Blessed [be] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ;
Ephesians does not open with instruction. It opens with praise. Paul looks at what God has already done for believers, before they had done anything at all. The verse raises three questions: who blesses, what is the blessing, and where is it held?
Paul does not simply say "God." He names Him by a relationship to Christ that has two sides. One writer points to the words Christ spoke before He returned to heaven.
Now Christ stands in two relationships with God, His Father. He is a perfect man before His God; He is a Son with His Father. We are to share both these relationships. He announced this to His disciples before He went back to heaven. His own words unfold it in full: "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." This precious — this priceless truth is the foundation of the apostle's teaching here. He considered God in this double aspect: as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, and as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our blessings are connected with these two titles.
That title also sets the measure of the blessing.
Notice the language. It is God acting in this special manner of relationship. He means to bless the believer as He blesses Christ. That is, not as Christ is blessed as a divine person — that would be blasphemy. Here we have what is given to Him as man in heaven. "The glory that you have given me I have given to them" is a related truth. He means to have men in heaven along with Jesus. It is not enough for Him to have that blessed glorified man there alone. He gives Jesus companions.
The verb is past tense. Nothing here is pending, and nothing depends on how the believer performs.
It is not blessing conditional on obedience, as Israel's was in the land. It is blessing in Christ. God brings us into it, now that Christ has accomplished all that the Father gave Him to do... Who has blessed us! And with EVERY spiritual blessing! And in Christ! How complete! How certain! How secure!
Spiritual blessings are not vague feelings. The same writer names them, and sets them beside what God promised Israel.
God promised that if they obeyed, He would bless them in their basket and their store, in the fruit of their body, their cattle, and the ground. Their blessings were to be material... There are no such promises as these to the Church. The Church exists because of union with a risen and exalted Saviour, so its blessings are spiritual. God blesses the Church with redemption, forgiveness, acceptance, adoption, knowledge of His mind and will, joint heirship with Christ, and the guarantee of the Spirit — these, and blessings like them.
"In the heavenly places" is a location, not a mood. It separates the Christian's portion from Israel's earthly one.
The expression "heavenly places" is in contrast with the portion of the Jews, who were blessed in earthly places. If we look at Ezekiel 36, it may bring out more clearly the character of our blessing as distinct from theirs. "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean… You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God." So there are spiritual mercies mixed in with their blessings. But they will be in the land of their fathers. God is going to make that good to the generation to come.
The last phrase explains why any of this belongs to us.
Our blessings are spiritual in character. Their sphere is heaven. And they are "in Christ" — ours only because we are identified with our great and glorious Representative and Head. They match a further truth. In an eternity past God marked us out for a place of infinite blessedness in an eternity to come, "holy and blameless before Him."
None of this can be seen or felt, so many dismiss it. One writer answers that faith, not feeling, takes hold of it.
Suppose you told most of God's children on earth, "You are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." They would think it wild enthusiasm or mysticism... They have no idea that it is a present fact true of all Christians. Though we are not yet displayed in it, it is not a question of feeling. May we believe it! Feelings may deceive me, but faith never can.
- Source — God is both the God and the Father of the Lord Jesus, and the believer shares both relationships.
- Measure — He blesses the believer as He blesses Christ the risen man, never as Christ is blessed as a divine person.
- Extent — every spiritual blessing, already given, not one held back and not one hanging on obedience.
- Sphere — heavenly places, not earthly places; the contrast with Israel's promised land keeps the two hopes distinct.
- Response — believe it before you feel it, and the praise that opens the verse becomes your own.
according as he has chosen us in him before [the] world's foundation, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love;
God dates His choice of us before anything existed at all. He also names its aim in three short words: holy, blameless, in love. So on what ground did He choose us, and what was He after?
The words "in him" carry the weight of the verse. Our actual history began somewhere else entirely.
But in blessing us in this wonderful way God has acted in keeping with something His mind did in a past eternity. Before the foundation of the world He chose us in Christ. Note those two words, "in Him," for they, or their equivalents, occur again and again in this chapter. As a matter of history each of us was in Adam before we were in Christ. But before Adam was created, God saw us as in Christ, and on that basis He chose us.
This answers the objection that rises the moment anyone measures himself against the standard of the verse.
You say, I am not holy. But look — is not He holy, and without blame, and in love before God? Oh yes. Well, I am in Him, that is the point.
Scripture uses two different phrases about God's plans, and the difference is deliberate.
"From" the world's founding does not mean the same as "before" it. Let us respect and learn from the very words of God. Think of the saints who are kept from yielding to the Beast at the close of the age. Their names were written from the foundation of the world in the slain Lamb's book of life… But the phrase used in Eph. 1:4, as in 1 Peter 1:20, is pointedly different.
Some read the timing as the proof that grace is sovereign. One writer argues the point lies elsewhere.
God's choosing us before the foundation of the world is not what proves the sovereignty of grace by the time of the choosing. Suppose God were to choose us now — it would be just as sovereign an act as doing it then. The practical truth brought out in His choosing us before the foundation of the world is this: it proves we have nothing whatever to do with the world. Before its very foundation He chose us. We have nothing to do with the world but to get through it… God settled our living place with Himself before the world ever existed.
Each of the three terms has its own ground, and none of them describes what we are by nature.
If we are to be before God, we must have a suited nature. Could the natural man be at home with God, and find pleasure where all is holy? Impossible, it is opposed to his very being. And supposing it were possible to be before Him with a conscience not at rest, where would be the joy? How blessed, then, that we are to be "holy and without blame before Him in love!" "Holy," because we have His nature, a nature that finds its only portion in God. "Without blame," because of Christ's work; for who shall lay anything to our charge? "In love," because His love flows always into our hearts, and back again to Him its source.
The standard is not an abstract one; it is a description of God Himself.
It is wonderful that these three things should be said of us — that we should be "holy and without blame before Him in love." For these three things mark the blessed God Himself. Holy in His character; blameless in His ways; and love in His nature.
One writer reaches for a family picture to explain the phrase "before Him."
"Before Him" — what an expression of His delight. Just as a mother puts her child out before her eyes so she may gaze on it and be satisfied in her love, so has He set us before Him in Christ.
A note on translation: the ESV joins "In love" to verse 5. The writers quoted here read it with verse 4, as words describing the saints.
The two verses are not saying the same thing twice.
Thus the blessing of verse 5 surpasses the blessing of verse 4. There it was sovereign choice that by grace makes us suited to Himself: here it is God's good pleasure that predestines believers to the relationship of sons.
Every honest reader will see how little he matches this verse today.
In the saint now there is much that is very unsaintly indeed, unlike God and His beloved Son. There is pride, vanity, foolishness, and all kinds of evil ways and thoughts that never flow from Christ… But for all this, are they not saints? God forbid they should not be. And yet this is the steady thought of God. How can that be? Because God looks at us here according to what He gives us in Christ, and nothing less.
- Chosen — in Him. God did not choose us and then place us in Christ. Before Adam existed, He saw us in Christ, and that is the ground of the choice.
- Chosen — before. "Before the foundation of the world" is not the same as "from the foundation of the world." Scripture keeps the two phrases apart on purpose.
- Chosen — for His nature. Holy, blameless, in love describe God Himself; He chose a people who would answer to what He is.
- Chosen — for His gaze. "Before Him" is the heart of the verse: God sets us out in front of Himself as the objects of His delight.
- Chosen — and seen in Christ. Real faults remain in every believer, yet God looks at us according to what He gives us in Christ, and nothing less.