Meditations on the Book of Ephesians
May 13, 2020
Every Spiritual Blessing
All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed
us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united
with Christ.
Ephesians 1:3
Read: Ephesians 1:1-3
The Letter to the Ephesians has
been rightly called the Queen of the Epistles. With flowing prose, Paul
worships and glorifies Jesus. He presents the core doctrines of what it means
to be a Christian, and what it means for Christians to come together as the
church. This letter is some of Paul’s last correspondence, and was written
while Paul was a prisoner in Rome. (The prison letters are: Ephesians,
Colossians, Philippians and Philemon.)
The letter is deep theologically,
and it will seem overwhelming at times. To help us grasp the wonder of Paul’s
teaching about God in Ephesians, I have divided the six chapters into
twenty-one meditations.
The opening lines are fairly
typical of Paul’s correspondence by stating by whom the letter is written and
to whom it is addressed, and then pronouncing a blessing on the people. From
there Paul immediately jumps into the deep end of the pool with a brief summary
statement of our right-standing with God:
“All
praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with
Christ.”
In the next passage he elaborates
on the wonder of our being in Christ.
This is a good place to pause and
ask ourselves how our life reflects the truth Paul just affirmed. Do we truly
have a sense that God has blessed us with EVERY spiritual blessing in the
heavenly realms? If so, how does this truth shape our life and our interactions
with other people each day?
If not, then let’s focus only on
the last words in that statement:
because we are united with Christ.
Our blessings from God are a gift
of His amazing grace. We are not blessed because we’re smarter and work harder
than others. We’re blessed because God has united us with Christ through grace,
by faith in our resurrected Lord.
My Takeaway: Today, let this be our goal: We will reach out and lay hold of that for
which we were laid hold of by Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:12). Today, we will
allow the truth of Ephesians 1:3 to open our heart to receive every spiritual
blessing God has prepared for us. Will you join me?
Sē’lah
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(Selah is a word that appears in the
Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my
correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about
these things.)
These
meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his
way of life. The meditations are
published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/
and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may
subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by
subscription.
Copyright © 2020 by Alex M. Knight
Publications by Alex M. Knight:
- Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.
- The second edition of First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.
Unless
otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible,
New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House
Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream,
Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
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