eph 01v06 Accepted In The Beloved

"...ACCEPTED IN THE BELOVED."

Ephesians 1:6

The believer's acceptance before God is in Christ and only in Christ. God never has accepted, and he never will accept, any man, or anything done by any man, except in Christ and upon the merits of his righteousness and shed blood. And all who believe in Christ always have been, and always shall be, accepted in Christ, our Substitute. We were accepted in Christ in eternity, before the world was, before we were created, before we had done any good or evil, before we fell in our father Adam. Our acceptance before God in Christ is AN ETERNAL ACCEPTANCE. Though we sinned in Adam, though we came forth from our mothers' wombs speaking lies, though we stubbornly rebelled against the Lord our God for many, many years, we were still "accepted in the Beloved". Our acceptance with God in Christ is AN IMMUTABLE ACCEPTANCE. Since we first came to Christ in faith and repentance, our lives have been a constant struggle with sin. Everything that we are and everything that we do is marred by sin. But still God declares that we are "accepted in the Beloved". Our acceptance before God in Christ is AN ABSOLUTE, PERFECT, AND UNCONDITIONAL ACCEPTANCE. I wish that every child of God could enter into the sweetness, the comfort, and the joy of what I am saying. Our acceptance before God is altogether in Christ. It is altogether a matter of pure, free, sovereign grace. Therefore it never changes. Our acceptance with God is in no way whatsoever dependent upon what we do. We are not more pleasing and acceptable to God when we do good; and we are not less pleasing and acceptable to God when we do evil. OUR ACCEPTANCE IS IN CHRIST! It depends not upon what we do, but upon what he has done.

I know that the legalist, the self-righteous religionist will begin to see red, when he reads what I have said. He will say, "That's antinomianism; it will give men a license to sin!" Such men do what they do, because they are afraid not to. But the children of God will find this matter of our acceptance in Christ a source of great comfort, a cause for great joy, and a motive to love Christ and seek his glory. If God's children are comforted, I rejoice.