Sermon #1221
Title: “Accepted in the Beloved”
Text: Ephesians 1:6
Reading: Ephesians 1:1-23
Subject: The Union of God’s Elect with Christ
Date: Sunday Morning - February 18, 1996
Tape # S-25
Introduction:
Let’s read Ephesians 1:6 again. The
apostle Paul, writing by divine inspiration, tells us that God almighty has
from all eternity, chosen, predestinated, adopted and blessed us in Christ - “To the praise of the glory of his grace,
wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” The title of my message
is found in the last part of our text - “Accepted
in the Beloved.”
Proposition: With those
words the Holy Spirit reveals and declares to us one of the most comforting and
delightful truths of Holy Scripture, and that is the fact that there is an
everlasting, indissolvable, immutable union between the Lord Jesus Christ and
his people.
Please
notice at the very outset that our acceptance in Christ is spoken of as
something accomplished by the Lord God himself from eternity. It is not
something accomplished by us in time. Because it is something done by God and
done by God from eternity, it cannot in any way be dependent upon us.
·
Ecclesiastes
3:14
Let men hoot and holler all they want
to about man’s part in salvation, man’s will, man’s work, and man’s
contribution, our text declares, “He,” God the Father, “hath
made,” from all eternity, before the foundation of the world, “us,”
you and me, vile, base, hell-bent, hell-deserving sinners by nature, but
chosen, redeemed, and called by his grace, “accepted,” highly favored, honored,
pleasing, and delightful to God himself,
“in the Beloved,” the Lord Jesus
Christ, his dear Son, our Savior.
‘Twixt Jesus and the chosen race
Subsists a bond of sovereign
grace,
That hell, with its infernal
train,
Shall ne’er dissolve nor rend in
vain
Hail! sacred union, firm and
strong,
How great the grace, how sweet
the song,
That worms of earth should ever
be
One with incarnate Deity!
One in the tomb, one when He
rose,
One when He triumphed o’er His
foes,
One when in heaven He took His
seat,
While seraphs sang all hell’s
defeat.
This sacred tie forbids their
fears,
For all He is or has is theirs;
With Him, their Head, they stand
or fall,
Their life, their surety, and
their all.”
John Kent
Give me your careful attention. Listen
closely. May God the Holy Spirit teach these lips to preach, as he taught
David’s hands to war and enable me to minister to your very hearts, as I
expound to you the meaning of these words: “He
hath made us accepted in the beloved.”
Divisions: My
message today has four divisions. Our text talks reveals...
1.
A Beloved
Person,
2.
An Everlasting
Union,
3.
A Glorious
Position, and
4.
A Divine
Operation.
I. A Beloved Person
The first thing I want to talk to
about is a beloved Person, our great Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of
God. He is revealed here as, “The
Beloved.” I cannot imagine a title,
or name more appropriate for my Redeemer. This sweet, golden name is the
one name that suits our Savior in all his relationships with the triune God,
the angels of heaven, and his people in heaven and upon the earth.
A. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
Beloved of the Father’s heart.
·
Matthew 3:17
·
Matthew 17:5
None of us can imagine how dear and
beloved the Son of God is to the Father. Who can enter into the relationships
of the three divine Persons in the eternal Trinity? We cannot imagine the kind
of love the Father has for his Son; but we have abundant evidence of it and
many illustrations of it in the Scriptures.
1.
God the Son
was one with the Father and beloved by him, as our Surety in the counsels of
grace in eternity (Pro. 8:22-31)
2.
In the
covenant of grace, all the blessing of grace were bestowed upon
chosen sinners only
in the Beloved (v. 3; II Tim.
1:9).
3.
When the Lord
God stooped to create all things out of nothing, the Father called to the Son
and said, “Let us make man in our image
and after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26), “For without him was not anything made
that was made” (John 1:1-3).
Everything that God the Father has
done and decreed to be done has been done to glorify the Son, “that in all things he might have the
preeminence” (Col. 1:18). And God the Son lived upon the earth as a man,
died as our Substitute, and lives again as our exalted King and Priest in
heaven that he might glorify the Father.
B. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
Beloved of the blessed Holy Spirit.
It is the office work and good pleasure of God the Holy
Spirit, in all his gracious operations and influences, to glorify the Lord
Jesus Christ.
·
John 16:13-14
I heard Bro.
Todd Nibert say, “Where the Holy Spirit is emphasized the Holy Spirit is
absent.” He was exactly right. The Holy Spirit never draws attention to
himself. He has come to glorify Christ. When he is present, when he is working,
Christ is preached, Christ is worshipped, and Christ is exalted.
