“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,”
(Ephesians 1:3, NASB95)
“Who” turns everything back to God. It would be so easy to “spiritualize”
this verse in such a way that we look only at those intangible things that we
can’t see or touch. But that is not what this verse is about. When Paul wrote
that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing he was not referring only
to the immaterial, though that is included. This blessing refers to the work of
God who is Spirit and who as Spirit blesses us in every way. “God is spirit,
and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”” (John 4:24,
NASB95) He is the source of all blessings. We are reminded of this throughout
Scripture where the word of God proclaims His constant and incredible grace
shown toward us through blessings that cannot be counted or measured. He is the
source of all that is good and perfect (James 1:17), and He is the One that
causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are
called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). He doesn’t just dump blessings
and let them unfold, but He is intimately involved in working them through to
their full, complete, and perfect end. He is the one that causes (makes it
happen) all things to work in them, even those with thorns. This causing work
means that even those things that we do not perceive as blessings He turns them
through the power of His hand into good. This does not mean that we get
everything we want, but that when we are seeking after Him and submitting
ourselves to His will for our lives that He is the One from His heavenly realm
who makes it happen just as He intends and for our benefit.
Peter tells us that He has given us everything we need, and
when God gives us everything there is no need to look anywhere else. “…seeing
that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and
godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and
excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent
promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having
escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.” (2 Peter 1:3–4, NASB95) This
is a hard one for many of us because we are so time and material oriented. We tend
to focus on what lies before us and we feel the pressures of what is most
imposing. But God, He sees these things as well and He knows the perfect way to
maneuver us through them to His perfect end. From my side I know I have made
many short-sighted decisions and have cut short waiting on God leading to
additional consequences. But at the same time, I have also seen how gracious He
has been to me when I turn even those times of not trusting back to Him and
seek His perfect direction. This does not mean that He has removed me from the
hole I might have dug in not trusting or waiting on Him, but it does mean that
He gives me light for the way out and hope for the future.
And in those times when I see no way and I chose to wait on
Him I am regularly amazed at how He answers. It is in these moments that I
realize just how blessed I truly am. Sure, I know it in the other times as
well, but seeing God work when I could not see the way is so incredible that I
am frequently brought to tears and I can do nothing but give praise to God and
bless His name. All of this because He first loved me and called me to be His
through His Son who gave Himself to die for my sins and who through His
resurrection gave me newness of life. It was at the moment of salvation that
this was all perfectly realized, and my eternal position was firmly
established. We will explore this more as we move through Ephesians, but stop
and consider the reality of what has already happened to us according to
chapter 2, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which
He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive
together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him,
and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the
ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness
toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4–7, NASB95)
In the last post I included the words of a
popular doxology, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures
here below…” We are truly blessed to be the recipients of His great love and
constant blessing shown toward us, and as a result it is our great joy to bless
or praise His name—giving Him full credit for all that He has done and even falling
short in not being able to verbalize those things that we don’t even see. He
truly has blessed us with everything pertaining to life and godliness—pertaining
to all that we are, need, and do.
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