Word Live: Every Spiritual Blessing
Praise God for blessing you in Christ!
Bible passage
Ephesians 1:1–14
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Praise for spiritual blessings in Christ
3 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. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will – 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, 9 he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfilment – to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
11 In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. 13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession – to the praise of his glory.
Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Explore
We all have friends who exaggerate! But we can’t exaggerate when it comes to God. Paul writes to believers in Ephesus (on the Turkish west coast) with the aim of blowing their minds. There may be details here we don’t initially grasp, but try to get a sense of the scale of his vision of God.
Verses 1–10. After the standard introductions, Paul launches into exuberant praise. Read through this passage again, noticing all the different things that God does for us.
Do this again, noticing God’s activities across history: in the past, in the present and in the future.
Is that making your brain hurt yet?! In short, God has been preparing the gospel since before creation (v 4) so that through Christ it is possible for sinful people to be holy and blameless, adopted, forgiven and brought together with everything in the universe under Christ’s rule at the end of time.
That’s quite a promise! Verse 3 is no exaggeration. In Christ we really do have every spiritual blessing.
Verses 11–14. Now Paul zooms in on the Ephesian Christians themselves. God makes plans and completes them (v 11). What’s the goal? So that people like them (and us) can ‘put our hope in Christ’ (v 12). This is similar to trusting in Christ, but is focused on the future – and it is certain because it is entirely dependent on God.
Author
Mark Meynell
Respond
Spend some time listing all your Christ-given gospel blessings, and praise and adore him for each one!
Deeper Bible study
‘May the words which I write and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer.’1
Paul announces his apostolic authority for the letter.2 The recipients are greeted anonymously as the ‘faithful’ (v 1), unnamed saints whose lives Paul has only heard about (v 15), though he hopes that they may have heard about him.3 These probably aren’t the Ephesians whom Paul knew so well, because they had openly received the Holy Spirit at baptism and witnessed mighty works of healing and exorcism in the name of Jesus.4 These must be the scattered Christians everywhere whom Paul had not been able to visit and whom he would never see. We can include ourselves in this group. We are God’s people scattered through time and space; we too can read here all that Paul longed to say to us but never could.
The letter opens with unbounded praise for the God of time and eternity. Paul has gone to his death, but his message to all Christians facing similar persecution, then and now, is that we belong to this God who is in control of all that is and all that will be. We are the redeemed, we are the forgiven, we are those upon whom has been lavished the ‘riches of God’s grace’ (v 7) from that distant moment in time when God thought us into being.
Some have shrunk these awesome verses to a them-and-us view of predestination that misses the glories of God’s moral universe. We are awed by Brian Cox’s stunning colour renderings of spectra on TV, mapping the universe further and further back in time; earth will be absorbed into an expanding sun in 7.5 billion years. Today’s even more awe-inspiring reading needs no such calculations. The universe, of which the people of God are an integral part, is designed so that all things return ultimately to God in Christ.
‘When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers … what is mankind that you are mindful of them … that you care for them?’5
1Ps 19:14, KJV (altered) 2 See Introduction 3Eph 3:2 4Acts 19,20 5Ps 8:3,4
Author
John Harris
