Find Freedom In God's FavorParaugs

The Well-Pleasing One

If we can’t earn God’s favor on our own, how can we ever receive it? Here’s the answer: God’s favor must be earned and won for us by someone else. And thankfully, that’s just what has happened!

When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, God declared that Jesus had won his favor. As Jesus came up out of the water, the Holy Spirit came down like a dove to rest on him, and a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17, ESV). The words “well pleased” actually translate the same words that in the Old Testament mean “I delight in him” and “I am pleased with him.” In other words, God declared over Jesus, “This one has my favor!”

Now, if you understand how desperately you need the favor of God, then your heart should thrill to hear those words. And understand this too: that’s more than just a personal opinion from God about Jesus. It is a verdict. It’s a judicial declaration from the throne of the cosmos that for the first and only time in human history, someone has finally done it. Someone has met God’s standard, accomplished what he requires, and earned his favor. It’s the verdict we all so desperately need and yet have all so catastrophically forfeited: “You are acceptable; you are righteous; you are pleasing to me.”

To put it another way, Jesus met the terms Paul laid out in that frightening passage in Romans 2. Indeed, if Paul rewrote the verdict of Romans 3:10–12 about Jesus, it would read like a celebration: “This one is righteous, yes, this one; he understands; he seeks for God. All others have turned aside, but he has finished it; together they have become worthless, but he has become all in all! There is one who does good, yes, only…one!”

Jesus did good—not just relatively or in comparison with others but perfect good. And he secured God’s favor for us. (More on how God’s favor is transferred from Jesus to us in a future devotional.)

Spend some time today praising God the Son for his holiness that earned the Father’s favor.