February 2, 2018

I AM PERSUADED THAT HE IS ABLE

TO MAKE ME ACCEPTED

Ephesians 1:6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

Everyone wants to be accepted. It starts very young. From a child’s first day of school, we are born with the need to fit in. Teenagers will sometimes participate in various activities, that they know are wrong, just to be accepted by peer groups. Single young ladies and young men will often go to extremes to try to be accepted by some love interest for whom they have feelings. Even we adults are affected more than we think, in our lives, by the need to be accepted at church, or work, or some social group. Even preachers like myself can feel pressured to conform to various groups to be accepted by other preachers. You get the point. So the statements in this verse bring a few questions:

1) “Who or what are the beloved?”
If this is the group that we are accepted in, then who or what is it. As you would probably assume, the beloved are those that have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. ( II Thessalonians 2:13 But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:) If there is any group that you and I should want to be part of and accepted in, it is this one.

2) “What does it mean to be accepted?”
The Greek word here means to indue with special honor: make accepted, be highly favoured. It means we now have an honored position, although we deserved no such position. We belong, although we should not belong. We are loved, we have special honor, and we have been given a new family, new future, and a new Father. That is what it means.

3) “How did Christ make me accepted?”
Christ was accepted of God the Father, after He died and rose again. We were not accepted because we are sinners and have come short of God’s glory. So when we put our faith in Christ, we are now “in Christ”. That means we are accepted in Christ, and because Christ is accepted by God the Father, we are now accepted into the love of God, the family of God, and in the “beloved”.

4) “Why would Jesus make us accepted?”
The answer to this question is given in the first phrase of the verse. Christ did this to the praise of the glory of His grace. IT IS ALWAYS BY HIS GRACE, TO HIS PRAISE, AND FOR HIS GLORY. Our being accepted in the beloved is not about us, it is all about Him. We were not accepted based on anything that we have done, but it is based totally on what His grace has done for us.

Let me remind you today that He, and He only, is able to make us accepted!