Blessed of the Blessed God

Blessed church!

Blessed people!

Blessed by the blessed God!

Verses 3 through 14 are one sentence. The King James Version has a period after verse 6, but that could be a comma. The Spirit, who inspired Paul, as it were takes a breath after verse 2. Then in verses 3 through 14, with one breath and without pause, the Spirit enumerates all the blessings that come to the church in Christ Jesus, her Lord. From the triune God, in Jesus Christ, his Son, and through the Spirit of Christ, one continual, unbroken stream of grace flows to the church. There are blessing upon blessing, grace upon grace, gift upon gift that flow and overflow from the eternal being of God in Christ through the Spirit to his church.

All that can be summarized as the gift of the Spirit. What does the apostle write in verse 13? He writes, “In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise.” Understand that the apostle is not making an argument about what comes first and what comes second. He is not arguing that first the Ephesians believed, and then they were sealed by the Spirit. But the apostle is emphasizing that their faith was the work of the Holy Spirit, that the work of the Holy Spirit by that faith was to assure them of their membership in Christ, and that all that is Christ’s is truly theirs, so that they are heirs of the promise of God and of eternal life. That is who the church is. She is the Spirit-filled society of those who are the blessed heirs of the promise. The church is the only society in the earth that is blessed, and she is always and in all things blessed of God, her Father. The church gathered into an institute in a certain place with her minister and her officebearers is the only blessed society in the world. From eternity in election to everlasting life in heaven, there is nothing but blessing that comes on the church.

The stream that begins in God returns to God through the Spirit who is in the church in the form of the church’s praise of God. Of God, through God, and to God are all things. This whole section in Ephesians 1 is a doxology. It is both a statement of doctrine and a doxology to the triune God. Doxology is ascription of praise to the triune God. The apostle blesses God. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blesses us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus! The glory of God is the end of all things and the end of our salvation: “That we should be to the praise of his glory” (v. 12).

The apostle through the Spirit speaks for the church of all ages, who in each age has lent her voice to the apostle’s voice to give glory to God for his grace. Not to add to God’s glory—he is perfect in praise—but as her highest privilege and honor and as the purpose of her salvation. The purpose of all things and the purpose of the church’s blessing is not to get the church saved but that the saved church blesses God.

We do not bless God as he blesses us. He blesses us, who are empty, by filling us with his goodness and grace. We bless him by ascribing praise to God out of the fullness that he has given to us. We add nothing to him and give nothing to him that he does not already have, including all praise. We merit nothing with him, and we do nothing for him. We take of his fullness even when we praise him.

If we recognize that we are blessed of God and that alone in the earth the church stands as a blessed organization while the rest of world perishes in darkness, then we will give glory to God and bless his name. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ!

The word blessing means a good word. When God blesses his church, he speaks a good word to his church. God does all things by his word. And his word toward his church is a word of grace and blessing.

We must connect that with the gospel. In verse 13 the apostle writes that all this blessing of God came on the Ephesians after they had heard the word of truth, the gospel of their salvation. Do not think that they were not blessed from eternity. They were a blessed people from all eternity. Yet the word of truth came to them to announce these blessings that were theirs in Christ and to cause them to know and to believe in Christ.

We often speak about preaching the truth, but that never may be understood as preaching some true things. It is true that we must love the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds, souls, and strength; it is true that we may not have any other gods before Jehovah, our God; it is true that we may not commit adultery, murder, and steal; but that is not the word of truth. The word of truth is the gospel. The gospel of our salvation is the preaching of Christ as very God and very man, who was crucified because of our transgressions and raised because of our justification. The word of truth is the preaching of the truth of our unconditional salvation by grace alone through Christ alone by faith alone. The truth of God is that God in his faithfulness to his covenant promise to save his people from their sins and to bring them to heavenly glory fulfilled that promise in Christ. When God speaks Christ to us, when God sends the gospel to us and speaks in that gospel to us, and when God assures us by the Holy Spirit that everlasting righteousness and eternal life are ours, then he blesses us. The coming of the gospel, the preaching of the gospel, and the effectual working of the gospel in us is the good word that God speaks.

