“Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

Very relevant.

My son is begging me for a Clone Ship for Christmas. I tell him he has to be a good boy, and maybe Santa will bring him one. If he’s good, and I give him the gift, is it any less of a gift?

(Of course, this breaks down because I’ll probably buy it him whether he’s “good” or not–so I can play with it.)

And, if you keep my commandments and endure to the end you shall have eternal life, which gift is the greatest of all the gifts of God.

I think that the Lord has said that it’s a gift, and we should get over thinking that we’ve done anything to deserve it.

Doctrine and Covenants 6:13: If thou wilt do good, yea, and hold out faithful to the end, thou shalt be saved in the kingdom of God, which is the greatest of all the gifts of God; for there is no gift greater than the gift of salvation.

Romans 6:23: For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Jesus our Lord.

Ephesians 2:8-9: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Let me define salvation for this discussion as “forgiveness of our sins without having to pay for them ourselves” (or TTTF #2). Our obedience and repentance are necessary conditions for salvation but not sufficient. Only the atonement makes our works of any consequence. Thus, I would not characterize salvation per se as a gift, but rather the atonement is the gift that makes salvation possible. When people talk of salvation as a gift, they are really talking about the atonement.

In that same vein, I would not characterize exaltation per se as a gift either. The atonement still counts as a gift here, because we cannot begin to be exalted unless we have been saved. But once we have been saved is their yet another gift that enables us to be exalted? Or can we earn it from that point on?
My working theory is that the personal reign of the Savior on earth during the millenium is the gift that will enable us to be exalted. Without it, I suspect that our efforts to build Zion and achieve exaltation would come to naught.

Seems to me we’ve struggled so much to avoid the concept of grace in the church, that we tend to make the gifts of God all conditional and “exalt” our capacity for saving ourselves, even though (as other commenters have noted) we ultimately rely on the grace of God exactly as much as any born-again evangelical.

There’s a part of me that finds the more humanistic side of Mormon thought appealing. The idea that my exaltation is at least partly under my control is a beautiful Mormon idea at some level. Maybe it is also a somewhat heretical idea, but it is beautiful to me nonetheless.

…but to your thesis, I we take what we are as eternal, what could be greater than exaltation?