All Spiritual Blessings

Eph 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:

Notice that we have in this one verse, blessed, blessed, and blessings, all variations of the same Greek word. Paul declared that our blessed Father has already blessed us with all spiritual blessings. So let’s consider the word “blessed” from Webster’s 1828 dictionary.

1. BLESS'ED, participle passive Made happy or prosperous; extolled (exalted in commendation; praised; magnified); pronounced happy.
2. BLESS'ED, adjective Happy; prosperous in worldly affairs; enjoying spiritual happiness and the favor of God; enjoying heavenly felicity.

I love that expression – “heavenly felicity!” Felicity is just great happiness or blissfulness. So heavenly felicity is you enjoying the blissfulness of heaven while yet here on earth awaiting our ‘appearing with Him in glory’ (Col. 3:4).

Thus, when Paul talks about how God has blessed us, he means God has brought us happiness, more than happiness really – He brought us inner joy. He brought joy into our lives through the deposit of His Son’s “Spirit of life” which includes His gift of eternal life and our identification with His Son, and in all of that. God has given us all these spiritual favors, advantages, privileges. He has spiritually enriched our lives. We’re spiritually prosperous. He has also made us prosperous in that He made us co-inheritors with His Son. With Christ, we are inheriting the entire universe. We will literally possess everything. We couldn’t be more prosperous in the physical sense than to be co-inheritors with Christ. Literally, the entire universe is yours. This brings us to “blessing.” Again, from Webster:

1. BLESS'ING, participle present tense Making happy; wishing happiness to; praising or extolling; consecrating by prayer.
2. BLESS'ING, noun Benediction; a wish of happiness pronounced; a prayer imploring happiness upon another.
   • Any means of happiness; a gift, benefit, or advantage; that which promotes temporal prosperity and welfare or secures immortal felicity.

I also love “Immortal felicity!” Immortal bliss. You forever feel the joys of Heaven inwardly.

God has brought us joy. He has given us a gift of eternal life. He has given us all these spiritual benefits, if you will. He’s given us this rich spiritual inner life. He’s given us advantages in that He has empowered us with the Holy Spirit, and He’s opened the door for us to put on the attributes of His Son. Our lives have been enriched because of these spiritual blessings God has given us because of the exceeding riches found in His gracious nature.

By blessed, Paul is saying our lives have been greatly enriched. We have been made to be joyous, because we’ve been given a spiritual endowment and with that spiritual advantages and privileges from God.

When you got saved, you believed that Christ died on the cross as a payment for all your sins, that He was buried and rose again the third day.

His death was the payment. His resurrection was the receipt. You believed that and you got saved. God gave you His free gift of eternal life.

It’s not like you’re the same person except now you have a ticket to Heaven. By accepting His free gift of eternal life, you accepted your identification with all that His Son accomplished at Calvary, in order for His eternal life to become a reality in you right here right now.

Thus, you are now no longer who you were because His death became your death. His resurrection became your resurrection. That identification was necessary for the victory Christ achieved on your behalf to become a reality when you got saved.

You are now a completely new creature – “behold all things new”! Everything you were in Adam is D.E.A.D. You’re now freed from the power and bondage of sin. And you are made alive unto God, and complete in Him (Col. 2:10).

You are His master workmanship. You are made able to fulfill the rightness of His ways in your life.

All this doesn’t even scratch the surface. You’ve been given so many spiritual advantages and blessings from God, it’s like walking inside a warehouse so vast and so endless, you couldn’t possibly inventory all the blessings God has given you.

Paul makes the point in Rom 8:32 that if God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? If God loved you so much that He was generous enough to give up His only Son to die for you, then wouldn’t God also be generous enough to freely give you everything? We’re given all spiritual blessings in this life, and in the life to come, as co-inheritors with His Son, we will literally inherit the entire universe with Him.

God has literally given you everything. He loves you as much as His Son. He has given you as much as His Son. He could not do more and He would not do less.

Spiritual Blessings:

So what are some of these spiritual blessings God has freely given to us? What are the spiritual blessings Paul’s talking about here?

The fun way to answer that question is to say, “Hey, I’ve got a list of 101 Spiritual Blessings that we have in Christ.” A few years ago, I went through Paul’s epistles. Every verse that could conceivably be considered a spiritual blessing, I copied and pasted them onto the list. It was like 150. Some of them were repetitious. So I combined some of them and condensed it to a catchy 101 Spiritual Blessings.