Never may we separate our blessedness from the gospel of Christ. Where Christ Jesus is preached, there and there alone is the blessing of God. I do not mean that just because the gospel comes that there is a blessing of God to all who hear it. The gospel itself is the good word of God and the word of truth. The gospel itself is good. Yet the coming of the gospel is no mark of God’s favor toward all to whom the gospel comes because it also hardens and cuts off those whom God eternally appointed to that end. Rather, when God blesses us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, those blessings come by the gospel, the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation. That gospel is the word of God by which God speaks for the blessedness, grace, and glory of his church.

Because that word of God in the gospel is the word of God, it is effectual to bestow what God speaks. God’s blessing is never an ineffectual wish. God’s blessing is never that God desires to bestow a gift if a man is willing to receive it. But God’s blessing is a powerful and divine word. As he spoke in the beginning and it was done, and as he commanded in the beginning and it stood fast, so God commands a blessing to his church. Being the powerful word of God, God’s blessing is an effectual word. Never does the word of God come and then return to him void. Always that word of God comes, and that word of God creates the blessedness of the church.

That is why the apostle says that God “hath blessed.” This surely points to the fact that the blessedness of the church is an eternal word of God and thus an eternal reality for the church. She is always blessed. Never was she cursed. And too “hath blessed” emphasizes the effectualness of God’s good word to his church. That blessedness is an accomplished fact. It had been accomplished in eternity. It was manifested at the cross and resurrection of Christ. It is a reality in the hearts of God’s people because of his powerful word that never waits on man. God is constantly blessing his church. He constantly speaks that good word of grace, and that word of grace constantly accomplishes God’s will and creates God’s blessedness in the church.

The apostle says that God blesses us with all “spiritual” blessings in heavenly places in Christ. The word “spiritual” defines the character of the blessings of the church. They are spiritual. 

The apostle calls the blessings spiritual, first, because they consist in the gift of the Spirit of Christ and heavenly life in him. He is the earnest of our inheritance; thus with the gift of the Spirit comes also all our inheritance that God promised to us.

The apostle calls the blessings spiritual, second, because he would have us acknowledge that our blessedness consists in being chosen heirs of God’s kingdom and possessing heavenly and everlasting life. 

By the word “spiritual” the apostle also means all the goodness of God’s grace toward us. Nothing comes to us except in the grace of God because he is favorably inclined toward us and loves us. It is true that we cannot eat a scrap of bread or take a sip of water in the creation without being robbers and thieves of God except that the bread and water come to us in the grace of God.

Wherein, then, does our blessedness from God consist? Is the blessedness of God in the abundance of earthly things, in the abundance of houses, cars, clothes, and the luxuries of this life? When you eat and drink and enjoy the good things of the earth, are those things the blessedness of God? Is the blessing of God in building wealth and even generational wealth? Does the kingdom of heaven come in the increase of earthly things?

If that is so, then there are many more blessed people in the world than in the church, and the world possesses far more of God’s blessings than does the church. For the world eats and drinks and is merry with far greater abundance than the church. But that is no blessing to them. What does the psalmist say concerning the abundance of the wicked? “Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction” (Ps. 73:18). The increase of the wicked is nothing but a perch on the slippery ledge of a steep cliff from which God casts the wicked down into destruction.

So even when we eat and drink, the blessing of God is his grace. He gives us everything in his favor. The blessing of God is spiritual. It consists in our salvation, the forgiveness of our sins, the cleansing of our hearts from the power of sin, our inheritance in heaven, the promise of eternal life, the assurance of our salvation, being partakers of the riches of Christ Jesus, and being the objects of the favor and wonderful grace of God. That is our blessedness.

