It just so happened that Christmas came just as I have been contemplating one of my favorite passages in the Book of Mormon, found in Ether 4:13-15.
One of our family traditions is to make sure there is an unwrapped gift from Santa near the tree for each of the little children to find on Christmas morning. All of the other gifts are wrapped and under the tree.
This tradition got me thinking about a gift from the Atonement of Jesus Christ that comes to each of us unwrapped, so to speak, in the form of a guaranteed victory over physical death. Nothing is required from us to access this gift.
On the other hand, there is another gift -- a wrapped gift -- sitting under the tree for each of us. The wrapped gift is eternal life -- living forever with God in a state of never-ending happiness and eternal increase. Unlike the promise of resurrection to a kingdom of glory, this gift must be unwrapped by us to take effect in our lives. We unwrap this gift through covenant-making and covenant-keeping. The wrapping paper symbolizes unbelief due to the material world itself, which separates us from the glory of God during mortality.
This metaphor fits very nicely into the words of Christ:
13 Come unto me, O ye Gentiles, and I will show unto you the greater things, the knowledge which is hid up because of unbelief.
14 Come unto me, O ye house of Israel, and it shall be made manifest unto you how great things the Father hath laid up for you, from the foundation of the world; and it hath not come unto you, because of unbelief.
15 Behold, when ye shall rend that veil of unbelief which doth cause you to remain in your awful state of wickedness, and hardness of heart, and blindness of mind, then shall the great and marvelous things which have been hid up from the foundation of the world from you—yea, when ye shall call upon the Father in my name, with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, then shall ye know that the Father hath remembered the covenant which he made unto your fathers, O house of Israel. (Ether 4)
At the conclusion of the Book of Mormon, Moroni directly connects "lay[ing] hold upon every good gift" with making and keeping covenants in order to access Christ's grace and become "holy, without spot":
30 And again I would exhort you that ye would come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift, and touch not the evil gift, nor the unclean thing.
31 And awake, and arise from the dust, O Jerusalem; yea, and put on thy beautiful garments, O daughter of Zion; and strengthen thy stakes and enlarge thy borders forever, that thou mayest no more be confounded, that the covenants of the Eternal Father which he hath made unto thee, O house of Israel, may be fulfilled.
32 Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.
33 And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot. (Moroni 10)
