Pure love led Christ to descend the courts of glory

"Knowest thou the condescension of God?" (1 Nephi 11:16) We miss the significance of the question posed to Nephi if we think that "to condescend" means to patronize, or to act in a smugly superior way.

As documented in Noah Webster's great 1828 American dictionary, Joseph Smith's contemporaries understood "condescension" to mean "Voluntary descent from rank, dignity or just claims; relinquishment of strict right; submission to inferiors in granting requests or performing acts which strict justice does not require."

This perfectly captures the remarkable central claim of Christianity, that God himself — moved by love for his very often unlovely and ungrateful creatures — chose to live among mortals in hopes of redeeming us by his grace. "Mild he lays his glory by," sings the Christmas carol, in a line far too easily passed over.

Nephi's prophetic successors understood this before Christ's birth:

"For behold," declared King Benjamin in roughly 124 B.C., "the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst men, working mighty miracles, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of diseases.

"And he shall cast out devils, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of the children of men.

"And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people."

Why? Because, remarkably, he loves us.

"And lo, he cometh unto his own, that salvation might come unto the children of men even through faith on his name; and even after all this they shall consider him a man, and say that he hath a devil, and shall scourge him, and shall crucify him" (Mosiah 3:5-7, 9).

"Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person," wrote the apostle Paul, "though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:7-8, NIV). "Herein is love," says 1 John 4:10, "not that we loved God, but that he loved us."