Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: When Paul wrote this Epistle, five and twenty or thirty years had passed by since Christ appeared to him near Damascus. They had been very wonderful years. None of them had been wasted. It is evident from his Epistles that his religious thought was constantly extending its control from one region of truth to another, as well as constantly securing a firmer hold of the truth which he had already mastered; and with the growth of his religious knowledge there was a corresponding growth of his religious life. 1. He attributes to Christ the whole development of his spiritual life. The larger knowledge of God and of the ways of God, which came to him from year to year, had come from Christ; and he felt sure that whatever fresh discoveries of God might come to him would also come from Christ. Faith, hope, joy, peace, patience, courage, zeal, love for God, love for men — he had found them all in Christ. 2. He defines the blessings with which God has blessed us in Christ as "spiritual" blessings. He does not intend simply to distinguish them from material, physical, or intellectual blessings; he means to attribute them to the Spirit of God. Those who are "in Christ" receive the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Whatever perfection of righteousness, whatever depth of peace, whatever intensity of joy, whatever fulness of Divine knowledge reveal the power of the Spirit of God in the spiritual life of man, "every spiritual blessing" has been made ours in Christ. 3. These blessings have been conferred upon us "in heavenly places" in Christ. To the apostle the visible order of human life was merely temporary, and was soon to pass away. Cities, empires, the solid earth itself, sun and stars, had for him no enduring reality. But the blessings which God has conferred upon us in Christ have their place among unseen and eternal things. 4. These blessings were ordained for the elect before the creation of the universe. The elect are those who are "in Christ"; being in Him they enter into the possession of those eternal blessings which before the foundation of the world it was God's purpose to confer upon all Christians. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: |
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