The Condescension of God

Over at LDS Freedom Forum, there is a thread entitled, "I Have Seen the Savior".

http://www.ldsfreedomforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31742

I have found parts of that thread extremely beautiful and enlightening.

Someone asked, "What does the Condescension of God mean?"

I responded:

The condescension of God took place when Christ Jehovah condescended to leave His Heavenly throne as a God and come down here to mortality and earth as Jesus to suffer with us, help us, be with us, and be as if He were one of us. He came down here to see things and experience things from our point of view. Before He left Heaven, He already knew that He would win by failing. He would win by being crucified and experiencing death, just like the rest of us will experience failure and death in some form or another before the end of our lives. As mortal beings, we each have a battle looming ahead of us that we each are destined to fail or lose. Mortals by definition are destined to die, and there's nothing we can do about it. Death is the ultimate failure. Now Jesus Christ knows what it is like to have to face and suffer death. That's the condescension of God.

The bitter cup is hell. The bitter cup is spiritual death. And, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus Christ drank a whole gallon of hell on our behalf, so that we wouldn't have to, so long as we are willing to accept Him on faith and repent of our sins. Drinking the bitter cup on our behalf, that is the condescension of God! Christ is trying to win us over to His side by His willingness to suffer and die on our behalf. God is the one making the ultimate sacrifice, not us. That's what makes Him the one true God, because He put His life and His spirituality on the line for our sake.