![\"PraiseBeToGod\"](\"http:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/PraiseBeToGod.png\")
<\/a>We have talked about the core message of Ephesians 1:3-14 being “praise be to God who blesses us with every spiritual blessing.” Next we are going to look at the long part of the sentence. Before that, let us visit the core sentence again and compare it with v. 3:<\/p>\n“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ<\/span><\/em>, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms<\/span><\/em> with every spiritual blessing in Christ<\/span><\/em>.” (Eph 1:3 TNIV)<\/p>\n Comparing the verse to our condensed sentence, we see that we have taken out a few phrases: “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, “heavenly realms,” and “in Christ.” While we have taken out these phrases for clarity sake, they are by no means just ornaments or embellishments to the sentence. They carry true significance! With “our Lord Jesus Christ” and “in Christ,” Paul brings to our attention that our blessing came through Jesus Christ. With “heavenly realms” he clarifies that he is talking about spiritual blessing and not earthly or material blessing (although such blessing is not bad in itself, as we have seen in Psalm 103).<\/p>\n As blog articles are meant to be short, it is impossible to go through every word and every phrase in details,\u00a0so we will leave those phrases now. Hopefully seeing the overall structure will help us in understanding of the overall flow \/ force of the sentence. One can always come back to study the details.<\/p>\n Now let us move on to the long description of the blessing we have received. Bible scholars agree that it is difficult to see a clear division as there are clauses after clauses. Different approaches have been used to provide a division.1<\/a><\/sup> Here I am using division based on content.2<\/a><\/sup> Again, we condensed the clauses for the purpose of clarity, and the long sentence can be structured this way:<\/p>\n Praise be to God who blesses us with every spiritual blessing, namely<\/span><\/p>\n God the Father chose us before the creation of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n God the Son redeemed us through His blood.<\/span><\/p>\n God the Spirit marked us to guarantee our inheritance.<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, structure by itself cannot bring us to full\u00a0appreciation of God’s blessing, so let us also take a quick look at some of the elements mentioned:<\/p>\n God loves us.<\/span><\/strong> Verse 4 says he chose us in love to be (become) holy and blameless before him.3<\/a><\/sup> The book further describes that because of his great love, God made us alive with Christ (2:4), and Paul’s prayer is that we truly grasp how deep the love of Christ is (3:18).<\/p>\n God has an overall plan for us, including plan when we make mistakes and fail.<\/span><\/strong> Note that God has planned for salvation before the creating of the world; the carrying out of the plan peaked with Christ’s death on the cross; and the plan is guaranteed to succeed by the seal of the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n God sees us as precious.<\/span><\/strong> Note how the three persons of the Triune God all participate in bringing the salvation plan to completion: the Father predestined it; the Son executed it; the Holy Spirit protected it. Although indirect, it shows how special we are before God.<\/p>\n Now, an honest question for us is, are we excited when we hear all these?<\/span> Are we praising God after reading vv. 3-14? Paul wrote this long sentence as a praise to God and a reminder for the Ephesians4<\/a><\/sup> to praise God. Most likely, the Ephesians responded with “yes, Amen, praise be to God indeed!” Are we responding the same way (and I don’t mean just reading the statement out but a genuine resonance to Paul’s call)?<\/p>\n If we are, great! If we are not, should\u00a0we not ask what seems to be the problem? \u00a0Should we not\u00a0look deep into our mind and our heart? In our next article, we will look at the background of Paul and his recipients which will perhaps provide some answer or explanation. At the same, we will have to look into ourselves too!<\/p>\n “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. \u00a0For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love \u00a0he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will– \u00a0to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. \u00a0In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace \u00a0that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, \u00a0he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, \u00a0to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment–to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. \u00a0In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, \u00a0in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. \u00a0And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, \u00a0who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession–to the praise of his glory.” (Ephesians 1:3-14 TNIV)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scripture: Ephesians 1:3-14 (text at bottom of post) We have talked about the core message of Ephesians 1:3-14 being “praise be to God who blesses us with every spiritual blessing.” Next we are going to look at the long part of the sentence. Before that, let us visit the core sentence again and compare it with v. 3: “Praise be …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[24,8,4,5,7,9],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ephesians","tag-bible-study","tag-blessed","tag-ephesians-2","tag-epistle","tag-praise","tag-thanksgiving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1204,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions\/1204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsoemarko.us\/christian\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Spiritual Blessing through Christ<\/h3>\n
Spiritual Blessing\u00a0Described<\/h3>\n
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