C. The Lord
Jesus is the Beloved of all the heavenly angels.
I
am not stretching the Scriptures when I assert that the heavenly angels, those
holy spirits who wait constantly before his throne look upon the Lord Jesus
Christ as the Beloved. It is before his throne that they bow. It is his praise
that they sing. It is his will they wait to perform.
·
Isaiah 6:1-3
D. Without
question, the Lord Jesus Christ is the beloved of all his people.
Saved
sinners everywhere, in heaven above and scattered throughout all the earth,
look upon the Son of God as their Beloved.
·
Song of
Solomon 1:14, 16
·
Song of
Solomon 2:3, 8-10, 16-17
·
Song of
Solomon 5:2, 4, 9-16
·
Song of
Solomon 6:2-3
·
Song of
Solomon 7:10
·
Isaiah 5:1
Never was the term “beloved” so full
of meaning, so well deserved, and yet so incapable of expressing all that is
meant by it, as when it is applied to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our Beloved.
“We love him because he first loved us”
(I John 4:19); but we do truly love him! How our hearts rejoice to look up
to heaven upon the Son of God and call him “Beloved!” The love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. His love for us has kindled in our
hearts a flame of undying love for him that neither life nor death can quench.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Beloved of our souls because he is our Savior.
·
I Corinthians
16:22
·
I Peter 2:7
Blessed is that person who can, with a heart of gratitude,
faith, and love, lift his eyes to heaven and say, “ Christ is my Beloved. I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine!”
Do you know this beloved Person? Do you know the Son of God? Is Jesus Christ
your Beloved? If he is, I want you to see, know, and rejoice in the next thing
revealed in our text...
II. An Everlasting Union
In recent weeks I have spent a good bit of time studying and
meditating upon the believer’s everlasting union with Christ. I cannot think of
a theme more delightful to my soul. Our everlasting union with Christ is the
source and spring of all the blessings and benefits of grace which we enjoy in
this world and hope to enjoy in the world to come. Did you notice, when we read
it, that in the first chapter of Ephesian the Holy Spirit very specifically
states that everything is in Christ?
In the first fourteen verses of the chapter he uses the words “in Christ,” or their equivalent,
fourteen times. He means for us to understand that all the blessings and
benefits of God’s covenant grace are ours only by virtue of our union with
Christ.
Our everlasting union with the Son of
God is the basis of our safety and
security, too. God’s elect are as safe and secure as Christ himself, for we
are “accepted in the beloved.”
Now, let me show you what the
Scriptures clearly teach about this everlasting union. The subject is too big
for me to comprehend it with my peanut brain. Therefore, I know I cannot
expound it. But I can show you that which is obviously revealed. No doctrine is
sound that does not recognize the everlasting union of God’s elect with Christ.
Yet, whenever I even mention this glorious subject, as I often do, I feel that
it is a subject that needs an angel’s tongue to proclaim it. But it is my
privilege and responsibility to preach it. So I will do the best I can.
I
am not talking to you about our manifest union with Christ. That is a blessed theme. When a sinner believes on the
Lord Jesus Christ, he begins to enjoy a personal, manifest union with Christ.
But our union with Christ began long before we believed on him. Our faith in
Christ is not the cause of our union with him, but the manifestation of it (II Tim. 1:9-10). Our subject is not our
manifest union with Christ in time, but our everlasting union with him from
eternity. Our everlasting union with
Christ is a fivefold union. When Paul writes that we are “in the beloved,” he means that we who
now believe, all who have believed, and all who shall believe are in Christ
from everlasting in these five ways.
A. Our everlasting union with Christ is an election union.
We were chosen in him before the
foundation of the world. This election union is the basis of all God’s gracious
operations toward and in his people.
·
Ephesians
1:4-6
Salvation
must begin with someone’s choice. Religion says it begins with your choice.
But the Bible declares that it begins with God’s choice. God’s choice of
sinners unto salvation is what the Bible calls “the election of grace.” (Rom. 11:5). Election is the basis and
first part of God’s salvation. Without election no one would ever be saved.
Though election is personal and distinguishing, we were not chosen separately
and distinctly as individuals, alone and apart. We were chosen in Christ. There
is no election of grace apart from Christ. And there is no union with Christ
apart from the election of grace.
1.
Christ was
chosen to be the Redeemer (Isa. 42:1-4).
2.
We were chosen
to be the redeemed (II Thess. 2:13-14).
“Christ be my first Elect, He
said,
Then chose our souls in Christ
our Head.”
