Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
FULL OF GIFTS: TO ME
As we will see later this week, this entire concept of the Blessed One, who blesses us with every spiritual blessing, is a very important part of the doctrine of predestination. And it is no accident that Paul places this exact verse here, just before he launches into a short praise of that most wonderful doctrine. In fact, it is no accident that Paul begins the main portion of his letter to the Ephesians with this statement. One could very easily understand this sentence as the theme of all Ephesians. Often we talk of Ephesians as an epistle which speaks of the one Holy Christian Church, and so it is. But to be more precise, one would have to say it is not merely a discussion of the doctrine of the Church, but rather a discussion of the fullness of Christ through whom the Church also receives the same fullness. Furthermore, we need to recognize that Paul, speaking of the fullness and unity of the Church, is not concerned with the collective as much as he is with the individual. Paul's message is not, "Look what Christ has done for you as a group!" But instead: "Look what Christ has done for you personally!"
In Paul's writings, the Church is never the sum total of a group but the full number of individuals. Thus when he says here that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing, he does not indicate that God took all spiritual blessings and spread them on a table before all the members of the Church and divided them among them. But rather that every single individual has been given every good spiritual blessing and is full of every good thing which comes from the heavenly realm, namely, that realm where God is and from where all good things come.
Thus Paul promises in these verses that God, who is the Blessed One full of all good things, has blessed, that is has freely given to, me every possible good spiritual blessing. The reason this is so vitally important will be seen in the following verses.
