“This is My Beloved Son, in Whom I am well-pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)

What amazing thing to hear from God the Father!  Everything Jesus had done: in thought, word, deed, and attitude, from His birth, to the time of His baptism here in this chapter, had been totally pleasing to God. And He would continue to live that way through the end of His life here on earth.  Jesus said in John 8:29, “I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.” There is a sense in which we cannot really understand this, being so far from that kind of perfection ourselves. We fall short in virtually every category of our lives each day.

But there is another sense in which this is indeed very true for us.When we receive Jesus as our Savior, we receive “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” as Romans 3:22 says. This means that Jesus’ righteousness is “imputed”, or “counted” as ours. So in a very real sense, whenever God looks at us, He does not see our own filthy righteousness, but the perfect righteousness of Jesus, which was so “well-pleasing” to Him. It is as Colossians 3:3 says “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

This means, amazingly enough, that if we are truly in Christ Jesus, that whenever God the Father considers you & I, He will say the same thing that He did to our Lord: “This is My Beloved Child, in whom I am well-pleased”!