Isaac
Watts
Here
is the blessedness of the doctrine of election: It guarantees our eternal
security. Our election and our Savior’s election stand or fall together. The
Lamb’s Book of Life, that begins with the inscription of his name is the same
register that holds our names. Until the pen of hell can scratch out his name,
it cannot scratch out our names!
B.
Our everlasting union with Christ is also a
legal, suretyship union.
As the surety and the debtor
represented by him are one before the law, so the Lord Jesus Christ and his
people are one before God in a legal sense. He became our Surety in the
covenant of grace before the worlds were made or ever the earth was.
·
Hebrews 7:22
As the Surety of the covenant, he drew
near to the Father in the name of his elect, made himself our Substitute, laid
himself under obligation to God to pay our debts, satisfy all the demands of
God’s law, justice, and righteousness for us, and procure on the grounds of
strict justice all the blessings of grace and glory for us, to the praise of
the glory of his grace.
“This being accepted by God, Christ
and the elect were looked upon, in the eye of the law, as one person, even as
the bondsman and the debtor, among men, are one in a legal sense: so that if
one pays the debt, it is the same as if the other did it. This legal union,
arising from Christ’s suretyship engagements, is the foundation of the
imputation of our sins to Christ, and of his satisfaction for them, and also of
the imputation of his righteousness to us, and of our justification by it.
Christ and his people being one, in a law sense, their sins become his, and his
righteousness becomes theirs.”
John
Gill
1.
When Christ
became our Surety, our Sponsor before God, he became totally responsible to God
for us, to pay our debts, fulfill our obligations, and bring us to glory (John
10:15-16).
2.
When Christ
became our Surety, God ceased to look for satisfaction from us.
3.
When Christ
became our Surety, our salvation was finished, in so far as
the Lord our God is concerned (Rom. 8:28-30; II Tim.
1:9; Rev. 13:8).
4.
When Christ
became our Surety, our everlasting salvation and security became a matter of
absolute certainty.
C.
Our everlasting union with Christ is, third, a federal, or representative union.
As Adam was the federal head of all
men, so Christ is the federal head of all the elect.
·
Romans 5:12-19
·
I Corinthians
15:21-22
Everything that Adam did in the
Garden, he did not as a private individual, but as the federal representative
of all the human race. All his acts were representative acts. Had Adam been
obedient to God, all the descendants of that original man would have been
partakers of all the benefits of obedience to God. But Adam was not obedient.
He sinned. He fell. He died. And we all sinned, fell, and died in him
representatively.
In exactly the same way, the Lord
Jesus Christ is the Federal Head and Representative of God’s elect. He was our
Federal Head from eternity. He is our Federal Head now. And he shall be our
Federal Head forever. I hope you can get hold of this. It will bless your soul
as nothing else can.
1.
Christ was our Federal Head and Representative in the covenant of grace before
the world began.
He was given for a covenant to the
people. He is the Mediator, Messenger, and Surety of that covenant. It was made
with him, not as a single or private Person, but as the Head and Representative
of God’s elect, who were given to him as a people to save. What he promised in
the covenant, he promised for us. What he received in the covenant, he received
for us. Thus, we were blessed in him and saved in him before the world was made
(Eph. 1:3; II Tim. 1:9).
2.
When the Lord Jesus Christ obeyed the law of God and made it honorable, we were
in him, obeying the law and making it honorable.
3.
When Christ suffered and died under the wrath of God, we suffered and died in
him. “Crucified with Christ.”
“Justice looks upon the chosen as
though they themselves had suffered all that Christ suffered, as though they
had drunk the wormwood and the gall and had descended into the lowest depths. “ C.H. Spurgeon
4.
When Christ was buried in the earth, we were buried with him.
5.
When the Son of God arose from the dead, we arose with him, triumphant and
victorious.
6.
When he ascended into heaven and took his place at the right hand of the
Majesty on high, we ascended with him, and sat down with him in his Father’s
throne, as the rightful possessors of heaven and glory with him, our Federal
Head and Representative.
Illustration: The
Symbolism of Baptism
7.
We see not yet all things put under the feet of man, but we see it as a matter
of certainty that all things shall be put in subjection to him in the new
creation, for “we see Jesus” seated
upon yonder glorious throne, from henceforth expecting until his enemies shall
be made his footstool.
·
Psalm 8:1-9
·
Hebrews 2:9
D.
Our everlasting union with Christ is, fourth, a mystical union.
I do not know a better way to express
this aspect of our union with our Savior than by using the word “mystical.” We
are one with him in the sense that we are members of his body, not in a
physical way, but in a spiritual sense.