But back to this question. What are the spiritual blessings Paul’s talking about here?

I’d suggest the correct answer is seen in context.

Eph. 1:3-14 is a doxology and Paul would expand upon this very thought throughout his doxology. The spiritual blessings Paul is talking is every doctrine he mentions is his doxology from verses 3-14, and these blessings are all-encompassing.

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: ⁴ According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: ⁵ Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

⁶ To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. ⁷ In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; ⁸ Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; ⁹ Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself:

¹⁰  [so] That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: ¹¹  In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: ¹²  That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. ¹³ In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, ¹⁴ Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1:3-14 (KJV)

In vs. 4-5, Paul talks about predestination. That is about how, before the universe was created, God made all His decisions about this age of grace. God making those decisions about our lives before He created the universe these spiritual blessings were readied. How? Because as soon as God willed it, it was as good as done. For God, His will is already done the moment He wills it, which means our spiritual blessings go all the way back to before creation. We were spiritually blessed before the universe even existed because God willed it.

In Eph. 1:10, Paul goes all the way from the beginning of the eternal state, to “the dispensation of the fulness of times,” and the glory of being in those heavenly positions in our heavenly bodies for all of eternity.

So everything God the Father ever willed to do before the creation of the universe, the secret He kept to Himself about the age of grace. We have the glories of the all-sufficiency of the cross, the perfection of our standing before Him in love, and all that He is doing today, and the glory of everything to come in the eternal state. This includes everything God ever chose to do, everything God ever did, everything God is doing today, plus everything God will do for us in the future. This all spans from before the beginning of time all the way to the eternal state, those are ALL the spiritual blessings Paul is talking about - literally all-encompassing.

Notice also, Paul does not say SOME spiritual blessings but “ALL spiritual blessings IN heavenly places IN Christ.” By all, he means every single spiritual blessing. Because he mentioned heavenly places, we know that these blessings are ours for all of eternity.

Here’s a question: “How can Paul say we’ve been given ALL spiritual blessings if we do not have the miraculous spiritual gifts?”

Ever thought about that? How can Paul say we’ve been given ALL spiritual blessings even though we don’t have miraculous spiritual gifts that Jesus’ twelve apostles” displayed during the early Acts period? Because if I had the ability to heal people, I’d say that would be a real blessing.

So what’s the answer to my question? How can Paul say we’ve been given ALL spiritual blessings if we don’t have spiritual gifts?

I have two answers. The first is that these are spiritual blessings IN heavenly places. God is not doing miraculous healings IN heavenly places. All will then have spirit bodies like Jesus glorified resurrection body (cf. Phili. 3:20-21). We have the same spiritual blessings that everyone else has “IN heavenly places,” We already have spiritual blessings internally, in our spirit, where we are “one spirit” with Christ (1Cor 6:17). The second answer is that miraculous spiritual gifts of the Acts period are not the same as spiritual blessings in heaven.

Believe me, spiritual gifts come with a lot of problems and frustrations. Some of those gifts can be as much a curse as it is a blessing. Look at the story of a father asking the Lord to cast out this powerful demon out of his son. The Lord angry with the father because he wasn’t a believer. He wanted to use the Lord without believing in Him, which is about as insulting as you can be. At the end of the day, His great miracles, the miraculous feeding of thousands of people, Him raising people from the dead, all His epic miracles, did very little to move the needle of faith in the people of Israel. Spiritual gifts were not true blessings. They were double-edged swords and distractions at best. This can never be said of the inner spiritual blessings we have in Christ.

There’s no downside to what God made you in Christ. There’s no downside to having His Word and having His peace, joy, love, and grace manifest inside of you. Those are true blessings. You can never say that about spiritual gifts.

Thus, spiritual blessings means that God has brought genuine joy into our lives. He’s enriched our lives. He has given us advantages and privileges that are spiritual in nature. The enrichment from God is spiritual in nature. Another way of saying it is that “spiritual blessings” are blessings of the Spirit. These are internal advantages and privileges through the work of the Holy Spirit. That makes us wealthy in ways that no one else on planet Earth is made wealthy.

• As adapted by Arthur Licursi - from Joel Hayes, Supply of Grace.com