The apostle emphasizes that our blessedness is spiritual, third, to teach us that our blessedness consists in our new life in Christ, the life in heaven for which we hope. Our earthly life is nothing but a continual death, a vale of tears, and the valley of the shadow of death. Our life is hid with Christ in heaven. We live and move in this world, but we learn to walk as pilgrims and strangers here below. That is why the apostle adds the words “in heavenly places.” Our blessedness consists in our permanent rest in heaven, in that heavenly life promised in Christ when all tears will be dried away. We have the earnest of the heavenly life in the Spirit; to the perfection of that life in heaven, God draws us irresistibly.

But still more the apostle would have us understand that our blessedness from God consists in the spiritual gifts of his grace in heavenly places so that when we suffer in the world, we do not view ourselves as not a blessed people. When the world and false church despise us, cast us out, mock and ridicule us, take away our places in the earth, and make our lives in the earth oppressive and hard, we content ourselves with the spiritual riches of God’s grace: these things that are so grand, so incomprehensibly glorious, and so high that we endure every suffering for their sake.

Can we count all God’s goodness to us? Daily he loads us with his benefits. Daily he forgives our innumerable sins and our sinful natures that are as God-hating today as when we were born. Daily he washes us with his word from guilt and pollution. Daily he assures us of our salvation. Daily he comforts us with his Spirit. Daily he leads us, guides us, protects us, and preserves us from all evil. Daily he corrects us, rebukes us, and exhorts us.

All spiritual blessings!

The eternal love of the Father for all his children dear!

Election and predestination!

Redemption from sin!

The forgiveness of sins!

The adoption of children!

Peace with God!

The knowledge of the mystery of God’s will!

Holiness and blamelessness!

An inheritance in heaven, a place reserved for us!

Our faith!

God spared not his own Son for us!

Christ abides in us by his Spirit!

God’s benefits are more than we can count!

Grace for grace!

God blesses us with all spiritual blessings “in Christ.” All our blessings come from God, the overflowing fountain of all good, and they are mediated to us in Christ Jesus. He is the channel by means of which all God’s blessings come to us. He is the head, and we are the body that draws out of him. He is the vine, and we are the branches engrafted into him, and his life courses through us. We only know God as the God of all blessing and grace through Jesus Christ. God has revealed himself as the God and Father of Jesus Christ. In Christ God has given us his image and revelation. Through Christ God has revealed himself to be our God and Father for Christ’s sake.

In Christ God has accomplished all our blessedness. Christ Jesus our Lord came down from heaven and became man. He bore all our curse because he took all our sins upon himself. He took all the sins because of which we deserve only to be cast off from God. The sins on account of which we deserve not blessing but cursing were imputed to Christ, and he became responsible for them. Because of our union with Christ—he is the head, and we are the body—he could and he did take our sins and cursing on himself. By his death on the cross, he took away our curse because he made satisfaction to God. By Christ’s death on the cross, he merited with God every blessing of salvation.

Christ also arose from the dead and ascended into heaven. In the heavenly places Christ dwells. All our blessedness, every grace, and all goodness are stored up in Christ. From heaven God bestows that upon us through the gospel, and by the effectual working of the Spirit of Christ is all our blessedness.

According as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world!

Blessed in Christ!

Because we were chosen in Christ!

At the heart of the doctrine of the church and of the blessedness of the church stands the truth of election. The apostle throughout this whole section of Ephesians 1 piles word upon word to describe election: predestination, the good pleasure of God’s will, the mystery of his will, his good pleasure, his purpose, and the counsel of his own will.

We cannot understand our blessedness, the church’s blessedness, or the blessedness of the blessed God and Father of Jesus Christ apart from the truth of election.

Many do not want to hear about election. Election is an offensive doctrine to them. If they do not teach the lie that election is God’s choice of those who are willing to believe, they try to bury election so that it is never mentioned. They hate it because election takes away man’s willing and working as the explanation for man’s blessedness.

