A Word in Season: Blessed in Christ (Ephesians 1:3)

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You may have been told to count your blessings. If that's the case, where would you begin, and with which blessings?

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For Christians, a good place to start is in Ephesians and chapter 1, where Paul, having greeted

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God's people, begins this way. Blessed be the God and Father of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

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He begins with the source of those particular blessings. It is the God and Father of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, it's God mediated to us in Christ Jesus.

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It is God reconciled. God in all his goodness, all his greatness, all his glory, all his kindness, all his tenderness, as they are manifested to us in and through the

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Lord Jesus Christ. God in his holiness, working towards us in grace,

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God's free favor and all the sweet fruits of it. So Paul blesses the

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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us, who has poured out certain goodnesses upon us, who has bestowed certain mercies upon us, who has deposited certain good things in us and has shown his love and mercy toward us.

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God has blessed us with what? With every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.

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And Paul's catalog in the rest of that chapter goes on to number out some of the particular goodnesses that God has shown to his people.

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My point, though, is that every spiritual blessing now belongs in promise and in reality to God's people.

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There is no good thing which God is withholding from us. Now, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy more of those good things, doesn't mean we can't enjoy a greater experience of those realities.

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But all that is needful for us to enjoy God as God and our

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God is there for us in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.

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That phrase in the heavenlies is a difficult one. It only occurs here in Ephesians in the

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New Testament, if I remember rightly, but it has to do with heavenly reality. It's there in the realm that is not seen, but is more real than what is seen, that these blessings are located.

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It's in Christ Jesus that they are found. And that's what makes them both secure and sweet, that they flow to us in him.

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He is the channel of every heavenly blessing, every spiritual blessing, everything that belongs to the world to come, that is already ours according to God's gift, which is already beginning to work in us and is already going to work out in our lives and beyond our deaths in this world.

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This, then, is how the believer counts his or her blessings.

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We begin with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we begin first with not the things that God has given to us in this world, but with the things that God has bestowed upon us as his beloved children.

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He has loved us from before the foundation of the world. He has set his love upon us, and now he is having given us his son, giving us every good thing in and with the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And so Paul goes on that he has chosen us in him that we should be holy.

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He's predestined us to adoption. We have redemption and ransoming through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.

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We have obtained an inheritance. We have the Holy Spirit as the down payment of the future blessings that we are already promised.

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These, then, are the blessings that every believer can number, can count out, and these are blessings which are held out to all who come to God in Christ Jesus.

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If we will trust him, if we will rely upon him, if we will confess our sins and look to him to save us, then we too will be able to count our blessings, not just in the passing things of this world, but the lasting beauties and glories of the world to come, the blessings that every