Day 8 Every Blessing

Every Blessing

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.   Ephesians 1:3 (NIV)

Most of Paul’s letters start, after the initial greeting, by telling the church what he’s praying for when he thinks of them. He will come to that a little later in 1:15-23. But pride of place here goes to a long expression of praise, (1:3-14 is one sentence) a form taken over from Jewish synagogue worship and commonly called a berakhah (the Hebrew word for ‘blessing’). Paul uses a similar form in 2 Corinthians 1:3,4 as Peter does in 1 Peter 1:3.

God the Father is the source (origin) of every spiritual blessing. It is the Father who has blessed us (1:3), who chose us (1:4), who predestined us to be adopted as his sons (1:5), who ‘freely’ gave us his grace (1:6), in fact ‘lavished’ it on us (1:8), who also made known to us His purpose to bring all things under Christ (1:9,10) according to His plan (1:11). The whole paragraph (1:3-14) is full of God the Father who has set His love and poured out His grace on us and is working out His eternal plan.

Christ is the One in whom every spiritual blessing is found and through whom every spiritual blessing is given. In 1:3-14 He is mentioned fifteen times and the phrase ‘in Christ’ eleven times. Formerly we were ‘in Adam,’ belonging to the old fallen humanity but we are now ‘in Christ’ and belong to the new, redeemed humanity. We are blessed in Him (1:3), chosen in Him (1:4), foreordained through Him (1:5), ‘graced’ in Him (1:6), redeemed through Him (1:7), see God’s plan in Him (1:9) with everything summed up in Him (1:10), have obtained our inheritance in Him (1:11) because we have set our hope on Him (1:12).

We have been sealed in Christ by the Holy Spirit as the guarantee of all that is to come (1:13,14)

Paul stresses here that the blessing the Father gives us in Christ is spiritual. In Paul’s mind spiritual blessings are almost certainly being distinguished from material blessings (also bestowed by God and in Deuteronomy 28:1-14 conditional on obedience).

These blessings are ‘in the heavenly realms’. This expression occurs five times in Ephesians but nowhere else in Paul’s writings. From these five times we understand that ‘heavenly realms’ is the sphere in which ‘principalities and powers’ continue to operate (3:10; 6:12), in which Christ reigns supreme and His people reign with him (1:20; 2:6) and in which God blesses us with every spiritual blessing in Christ (1:3). Life now, if it is life in Christ, is in the heavenly realms.

God has blessed us (aorist tense) in Christ with every spiritual blessing. Every blessing imparted by the Holy Spirit comes from the Father because we are in the Son. No blessing is withheld from us. We nevertheless still have to grow into maturity in Christ, and be transformed into His image, and explore the riches of our inheritance in Him.

Everything heaven contains has already been lavished upon us as a love gift from our wonderful heavenly Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus—all because He sees us in Christ. This is why we praise Him with all our hearts! Ephesians 1:3 (The Passion Translation)

Categories

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top