Are We Accepted? – by Ella Rodionoff
Jun 2, 2016 2478
In what parts of your life are you striving to be accepted?
Are your grades good enough for you to be accepted for your chosen course? Do you qualify for the promotion? Will that ‘special someone’ like you enough, or even notice you? Will that group of people include and like you?
You get the idea: a dozen times every day you’re wondering whether you and what you do are going to be acceptable. Acceptance is something we all want. We strive to be accepted by others. What do you do to be accepted? How far will you go? Sometimes no matter how hard we try, what we do just isn’t enough.
In the gospels we read about how Jesus accepted those that society didn’t. Those who considered themselves righteous judged him for associating with people such as tax collectors, lepers, prostitutes, and “sinners.” These people weren’t accepted by society, but Jesus accepted them.
Just like them, Jesus accepts us. This is because our acceptance is not based on what we do, but on what he has done. We don’t have to do anything to earn it; in fact, we couldn’t even if we wanted to. Romans 15:7 tells us,
Christ accepted you.
And Romans 5:8 says,
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
He loves us so much that he died so we could live. Others judge us by the version of us they can see. But Jesus, who knows who we really are, how messed up we happen to be, still loves us anyway. When we were still sinners, “unacceptable”, he died for us so we could be acceptable, so we could have eternal life.
– Ella Rodionoff
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