Eph. 1:3-6 "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved." - ESV
When I read this passage in the Bible, I begin to think of the Wizard of Oz. There is a scene in that movie where Dorthy and her friends find out what's going on "behind the curtain." When we read Ephesians (especially the first chapter) Paul seems to give us a "behind the curtain" look at what God is doing in salvation.
Understanding this can be quite difficult for many, because it will run counter to what our culture seems to communicate. Our culture screams individualism, and self proclaimed glory. It's very hard for us to give up the credit. It seems unnatural, and whenever we realize that we don't really deserve the credit for something, we try to come up with some sort of rationalization to at least keep some of it. People do this in the work place, husbands and wives do this in their relationship, and we even see it in our children.
The most prevalent place we see this today is in social media. It seems that many people look to social media for their "self-esteem boost of the day." They constantly want to know if someone "liked" their post, or commented on their picture, or re-tweeted their quote.
Paul takes all of that away in these verses. He strips us of all credit in our salvation! He tells us that it was all part of a master plan that existed before the world was even created. THAT IS HARD TO SWALLOW!
We will focus on the first part of this long, rich doctrinal sentence today, and continue through it next week, so here we go, let's get to work....
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,"
The first thing Paul does is bless God. He gives God honor and glory. WHY? He tells us why. Because God the Father through Jesus the son has given us EVERY spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. It wasn't us, it was HIM!
First, notice all of the Trinity is involved in our salvation.
1. Blessed be the God and Father...
2. ...of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ
3. ...with every spiritual blessing...
As we continue through Ephesians, we will see this Trinitarian element over and over.
If you haven't figured it out yet, the "blessing" that Paul is talking is salvation. The rest of the passage makes that abundantly clear.
Focus on the word "every" for a minute. It's the Greek word pantos. It means the units of the sum, or a complete accounting of.
The point is that when it comes to our salvation, God did not exclude any part of salvation from us when He saved us. Our salvation is COMPLETE! He did not say, "Ok Tim, I'm going to do this much, and you need to do the rest."
This is why we can never loose our salvation...because we didn't have any part in it. I've always thought this was a weird thing to believe anyway. "Honey, I lost my salvation, can you help me find it?" Who says that? It sounds absurd. Yet many believe this non-sense. Some people think if they sin, they "lost their salvation" and have to go pray to God to give (or "get"...because they think they had a part in this) it back. I guess we just haven't read Col. 2:13-14 or 1 Peter 1:17-19. Ultimately, when we say that sin causes us to loose our salvation, we are saying that the blood of Christ didn't really cancel out our debt, we have to do that. It's just another form of trying to earn your salvation.
We know Satan can't take our salvation away (Romans 8:31-39), and we can't loose it because of sin, so the only other person that can take it away would be God, and Jesus told us in John 10:28 - "I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand." You know what "never" means in Greek, NEVER!
We were given salvation by God, and God promises that this blessing will never be taken away, perish, lost, or stolen.
One thing I haven't talked about yet is the phrase "in the heavenly places." Paul is communicating that there is a sort of "here and now" element to the blessing of salvation, and a "yet to come" element.
While our salvation is complete in the sense that God has not required anything of us to do, We have not yet experienced the fullness of all that salvation means. This is a "tricky truth" so stay with me.
We have the imputed righteousness of Christ, but we don't live 100% completely righteous lives. We still sin, and we continue to strive toward holiness. This is the struggle Paul speaks of in Romans 7. However, there will be a day that we are fully sanctified and glorified, and we look forward to that day while we strive to "work out our salvation (Phil. 2:12)."
Let us daily "take up our cross and follow Christ (Matt. 16:24; Luke 9:23). We will struggle in sin till we see Christ, but we don't have to strive to earn God's favor. It is He who favored us when he blessed us with EVERY spiritual blessing before the foundation of the world! That's just AWESOME!
Be edified!
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