DOES THE BIBLE REALLY SAY...

GOD WILL NOT BLESS ME IF THERE IS SIN IN MY LIFE?

Paul states clearly in Ephesians 1:3 that God ‘has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.’

Let’s look carefully at this verse. There are three indisputable facts:

[1] ‘he has blessed us.’ When he wrote this, Paul used the perfect tense, which means that God blessed us at some point of time in the past and we remain in that state of blessedness. It is a past action with on-going, permanent, present effect. It is not a one-off temporary action the effect of which was once ours but now is not. This is something that has already happened, that is still in place. It is already ours, and remains ours; we are not waiting till we die to receive it.

[2] ‘he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing’. In other words, we’ve already got the whole salvation package. We are prohibited from saying ‘there’s more!’ Every spiritual blessing that God has for us is already ours. (Verses 4 to 14 itemize some of them).

[3] ‘he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ’. This package of spiritual blessings which is already ours is totally independent of our personal performance. They are ours because of our faith union with Jesus Christ which is here conveyed by the words ‘in Christ.’ These spiritual blessings cannot be separated from Jesus Christ. If we are united to Christ we have not only Christ but every spiritual blessing as well, because, in a very real sense, he is the blessings. None of us can say ‘I have only Christ, while that other, more spiritual, Christian has Christ and all of God’s blessings’. Just as the Old Testament believers affirmed ‘the Lord is my ... salvation’ (Ps 27:1; see also Exodus 15:2; Psalm 62:6) so the New Testament states that Christ ‘has become for us wisdom from God - that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption’ (1 Corinthians 1:30). As Jesus himself said ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty’ (John 6:35).

There is another fact here, which some might dispute:

[4] ‘... in the heavenly realms’. Some might say this means that these blessings are ours, but we won’t enjoy them until we get to heaven. In that case Paul would be wrong to infer in the following verses that there are blessings which we already have. Rather than indicate the time and place that we can expect to enjoy these blessings, these words indicate the source and origin of these blessings. In the Greek text ‘in the heavenly realms’ comes after ‘every spiritual blessing’. What Paul is saying is that in Christ God has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing that heaven has to offer us, and that we remain in that state of blessedness.

The truth of this verse is affirmed by Christ’s words in John 5:24: ‘I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.’ Like Ephesians 1:3 the verb in this last clause is in the perfect tense: something has happened in the past and the results of that are effective in the present. Those who believe have already crossed over from death to life, and they’re still there. We are not waiting till we ‘go to heaven’ to enjoy God’s blessings. They are already ours, in Christ. And they do not depend on us. They were given to us in Christ when we were still sinners (Romans 5:8); we are not at risk of losing them because of our present sins. Our lives, with all their faults and failures, are ‘hidden with Christ in God’ (Colossians 3:3).

(Note: Questions about physical blessings will be addressed in later meditations.)