Luke 2
Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught the following about the circumstances of the Savior’s birth:
“We find it remarkable that the very Son of God, the great Jehovah of old, should be born into this mortal world in the humblest of circumstances. An inn would have been lowly enough, but it was not even an inn. Rather it was a stable, and the babe was laid on the hay of a manger where common animals fed. Even so, the greater condescension is that Jesus should have submitted to mortality at all, even if He were to be born in the best and most elegant of circumstances. With Paul, we marvel at ‘God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh’ [Romans 8:3]--that He should have become a baby; that He should have been a child and then a man, suffering ‘temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue’ [Mosiah 3:7] and even death.
“How is it that He who ruled on high in the heavens, the very Creator of the earth, should consent to be born ‘after the manner of the flesh’ (1 Nephi 11:18) and walk upon His footstool (see 1 Nephi 17:39) in poverty, despised and abused and, in the end, be crucified?” (“The Condescension of God and of Man” [First Presidency’s Christmas devotional, Dec. 7, 2014], lds.org/broadcasts).
“We find it remarkable that the very Son of God, the great Jehovah of old, should be born into this mortal world in the humblest of circumstances. An inn would have been lowly enough, but it was not even an inn. Rather it was a stable, and the babe was laid on the hay of a manger where common animals fed. Even so, the greater condescension is that Jesus should have submitted to mortality at all, even if He were to be born in the best and most elegant of circumstances. With Paul, we marvel at ‘God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh’ [Romans 8:3]--that He should have become a baby; that He should have been a child and then a man, suffering ‘temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue’ [Mosiah 3:7] and even death.
“How is it that He who ruled on high in the heavens, the very Creator of the earth, should consent to be born ‘after the manner of the flesh’ (1 Nephi 11:18) and walk upon His footstool (see 1 Nephi 17:39) in poverty, despised and abused and, in the end, be crucified?” (“The Condescension of God and of Man” [First Presidency’s Christmas devotional, Dec. 7, 2014], lds.org/broadcasts).
