and gratuitous act of love.
As a Latter-day Saint I gloried in the birth of a Savior, but there were some key differences.
In Latter-day Saint thought, Jesus had to be born into the world at some point. He had to do this not just for our sake, but for his own sake. While the suffering he endured was not inevitable, he still needed to enter into the mortal world at some point. He had to progress “from grace to grace” and eventually “receive[] a fulness.” D&C 93:13. Jesus “attained eternal perfection following his resurrection” Russell M. Nelson, Perfection Pending, Oct. 1995 Gen. Conf. There “were some things lacking which he did not receive until after his resurrection” Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation (1954), 1:33.
Furthermore, in Latter-day Saint thought, Christ and the Father are also not just separate persons, but separate Gods. Jesus is our brother not the eternal God. That changes and diminishes the incarnation. Understanding that the Son was eternally in the Bossom of the Father and truly God from all eternity makes the mystery and awe of the birth of Christ so much greater.
I am grateful to understand now how incredible it is that the perfect God who had no need to progress or improve himself in any way voluntarily condescended to enter into our messy story out of pure love.
I heard a quote from Augustine of Hippo that best captured my sentiments this Christmastime.
“The Maker of man became Man
that He, Ruler of the stars, might be nourished at the breast;
that He, the Bread, might be hungry;
that He, the Fountain, might thirst;
that He, the Light, might sleep;
that He, the Way, might be wearied by the journey;
that He, the Truth, might be accused by false witnesses;
that He, the Judge of the living and the dead, might be brought to trial by a mortal judge;
that He, Justice, might be condemned by the unjust;
that He, Discipline, might be scourged with whips;
that He, the Grape, might be crowned with thorns;
that He, the Foundation, might be suspended upon a cross;
that Courage might be weakened;
that Security might be wounded;
that Life might die.
To endure these and similar indignities for us, to free us, unworthy creatures, He who ‘existed as the Son of God before all ages, without a beginning, deigned to become the Son of Man in these recent years.
He did this although He who submitted to such great evils for our sake had done no evil and although we, who were the recipients of so much good at His hands, had done nothing to merit these benefits.”
All praise and glory and honor be to Christ “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” (Phil 2:6-7) (NIV).