“The Beloved”

Ephesians 1:6

            I cannot imagine a title, or name more appropriate for our Redeemer. This sweet, golden name is the one name that suits our Savior in all his relationships with the triune God, the angels of heaven, and his people in heaven and upon the earth.

            The Lord Jesus Christ is the Beloved of the Father’s heart (Matt. 3:17; 17:5). Who can enter into the relationships of the three divine Persons in the eternal Trinity? We cannot imagine the kind of love the Father has for his Son; but we have abundant evidence of it and many illustrations of it in the Scriptures. God the Son was one with the Father and beloved by him, as our Surety in the counsels of grace in eternity (Pro. 8:22-31). In the covenant of grace, all the blessing of grace were bestowed upon chosen sinners only in the Beloved (v. 3; II Tim. 1:9). When the Lord God stooped to create all things out of nothing, the Father called to the Son and said, “Let us make man in our image and after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26), “For without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:1-3). Everything that God the Father has done and decreed to be done has been done to glorify the Son, “that in all things he might have the preeminence” (Col. 1:18). And God the Son lived upon the earth as a man, died as our Substitute, and lives again as our exalted King and Priest in heaven that he might glorify the Father.

            The Lord Jesus Christ is the Beloved of the blessed Holy Spirit. It is the office work and good pleasure of God the Holy Spirit, in all his gracious operations and influences, to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ (John 16:13-14). The Holy Spirit never draws attention to himself. He came to glorify Christ. When he is present, when he is working, Christ is preached, Christ is worshipped, and Christ is exalted.

            The Lord Jesus is the Beloved of all the heavenly angels. I am not stretching the Scriptures when I assert that the heavenly angels, those holy spirits who wait constantly before his throne look upon the Lord Jesus Christ as the Beloved. It is before his throne that they bow. It is his praise that they sing. It is his will they wait to perform (Isa. 6:1-3).

            Without question, the Lord Jesus Christ is the Beloved of all his people. Saved sinners everywhere, in heaven above and scattered throughout all the earth, look upon the Son of God as their Beloved (Song 1:14, 16; 2:3, 8-10, 16-17; 5:2, 4, 9-1; 6:2-3; 7:10; Isa. 5:1). Never was the term “beloved” so full of meaning, so well deserved, and yet so incapable of expressing all that is meant by it, as when it is applied to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our Beloved. “We love him because he first loved us” (I John 4:19); but we do truly love him. How our hearts rejoice to look up to heaven upon the Son of God and call him “Beloved!” The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. His love for us has kindled in our hearts a flame of undying love for him that neither life nor death can quench. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Beloved of our souls because he is our Savior.

Don Fortner