Every Spiritual Blessing

By Benjamin Sternke

On Sunday I preached on Ephesians 1:1-14, which is an unruly run-on sentence of praise to God for pouring out “every spiritual blessing” on us in Christ.  These first verses of Ephesians ground us in three inter-related realities:

• God’s story
• God’s sovereign grace
• God’s blessings

Being grounded in God’s story means that what God is doing in the world is what is really going on in history. From choosing us before creation all the way through until God brings everything to unity under Christ, God is writing a story that we get in on. We get to join God in the renewal of all things.

Being grounded in God’s grace means that we understand that God is the one who has saved us, and not because of anything we did. He did not do this because we were beautiful or good or talented, but simply because he loved us. God is the actor is almost all the verbs of this passage. We get to “hear” and “believe” – God does everything else.

Being grounded in God’s blessings means that we become increasingly aware of the magnitude of what God has done in Christ. We (right now!) have the spiritual blessings of holiness, adoption, redemption and forgiveness, knowledge of his will, the Holy Spirit as a seal, and the hope of glory that assures us that what God has started, he will finish.

Do we thank God for these things? Or are we content with nice weather or a good parking spot at the mall? Do we live with an understanding of the magnitude of our blessings in Christ?

C.S. Lewis said in a letter once, “if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Are we far too easily pleased? Do we settle for thanking God for nice weather when we could be diving into the depths of our life in Christ to discover what having every spiritual blessing really means?!? Are we selling ourselves short with our polite thank-yous when we ought to be shouting and dancing about the Spirit’s work in our lives?