Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Adult Sunday School Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/bb/bb20091004.htm

THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION
Ephesians: Overcoming Our Insecurities In Christ
Part I: The Believer's Secure Position In Christ, Ephesians 1:1-3:21
C. Overcoming The False Insecurity Of Being Rejected By God
(Ephesians 1:6)
  1. Introduction
    1. Whether it is a works-based religious heritage where they were left thinking they could never be good enough or whether it is their sinful records or whether it was their being left to feel worthless due to verbal or physical abuse, many Christians today are conditioned to fear that they are not fully acceptable to God!
    2. In solution, Ephesians 1:6 in light of the rest of Scripture, offers great relief for the afflicted (as follows):
  2. Overcoming The False Insecurity Of Being Rejected By God, Ephesians 1:6.
    1. After Paul wrote of God's work to elect and predestine Christians He knew in eternity past would believe in Christ to enter into His heavenly presence by the rapture as holy, blameless and in love (Eph . 1:4-5), Paul noted God would do this to the praise of the glory of His grace, of His unmerited favor, Eph. 1:6a.
    2. This grace was then the tool God utilized positionally to bestow His favor upon the believer (literally) "in the Beloved One" [en to 'agapaymeno] that is, in God's Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, Ephesians 1:6b:
      1. The KJV verb "made us accepted" ("which he has freely given us" NIV; "with which he has blessed us" ESV) translates the Greek word echaritosen [from charitoo], and it means "to favor highly," Arndt & Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the N. T., 1967, p. 887; U. B. S. Greek N. T., 1966 ed., p. 664.
      2. God has thus highly favored the believer in his spiritual position in Jesus Christ.
    3. To understand this high favoring of believers in Christ, we view other Scriptures (as follows):
      1. By God's grace, when a person believes in Christ for salvation, he is made positionally free from sin before God, and is pronounced justified by God because he is substitutionally imputed the very righteousness of the Lord Jesus Himself, Romans 3:24-26 with 2 Cor inthians 5:21 and Romans 5:18.
      2. In his legal standing in Christ, even "carnal" believers who live by means of their pre-salvation sin natures are nevertheless positionally sanctified in Christ, cf. 1 Corinthians 3:3 with 1 Corinthians 1:2.
      3. This is a remarkable truth considering that some believers to whom Paul wrote his 1 Corinthians epistle were guilty of such vile sins as idolatry (1 Cor. 10:14-22) and a form of immorality not practiced by the unsaved in Corinth (1 Cor. 5:1), a city so notorious for its pagan immorality that the Greeks coined the verb, "korinthiazomai," meaning to practice fornication, Ryrie Study Bible, KJV, 1978, p. 1619.
      4. Also, some of these same Christians had come from wretched backgrounds, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11:
        1. The vices in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 had been practiced by some of Paul's readers, 1 Corinthians 6:11.
        2. These sins included sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, and both passive and active roles in consensual homosexual acts, 1 Corinthians 6:9 ESV (and its footnote). They also included stealing, greed, alcohol abuse, verbal abuse and swindling, 1 Corinthians 6:10 ESV.
      5. Yet, regardless of their evil heritage and experiences in sin, in Christ, these same believers had been "washed," "sanctified" and "justified," i.e., pronounced to be as righteous as is Jesus by God the Father, all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 6:11 ESV!
      6. Then, once pronounced righteous by God, Hebrews 10:14 reveals the believer is positionally perfected forever before God, there thus being no reason why God the Father cannot positionally eternally accept every single believer in Christ in His heavenly presence based upon this great salvation!
      7. Wonderfully, though the believer is experientially imperfect, at the rapture, he will lose his sin nature and be taken to heaven without sin, entering God's presence forever, 1 Corinthians 15:51-57.
    4. Thus, we should realize that having been justified by Him, God the Father positionally unconditionally and eternally accepts us just like He accepts His own Beloved Son, the Lord Jesus, for we are in Him!
Lesson: When one trusts in Christ as Savior, God the Father pronounces him "righteous" since he is substitutionally given Christ's righteousness, and is thus just as acceptable to the Father as is Christ!

Application: May we relax and rejoice in our "highly favored" status with God, for our acceptance by Him is based on His grace and not on any of our merits or lack thereof! God looks beyond our record, our heritage and our experiences to see our position in His Beloved Son, and thus He fully accepts us!