No small part of the offense at the truth of election is because election cannot be preached apart from reprobation. Those two are twins. Together and never separated, they explain the blessing and cursing of God, the course of the gospel, and the effect of the gospel—whether that gospel comes and saves and blesses or whether that gospel comes and hardens and condemns. Why did the Lord confine his word to one small family for hundreds of years? When the gospel came to Israel, why did many not believe, so that even in Israel many perished, unblessed by the Lord? Why does the gospel go here and not there, come to this people and not to that people? Why did the gospel come to us in order to bestow on us and our children all the blessing of God?

Election and reprobation explain all that.

Election and reprobation together constitute the one decree of predestination. In eternity before the creation of the world, God determined the eternal destinies, the blessing and the cursing, of all his rational and moral creatures. In eternity God had mercy on whom he will have mercy, and the rest he determined to harden. When men complain against that, they summon God into judgment and would measure God by their own standard. But God is the only standard of what is right and wrong. God cannot be brought into judgment by men.

20. Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

21. Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? (Rom. 9:20–21)

Yes, God is God!

Let God be God!

But those who prefer that God would show mercy upon all do not even grant to God the freedom that they grant to men. For what rich man is there who out of his own goodness may not decide to give a gift to some poor man? And if a rich man decides to give a gift to a poor man, may the other poor men complain and say that the rich man is obligated to treat them in the same way? The rich man may do what he wants with his own things. Even more so may the Lord of the universe, who is absolutely and sovereignly free, who does not respect persons but has respect only to the goodness of his own being, and who has mercy on whom he will have mercy.

The opposite of election is reprobation. There is no election without reprobation. In election God appointed men to eternal life. In reprobation God appointed men to condemnation. We must understand that God did not reprobate men because men were sinners. Then no men would be saved, but all would be reprobate. Rather, as with election, God reprobated because that is what pleased him and that is the way in which he chose to reveal his righteous severity. God did not will, desire, or purpose the salvation of all men. Just as in election, the love of God moved him to elect his people, so in reprobation the divine hatred of God moved him to reprobate.

Where is that taught today? No one talks about God’s hatred. But that belongs to the revelation of God. God says with regard to Esau that he hated Esau, and so implied in scripture is that God also hated Pharaoh. That is why God reprobated them. But the god of the church world today is a god whose only virtue is love. But therein also that church world misses the unique character of the church of God as the only society in the world that is blessed. The church is the only society in the world that is blessed because it is the company of the predestinated whom God willed to bless from all eternity.

In election God chose that blessed people for himself. The Greek word for election means to choose out for oneself, a choice motivated by love for the one chosen. God chose for himself. That he chose for himself teaches that this act of God was motivated purely by God’s good pleasure and love. Election is an act of love. Because God set his affection on some, because they were precious to him, and because he willed their blessedness, he chose them.

When the apostle says that God blesses us according as he has chosen us, then the apostle ascribes to election the obtaining of all the blessedness that we receive. Whatever good there is in us, whatever faith, righteousness, holiness, obedience, repentance, hope, joy, love, and all the rest of the blessings of God, election obtained that for us. If we regard ourselves as the authors of anything that is good in us, we make ourselves robbers of God and his glory, and we turn that good into the worst kind of evil. Oh, do not say to me, “But we are rational and moral creatures!” I know that is true. God always operates according to the rational and moral nature of his creatures. So we can rightly be said to believe and repent and obey. Yet that is all God’s work in us. If it is true of all men that in God they live and move and have their being, that is so much truer in the matter of the blessedness of his church. Without God we can do nothing. Such is the relationship between election and our blessedness that election is not only the eternal appointment of God’s elect to the blessings, but election itself also brings those things to the elect and ensures that the elect receive all the good that God determined from eternity to give to them.

