Greatest of All Gifts

This Christmas, I am most grateful for the transcendent gift of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

"This little child, born in a stable and cradled in a manger, was a gift from our loving Heavenly Father. He was the promised Redeemer of the world, the Savior of mankind, the Son of the living God. He was with His Father before He came to earth in mortality, the Creator of the earth upon which we stand.

"The...Apostle John gives us a sense of the greatness of this child in the courts on high, from which He came: ‘Without him was not any thing made that was made.’ Yet He came to earth in humble circumstances.

“He worked as a boy and a youth in the carpenter’s shop of Joseph in Nazareth. In His mortal ministry He walked the dusty roads of Palestine, healed the sick, raised the dead, taught His gospel to people who rejected Him, gave His life on Calvary’s hill, and rose on the third day in what began the Resurrection to break the bands of death for us all and so became “the firstfruits of them that slept.”

“Above all, the Savior whose birth we remember this season of the year paid the price of all of our sins. Again the prophet Isaiah, long before our Lord’s birth, saw the gift beyond price of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

[Isaiah] ...gave us this description of what the Savior did for us:

‘Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

‘But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”

(Henry B. Eyring, “The Gift of a Savior,” December 5, 2010)