Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Ephesians 1:3
A few months ago, I had the sad duty and high honour of speaking to the large gathering at my dear mother’s funeral. My responsibility was to speak well of her, and I had no lack of good material, from my own memory and from the memories and records of the rest of her large family. Although I had only a few minutes, I am sure I could have gone on for hours, there was so much to recall and relate. As I look at the program for the funeral today, I notice that it gives my name as one of the ‘officiants’. My task was to deliver the eulogy. And that’s a good word, because ‘eulogy’ means ‘to speak well of’. It is also the Greek word for one of the wonderful words in our text today: ‘blessings’.
Our text tells us the source of the blessings referred to here: the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here I am reminded of the opening words to a lovely old hymn written by Robert Robinson in the 1700s: ‘Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, Tune my heart to sing Thy grace; Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise’. Truly, all of our blessings come from a loving and bountiful God, Who delights in blessing us. He has the power and the incentive to pour out His blessings, because as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, He delights to bless those who are in His Son.
Our text also tells us the scope of the blessings: all spiritual blessings. It is impossible for our feeble and finite minds to grasp the scope of these words. But they go so far beyond what those who proclaim the so-called prosperity gospel in our day. Those people are taken up with the temporary little things of this fleeting world. But God is here proclaiming His provision of blessings that will flood our souls here and for all eternity, blessings that lose none of their power and glory even as the temporal blessings wither and decay. God has great blessings for us, and He withholds none of them from us, even as he unfolds them to us from His Word.
Our text also tells us of the sphere of the blessings: in heavenly places, or in the heavenlies. Although you and I are still pent in human flesh and bound to this earthly realm, we have been granted a citizenship in Heaven, and an eternal relationship with the God of Heaven. And God fully expects and enables us to appreciate and enjoy those blessings today as well as into all eternity, just as He granted the children of Israel to eat the old corn of the land at Gilgal before they entered into the land that He had promised them (Joshua 5:11).
Thank God for the spiritual blessings He gives us; we’ll look at some of these blessings as presented in the first chapter of Ephesians over the next several days. – Jim MacIntosh