Thus we may not forget that when the apostle says “according as he hath chosen us,” he is interested not only in describing the source and origin of the church’s blessedness but also the manner in which God bestows that blessedness on the church. Just as she is chosen unconditionally and without her willing and working, so also her blessedness comes on her unconditionally and without her willing and working. The blessedness of the church comes on her in the same way that God chose and appointed the church to salvation. It was without her aid! It is not that God is willing to bless the church if the church is obedient, repentant, prayerful, and industrious, but the blessedness of the church comes on the church as sovereignly and efficaciously as God chose the church. Or, to put that another way, if the church must do something, anything, to receive the blessedness of God—if she must repent first, believe first, obey first—then it must also be true that her election is because she repented first, believed first, or obeyed first. But because her election is without conditions, so her blessedness is without conditions.

The cause of God’s election is not to be found in ourselves. The text emphasizes this fact when it says that God chose us “before the foundation of the world.” In the language of Romans 9:13, before the children had done good or evil, God said, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” Nothing in us moved God to choose us. It was an entirely free choice on his part. He did not choose some because of anything in those who were chosen. He was moved only by his own love and good pleasure. He is the independent God. He does not depend on man for anything that he chooses or does. Those who would have God choose man because man accepted God’s offer of salvation have an idol god who is dependent upon man. But God is independent in all that he does.

We are elected in Christ. For God to look at us in eternity, he had to look at us in Christ; he had to look at us as we are saved, justified, sanctified, and glorified in Christ. Christ was first in the counsel of God. Christ is the elect one. If all our blessedness is in Christ, and all that blessedness comes on us because of election, that is because we were elected in Christ. If we can imagine election as a book—and we can do that because the Bible calls election the book of life—then our names are written in that book. But the book is Christ. First, God loved Christ and chose Christ. He is the book. And we are written in Christ in that book. Or, if you prefer, Christ is the head. God loved Christ and chose him before all. And we are chosen as his body, the church, the fullness of him who fills all things.

Because we were chosen in Christ, election forms the church. That is the very essence of the church. The church is visible in her membership, doctrine, confession, offices, sacraments, and discipline. The church manifests herself as an institute in the world. But what is the church at her essence, and what explains the existence of an institute? Not every member of the church as she is manifested in the institute is church, for mingled in the church are always the devil’s tares, the dead branches, and a company of hypocrites who are not church at all. The church as to her essence—always and in every way that we speak about the church—is the elect of God. The church is the whole company of the elect whom God willed to bless with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus and whom God does bless according to that decree of election.

The church is chosen for the purpose that she be holy and without blame before God in love.

What glory God willed for us!

That we would be holy and without blame!

That is perfection. God willed perfection for us. That is hard to imagine when we look at ourselves and all our sins, and we see how much in us is unholy and blameworthy. We can hardly imagine that God willed that we be holy and without blame before him. Understand what that means. It means that we stand before the holy and righteous God, that the holy and righteous God—whose eyes search and know all things and before whom all are as an open book and before whom there is nothing hid—finds nothing in us to blame, but all is good.

How are we to understand that, if there is yet so much in us that is blameworthy? First, we have to understand that we are in Christ. God looked at us in eternity in Christ, and God always looks at us in Christ. We were in Christ in election, and we are in Christ by the Spirit of grace and through faith. We are in Christ and never can be viewed outside him. So we are absolutely blameless in Christ. His righteousness is become ours. God’s approval of Christ, in which he said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” is our approval (Matt. 3:17).

Also true of us is that we are holy and without blame before God in principle according to the work of regeneration. This is what God gives to us. He operates in our hearts, takes out our old, stony hearts and places in us hearts of flesh; he softens the hard, opens the closed, quickens the will, and changes us in the very depths of our beings. What God wills, he actually works in us. This is the glory of the church and the believer: They are holy. They are holy now. They are holy and blameless before God now. The work of regeneration in us is small as yet. That is why there is so much that is still blameworthy in us; but according to the work of regeneration, we are holy in God’s sight. We are that by faith alone, on account of God’s blessing alone, according to God’s election alone. What God wills, he actually performs in us. He spoke in eternity, “I will that these be holy and without blame before me,” and that he actually accomplishes, cleansing our hearts by the sprinkling of the blood of Christ by the Holy Spirit of promise.

