Blessed and Blessed

Ephesians 1:3

We started the series on Ephesians last week. We looked at how the church began and how Paul, Aquilla, Priscilla, and Apollos all had an influence on how the church continued. Today we start digging into the verses. Ephesians is very doctrinal in the first three chapters and then more practical in the remaining three chapters. I hope that we can all gain a greater understanding of what the bible teaches and how we are to obey Him as we go through this book!

Let’s dive in to verse three. After his greeting, Paul starts out his letter by saying, “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.” In the first half of this verse, Paul says blessed be God, the Father of Jesus. Just in that statement there is a lot of truth. Paul is explicitly saying that God is the Father of Jesus, something not taught by many religions out there today (Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses to name just a few) as well as Judaism which was prominent in this day. Paul states matter-of-factly that Jesus is the Son of God.

Those persecuting the Ephesians were bothered by Paul because he was essentially costing them money. Paul’s teachings eliminated the need for idols and gods which hurt the economy and effected the pockets of those involved in the idol making business. We see this clearly with Demetrius the silversmith in Acts 19:23-27. He started a revolt by tickling the ears of the religious and the greedy. How did this revolt effect Paul and his faith? It didn’t, he kept preaching and teaching the truth that Jesus is the Son of God.

What is also interesting about this part of the verse is that Paul says, “Blessed be the God.” The Greek word for blessed here is eulogéō. According the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance it means to speak well of and HELPS Word-Studies states its literal meaning is “confer what is beneficial”, specifically in regard to believers blessing Him. Can we confer a benefit to God? In other words, can we give God anything beneficial? No, in truth we cannot. We cannot give Him anything that He needs or wants because He already has everything. However, we should give him everything still. It does not add anything to Him, but He is worthy of all.

If God does not gain anything from us blessing Him, than why should we do it? Who gains from us blessing Him? The truth is, we do. Although God does not need our praise and blessing, we do need to bless Him. We praise the ones we love the most, we honor those who mean the most to us, and God should be the One we love above all (Matthew 22:37). If we do not bless God we do not love Him, but by blessing God we grow in love, joy, peace, patience, etc. So though Paul realizes he cannot “confer what is beneficial” to God, he also realizes, and desires to, bless Him because he loves Him and wants to praise His Name.

The second half of this verse says, “who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” Paul is not saying that we ought to bless God because He blesses us. These are separate statements. We should bless God no matter what. What is also true is that He blesses us greatly all the time. What I want to focus on though is the fact that Paul writes that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing.

A spiritual blessing implies that those receiving this blessing are believers. Non-believers don’t really care about spiritual blessings, or at least they don’t think they do. Believers, though, should desire spiritual blessings above earthly blessings. Spiritual blessings last, and they draw us closer to Him. Earthly blessings are temporary and could turn the desires of our fleshly heart away from Him.

Paul states that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing too, meaning we lack nothing. We have all we need. We have infinitely eternally. Why? Because Jesus dies on the cross, taking our sins with Him to the grave and leaving them there. We are washed clean by the blood of Christ. When we put our faith and trust in Him we are saved forever, eternally His. We are blessed with every spiritual blessing. He loves us infinitely; He has given us everything though we can give Him nothing. What is unbelievable is that we only gain in this relationship and, though we cannot give Him anything, He, for some reason that I will never understand, desires a relationship with us! He desires to spend time with us! We are infinitely sinful and yet He is infinitely good to us, blessing us with every spiritual blessing, and growing us through our blessing of Him. What a powerful, all-knowing, sovereign God we serve!

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