Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow
Posted by Pastor Pat on March 3, 2010
Read Ephesians 1:3-14
Throughout this short letter, Paul speaks of God’s superabundant activities flowing from Himself to His people. Such words as “rich, lavish, surpassing greatness, surpassing riches, unfathomable riches, surpasses knowledge and far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think” (1:7, 8, 18, 19; 2:4, 7; 3:8, 16, 18, 19, 20) are employed in an attempt to capture the magnitude of God’s person and work to redeem His people from sin’s debt and to adopt them as sons. All of this was written by Him into His story (1:4, 5, 9, 11, 21; 2:7, 10; 3:11).
Paul’s opening sentence reaches from verse 3 to verse 14. Here is an avalanche of descriptive words that unveil what God did in the securing of His people for Himself. Here we read of God as a tri-unity working (energy) to secure for Himself worshipping sons and daughters. Our passage speaks of God the Father blessing (v. 3), choosing (v. 4) and adopting (vv. 5, 6) trespassers into His family. We can equally note the activity of the Son to redeem slaves by forgiving debt by means of His own substitutionary and voluntary death (vv. 7, 8). It is the Son who makes known to us the mystery of their eternal purpose (vv. 9, 10), how from rebellion, division, and damnation He brings peace, harmony, and life. It is through Him and in Him all things created find the object that silences the rage from within and the loneliness that robs and destroys. What is the outcome, the inheritance of His activity? Through Him, the alienated are adopted, the rebel is restored, the indebted are pardoned and the forsaken are chosen.
