You Are My Beloved Son, in You I Am Well Pleased.
Posted by Pastor Pat on March 11, 2009
Read Mark 1:9-11
There is no greater statement in all of Scripture than the approval by the Father of the Son. The Father identifies Him as His beloved Son in whom He is pleased. All three gospels note this statement. The grammatical structure is equally telling as to the nature of this event. One grammarian gives us the following statement:
“The verb ‘I am well pleased’ may be taken as a timeless aorist or perhaps as representing the Hebrew stative perfect. The meaning then would be that God is always pleased with the Son.” (Walter W. Wessell, “Mark,” EBC, [Zondervan, 1984], 8:622).
Another concurs,
“It is a delight that never had a beginning, and will never have an end.” (Kenneth S. Wuest, Wuest’s Word Studies, [Eerdmans, 1973], 1:25).
Who He was and what He was about to do received the Father’s full approval. The overarching idea reaches beyond the person and into the work He will accomplish. The Father will accept the sacrifice His Son offers in behalf of sin.
This sense of acceptance and approval is the very essence of our Lord’s redemptive activity in behalf of those who believe. Listen carefully to the following statement:
“The whole Christian gospel could be summed up in this point: that when the living God looks at us, at every . . . believing Christian, he says to us what he said to Jesus on that day. He sees us, not as we are in ourselves, but as we are in Jesus Christ. It sometimes seems impossible, especially to people who have never had this kind of support from their earthly parents, but it’s true: God looks at us, and says, ‘You are my dear, dear child; I’m delighted with you.’ Try reading that sentence slowly, with your own name at the start and reflect quietly on God saying that to you, both [when you believed] and every day since.” (Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone, [WJK, 2004], 4, 5).
Did you catch what was just said? Just as, so also. Just as the Son finds full acceptance before the Father, so also those who are in His Son. Listen to the following verses. Consider what they are saying. Perhaps you will see that what has been said is true.
17 “By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love” (1 John 4:17, 18).
“Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming” (1 John 2:28).
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20).
“Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).
17 “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. . . 21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:17, 21).
As believers we are to live by the “just as, so also” principle. There is no greater delight and no greater rest. Right now, in your moment of failure, the Father’s acceptance of you is poured out on you. He is pleased with you, not because of your obedience and certainly not because of your rebellion. He is pleased with you because His Son offered a sacrifice of infinite worth to enable Him to impute to you His own righteousness. Listen to the words of Larry Crabb in his book, The Pressure’s Off:
“We’re as beautiful to the Father as Christ is because we’re in Him. The Father sings. And we collapse with gratitude at His feet. Filled with joy. The Son touches us on the shoulder. We stand.” (Larry Crabb, The Pressure’s Off, [Waterbrook Press, 2002], 107).
My fear for all of us is that we will fail to feel the weight of those words and continue to live in bondage to our performance-based thinking as it relates to our standing before the Father. It has been my ongoing prayer that we will fully come to know and experience the freedom that is in Christ Jesus. I would encourage all of us to meditate on these things. Let them dominate our thinking and control what is said and done. May we find the rest that is already ours.
By Pastor Patrick J. Griffiths. For more information see the Waukesha Bible Church series on Mark.
