Blessed with every Spiritual Blessing

I was speaking last Sunday on the opening verses of Ephesians 1. As an occasional and developing preacher I felt it was time to move away from just expounding my favourite verses and start work on a series (on my favourite letter). So I have started a series that only I will hear as I shall take it on the road. Anyway here are my thoughts on the opening section:

Paul an Apostle by the will of God, to the saints who are faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God and the Lord Jesus Christ. 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)

Joel Osteen's book Your Best life now is a best seller, it promises that you can have on earth your best life now. Whilst its easy to reject in your head sometimes its difficult to reject in your heart and when difficult comes we think God is treating us unfairly. We often qute Romans 8:28 and leave out 29 that all things work together for good to comform us to the image of God's son.
Paul knew that this isn't our best life now and he wrote from his prison cell to the little persecuted flock in Ephesus to encourage them.

Three A's Acceptance, Adoration and Adoption.

Acceptance:

Paul writes as an apostle to those who are faithful yet Paul was once Saul and knew that through the will of God he had found compassion. Also he knew those who are faithful in Christ, have not always been and have are not always faithful. The key for both of them is Grace and Peace from God and the Lord Jesus Christ. This grace costs us nothing but was bought at a great price, Jesus' suffering and death, it was the will of the Father and the Son for the Son to suffer on our behalf. He was the offended party and yet we have undeserved kindness from God, so we now have peace with God, we are reconciled.

Adoration

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because we are accepted we now have a relationship with God that allows us to see Him in all his glory. The word blessed is Eulugeo from which we get our word Eulogy, some NIV's have praise. Both ESV Blessed and NIV praise are getting at the meaning of the original, which means to ascribe worth and honour to something worthy. How fitting that Paul should use this word for God, who alone has all worth and all value, it is right to adore him for who he is before we adore him for what he has done for us and what he has given us. The cross is not the means of God's love, the cross does not compel God to love us, the cross is the means by which we can worship God, the cross is the fulfillment of God's love because it was planned before the fall, for the lamb shall have the reward of his sufferings. To ascribe worth to God for his good gifts to us might be idolatry, the first stop on the road to spiritual blessing is to dwell on the loving qualities of who God is.

Adoption
We are blessed with every Spiritual blessings. MacArthur suggests that these blessings are Spiritual in their source they are from the Holy Spirit. However as Eph 1 1-14 is one sentence in the original and Paul uses 11 different ways of saying in Christ in this opening section these Spiritual blessings are for his Church and should be separated from material blessings. Paul unpacks them for us in the following verses, the first of these is adoption. We before the beginning of time were adopted into God's Family, election has nothing to do with us, God does not look down the tunnel of time before the foundation of the earth and see who is worthy of adoption. It cannot be, because none of us are worthy, none of us would decided for Christ. The idea of Adoption helps bring it out, Roman adoption wasn't of children but of worthy Adults who the wealthy family saw as someone worthy of their patronage, someone who was building a name for themselves, who would also bring honour onto the family. Yet we are are objects of mercy who should have known wrath have been adopted by the Lord of all things. We now have the right and authority to be called children of God. Because God has bought us to himself and decided to before the foundation of the world we can trust him when sad events come into our lives because God is working everything out for His glory and our good and that our best life is yet to come.

That's a synopsis <><
Stephen