The outworking of that wonder of grace is the wonder that we walk in love.

I believe the words “in love” apply to the church and the believer, to you and to me. I suppose that I would have no problem with the words being applied to what follows, so that we understand the words to say “in love having predestinated us,” meaning that love motivated God to choose his people.

But I believe the Spirit’s true sense is different. The words “in love” apply to us. What is holy and blameless except love? Against love there is no law. True holiness and blamelessness consist in the life of love—love for God and love for the neighbor. The believer is blameless in that for two reasons. First, he walks in love as justified in Christ and thus is utterly blameless. He is not justified by his walk of love. He is justified in Christ by faith alone wholly apart from a walk of love. And as the justified he walks in love. Second, the walk of love is blameless because against love there is no law. Who but the ignorant and unbelieving would blame that? I understand many criticize and blame walking in the way of true love. They call it harsh and unloving and hateful, for the way of love is heavenly and spiritual and totally foreign to these carnal critics! The way of love surely is antithetical to the way of the world’s wisdom. Love does things that the world with its carnal love would never do. That criticism of the heavenly and spiritual way of love by those carnal Christians only shows the malice that is in their own hearts toward the good. God does not blame love and the way of love, which is so foreign to this world and which elicits such harsh criticism from the world. Love and the way of love are good in his sight, for love and the way of love are of God.

And when the apostle says that the end of our blessing and of God’s election is our walk in love, he warns hypocrites in the church what is pleasing to God. The hypocrite always is satisfied with a few outward ceremonies. He puts on a few religious airs, says a few spiritual things, talks the right talk, makes a shallow outward show of holiness, and he does that in front of the church because he seeks the praise of men and not of God. But away from the church and comfortable among those who are likeminded, the hypocrite becomes himself. He lives full of envy, malice, and hatred toward the truth, the church, and the servants of the Lord. Such hypocrites are given to cruelty, treachery, lying, deceit, malignity, and loose living, and they give free reign to their evil lusts. They suppose that all is papered over with a suit, the right church membership, and some holy-sounding words. Oh, how such men can talk about predestination, probably better than you and I can. But Paul cuts off all that wickedness and says that God’s will is our holiness and blamelessness, which do not consist in outward things but in the Spirit-
motivated life of love out of faith unfeigned!

Election cannot lead to carelessness in the believer, for it is simply not God’s will. It is God’s will from all eternity that we be holy and without blame before him in love. And what he wills, he actually works in us.

And you have to say that the apostle looks all the way to the end of our salvation and what we will be in heaven. Now we are holy and without blame in principle. There is so much that is unclean, unholy, and blameworthy in our flesh. But such will not be true in heaven. There we will be perfect. The old man of sin will be dead and buried, and we will be transformed into the very image of God in Jesus Christ.

This is chief among love’s things: That we bless God! The chief sacrifice that God requires is that we acknowledge him and all his benefits to us. Why are we found in the earth; why does God cherish and nourish us with an inexhaustible stream of goodness; why does he astound us with so many benefits? That we thank and praise him. We do not profit him at all. Always this is the truth of our lives before God: When we have done all that is our duty to do, we are unprofitable servants! We do not render to God again what he gave to us, and we render no benefit to him. He does not give to us of his grace so that we can become mercenaries, merchants, and traders with God, bargaining with him or working for a reward from him.

He gives us all so that we thank him. Does not the psalm say that? 

12. What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?

13. I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord. (Ps. 116:12–13)

That is all we are called to do. Our entire duty and calling is to thank God, to acknowledge that all that we are and all that we have we owe to him and that we are bound to his overflowing goodness for everything. And even in this we must thank God that we might thank him!