Accepted In The Beloved

Minister:
Date: PM
Text: Ephesians 1:6
Psalters: 397, 428, 187, 277
Confession of Faith
  1. The wonder.
    1. ?Accepted? is to make graceful, charming, lovely, agreeable, highly favored (cf. Luke 1:28).
    2. ?In the Beloved.?
      1. Every blessing the elect enjoy is always in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.
      2. This is a name God gave to Him, viz., Jesus is God?s Beloved (John 3:17; Matt. 17:5; Luke 20:13).
      3. No term expresses so perfectly and so completely the relationship between God and Jesus as ?Beloved.?
    3. Our acceptance in the Beloved expresses the measure the Father?s love toward us.
      1. To know correctly God?s love, then we must grasp the truth about this Person.
      2. And we know something of the Beloved?s love for us.
    4. Put this altogether to learn of the Father?s relationship to you.
      1. You are loved by God even as He loved His Beloved Son (John 17:23b)!!
      2. That this is the relationship is made clear in that God gives us the same name in Col. 3:12 and II Thess. 2:13: ?beloved.?
  2. We have been chosen to be holy and to adoption and are accepted in the Beloved so we might praise the glory of God?s grace.
    1. Does our profession of the Christian faith reveal itself in our praising God?s grace?
    2. Salvation is a revelation of the glory of God: ?the praise of His glory as it is manifested in and through His grace.?
      1. ?Glory? speaks of beauty, majesty, splendor, with the idea of greatness, mighty and eternity. Resplendent radiance.
      2. The gospel is the proclamation of the glory of God (II Cor. 4:6).
    3. This teaches us how we should be thinking of our salvation: it fills us with wonder, praise, and amazement.
      1. The chief end of man is to glorify God, which makes the seriousness of sin to be that it does not give God the glory due.
      2. God?s work of redemption reveals the riches of the glory of His wisdom (18) and grace.