“According to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath had us accepted in the beloved.” (Eph. 1:5-6)
It is a great comfort to know that our standing in Christ, and acceptance in Him, are not according to the measure of our faith or of our spiritual experience, but “according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved.”
“Hath made us”—it is the Father’s own doing and it is already done, and so done, that no want of experience, or weakness of faith, or failure of testimony, or slowness of progress, or want of realization, or consciousness of evil within, can possibly alter it in the least.
This is an unchangeable acceptance. We stand in Christ; and as He stands. This, then, is a sure foundation for our hope, and a sure foundation for our joy, notwithstanding the fact that everything of our own is marred and worthless.
We rejoice in the Lord Jesus always, as our ground of acceptance, though often sorrowful because of increasing consciousness of our ill-desert. We rejoice also in the love and grace of our Father who has, because of that love and grace, “made us accepted in the Beloved.”
—From the May 21, 1964 Timely Messenger
