Made Accepted

Ephesians 1:6b

We looked at the first part of verse six in our last article. We saw how God glorifies Himself and how that is what is best for us. It is something that He must do since He is holy. It is something that He does which is ultimately for our benefit.

Today we look at the second portion of verse six, but I want to look at verse five too. These verses say, “having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved” [emphasis mine]. The reason I wanted to include verse five is because it helps us look back at what Paul is referring to when he writes the last portion of this long sentence.

If you read these verses together we can see that Paul is saying that God predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself by which He made us accepted in the beloved. The statements between the beginning of verse five and the ending of verse six support the beginning of verse five, i.e. He predestined us according to the good pleasure of His will. He predestined us for the glory of His grace.

What we can see then from the verse we are focusing on in this article is that we are accepted in the Beloved because we have been predestined to be His adopted children through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He has accepted us through Him, or, God has accepted us through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice.

What does this show us? It shows us that our salvation is all thanks to Him. He sent His Son to die for us. He made us accepted through His Son’s death. Meanwhile Jesus willingly came to die for us, and His death and resurrection has defeated our sin and given us the opportunity to be His children. We had no hope. One sin condemns us to hell. But since Jesus willingly took our sins on the cross and died, taking our sins with Him, we have been forgiven. It does not mean every man is saved, but it does mean He has given us the free gift and all we have to do is accept it. He made an impossible task possible.

I don’t want to dig too much into predestination since I already wrote an article on it, but since it is combined with the verse we are looking at today it is good to bounce back to it. God made us accepted in the beloved by predestining us as His children before the foundations of the world (1:4). So God made us, predestined us, and chose us. He made us accepted, predestined us to be His children, and chose us before the world began. He made us accepted through the Beloved (Jesus), predestined us to be His children through Jesus, and chose us through Him (Jesus). Clearly then we can see that our salvation is through Jesus, and it is through God’s grace that we have been saved! God making us accepted, predestining us to adoption, and choosing us make it abundantly clear that He is responsible for our salvation. We cannot earn it, and we cannot claim that we played a role in our salvation. Just in one sentence we have evidence of that!

I want to reiterate that my goal is to read Scriptures and interpret them correctly. I do not want to push an agenda or change anyone’s mind. I want to understand His Word and correctly exposit what it says so that others may see the truths of Scripture. The best way to do this is to read it and study it out for yourself, asking the Holy Spirit for wisdom as you do so. Wise counsel is great, commentaries are helpful, but nothing compares to reading through Scriptures on your own and having the Holy Spirit show you what His Word says. We all just need to put in the effort, to study things out, to read over verses multiple times if need be, and pray for wisdom. We know He will provide it!

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