These words are found in the first chapter of Ephesians and verse six. They mean that anyone who has taken Jesus as his or her Saviour is clothed in all the beauty of the Lord Jesus—God does not any more see him in his sins but, “in Christ,” in all His grace and loveliness. That is exactly as God sees us though we may see many unlovely things in ourselves because “the flesh,” our old bad nature, is still in us till we receive our new bodies.
Now, once there was a dear Christian lady who just did not seem able to grasp this wonderful truth—that she with all her unloveliness, was all covered up by the Lord Jesus and His loveliness before the eyes of God—that God really did not see her at all, so completely was she “clothed” in the Lord Jesus. Would you like to know how she came to enter into and enjoy this precious truth?
Well, one day some visitors came to have dinner with her. After the meal they helped her with the dishes. One person wiped, I suppose, and another put the dishes away. After they were gone, she was quite unable to find a certain plain glass tumbler that she always kept in the kitchen. She searched high and low for it, among all the glasses and dishes she had, but it had simply disappeared and so finally she gave it up as lost.
Quite a long time after, she was cleaning her cupboards, washing every glass and dish. All of a sudden, she found her little plain glass! Where do you think it was? It was inside a beautiful cut-glass tumbler where one of her guests had put it not knowing it belonged in the kitchen. Why had she not seen it when she looked among her glasses? Why, the beautiful design cut in the tumbler had completely hidden the plain glass so that it was quite out of sight, hidden behind the beauty of the lovely glass.
In a flash it came to her that she was just like the plain glass—hidden right out of sight “in Christ.” O, how she did enjoy that truth then, and no doubt enjoys it more every day. Thus God, her Father taught her in this simple way one of His most blessed truths.
Now this is true of even the youngest one who believes in Jesus. Is it true of you, dear friend? If not, do not rest until you, too, can say, “I am Accepted in the Beloved.”