·
Ephesians 4:30
·
Hebrews
2:11-14
I am in deep waters that rise far
above my head. I cannot begin to explain this mystery. The fact is I do not
understand all that I know about it. But this I do know, God’s elect have a
greater union with Christ than the members of our physical bodies have with our
heads. We are one with Christ...
·
As the Head is
One with the Body.
·
As the Father
and the Son are One (John 17:21).
·
In His Glory
as the God-man (John 17:22).
·
As the Objects
of the Father’s Love (John 17:23-24).
E.
Let me show you this fifth thing, too: Our everlasting union with Christ is a vital union.
Our union with the Lord Jesus Christ is so essential and
vital that without it we could never be saved and Christ could never be
complete as our Mediator and Head.
·
John 15:5-6
·
Ephesians 1:23
I cannot talk about it more than a
minute or two; but I must say at least a little about the third thing revealed
in our text. It is...
III. A Glorious Position
The Holy Spirit tells us that we have
been made “accepted in the beloved.” The
word translated “accepted” in our
text is a much stronger word than our English word “accepted.” This word means,
“highly favored, laudable, praiseworthy.” Now we are not and never could be
“accepted” before and by the holy Lord God, except in Christ the Beloved. But
in him, in the Beloved, every believer, every sinner chosen, redeemed, and
called by grace, is so completely and totally accepted of God that, even in the
eyes of the holy, omniscient Lord God, we are highly favored, laudable, and
praiseworthy! Let me show you three
things.
A. Our acceptance with God is
thorough, complete, total, and absolute.
To be “accepted in the beloved” is to
be...
1.
Justified from
all things.
2.
Freed from all
sin.
3.
The objects of
divine complacency and delight. “Well done!”
4.
Worthy of our
heavenly inheritance (Col. 1:12).
B. Our acceptance with God is
only “in the beloved.”
God the Father is well pleased with
his Son. And he is well pleased with us in his Son.
·
Matthew 17:5 “In whom,” not with whom “I am well pleased.”
·
I Peter 2:5
C. Our acceptance with God in
Christ is everlasting and therefore immutable.
Bless God, our acceptance does not depend upon us. It did
not begin with us. It is not maintained by us. And it cannot not be altered by
us. Though we fell in our father Adam, yet were we “accepted in the beloved.” Though we came forth from our mother’s
wombs speaking lies, we were still “accepted
in the beloved.” Though we spent our days, from our youth up, in wanton
rebellion against God and in league with hell, we were still “accepted in the beloved.” And though
after the Lord God saved us by his wondrous grace, we sin and fall a thousand
times a day, as we all do, yet it stands in the Scripture that we are “accepted in the beloved.” What a
glorious position this is. You and I who believe are “accepted in the beloved!”
·
Malachi 1:6
·
Romans 4:8
·
Psalm 89:19-37
“Unchangeable His will,
Though dark may be my frame;
His loving heart is still
Eternally the same:
My soul through many changes
goes,
His love no variation knows.”
Our text reveals a beloved Person, the
Lord Jesus Christ, an everlasting union, “in
the beloved,” a glorious position, “accepted
in the beloved,” and fourth...
IV. A Divine Operation
Look at the text one more time. “He hath made us accepted in the beloved.”
Grace is stamped upon the whole thing. From beginning to end, the work of our
acceptance is God’s operation. Our text declares, “Salvation is of the Lord!” Our being in Christ and accepted in
Christ must be the work of God alone because no one else existed when it was
done. It is a work finished from eternity!
A.
God the Father
put us in the Beloved by his sovereign decree because of his everlasting love
for us.
B.
God the Son
made us acceptable and accepted.
C.
God the Holy
Spirit made our
acceptance manifest to us (II
Tim. 1:10).
·
By Divine
Regeneration.
·
By Giving us
Faith in Christ.
Application:
If this day you believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, the Lord God has made you “ACCEPTED IN THE BELOVED.”
1.
Your faith in
Christ is the gift of his grace, the fruit of being “accepted in the beloved.”
2.
Your faith in
him is the evidence of your being “accepted
in the beloved.”
3.
Your faith in
Christ is the assurance of your being “accepted
in the beloved.”
4.
He who has
begun his good work of grace in us, making us “accepted in the beloved,” will complete his work and make us
perfect in and with the Beloved.
·
Philippians
1:6
·
John 13:1
5. Let us give all praise,honor, and glory to
our great God alone.
“Praise God from whom all
blessings flow.
Praise Him all creatures here
below.
Praise Him above, ye heavenly
hosts.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost!”