God has blessed His people with every spiritual blessing in Christ. To get a handle on how great this is, let’s briefly backtrack to the Old Testament laws and the Kingdom of God in the Sermon on the Mount.
The OT laws were pretty straightforward. They were not impossible to keep. You did not have to be spiritual to keep them. Do not murder. When you build a rooftop, put a fence around it so people don’t fall off. No kidnapping. When you sin, bring the best from the flock to the priests and sacrifice it and your sin will be covered. Keep this feast on this day of this month. The laws are straightforward and mostly about what to do and not to do.
But then Jesus comes along and upsets the applecart (and the moneychangers’ tables). The Jews were pretty situated around their laws and doing their best with them and the many extra traditions added by the scribes and Pharisees.
Jesus’ central message was, “The Kingdom of God is here. Repent and believe the gospel.” How did Jesus convince them to repent (change their minds) about their self-righteous relationship with God? In His Sermon on the Mount, He took the OT laws and raised the bar. He showed that the laws did not govern just the outward acts but the inward.
For example, if you murder someone, it will be bad for you. But if you assassinate their character, like saying, “You fool!” then you are in danger of hellfire. (Matthew 5:21–22.)
Also, Jesus says the merciful will be blessed with mercy. (Matthew 5:7.) What about all the times we weren’t merciful? Looks like we are doomed if God is going to treat us as we treated others. I mean, when we make a mistake, we excuse ourselves pretty quickly. But when someone else does, we shake the head, glower, and point the finger.
So Jesus elevated the standard regarding being righteous according to your own good deeds. He is pressing us to re-evaluate our standing with God. We may be compromising with sin. We might have reinterpreted John 3:16 to read, “God so loved the world, that whoever is nice and polite will not perish.” We’ve lowered our standards so that almost anything goes. The Sermon on the Mount is a wakeup call. Living by external ethics is not the way to go.
Now we come to Ephesians 1:3 and find a complete turnabout. How did we get from wholesale condemnation to absolute blessing? Did we miss a memo? Yes — and Romans 5–6 is the message that explains this transition.
In Romans 5–6 we learn of the basis for these blessings that belong to every child of God. When we were born, we were in Adam. That means we share what Adam had. Adam sinned against God; we share that sin. Adam disobeyed God. That tendency to disobey was passed on to us — we know this well: “I don’t care what the Bible says. I will do what I want.” Adam died and passed death on to all of us, so we are all dying.
Then Jesus, the Last Adam, came, died for our sins on the cross, was buried, and rose from the dead. He sat down at the right hand of the Father and released the Holy Spirit. He has become the head of a new humanity, just as Adam was the representative of us all.
When we believed in Jesus, trusting Him to save us from our sins, then the old us in Adam was lowered into the tomb with Jesus, to trouble us no more. The new us was put in Christ. From that position in Christ we were raised to new life with Him. There the magic takes place.
While we were in Adam, Adam passed his disobedience to us. But now in Christ, Jesus passes His perfect obedience to us. Adam passed death to us. Now Jesus passes eternal life to us. Adam passed guilt to us. Jesus removes that guilt and declares us righteous — we have the righteousness of God in Him.
When we were born, we were in Adam. When we believed in Jesus, we were born again and are now in Christ. And that brings us forward to Ephesians 1:3.
We have all these blessings because we are a new creation in Christ. The laws no longer rule over us. The old things are passed away and all is new. Now it is all of grace. Now God freely gives us everything we need apart from following rules, just as Jesus received everything He needed from the Father to fulfill His ministry on earth.
What blessings does this verse include, exactly? Here are just a few.
1:6. We are accepted in the Beloved. With us in Christ, God accepts us freely, just as He accepted His Son. This acceptance is by His grace. He freely bestows it upon us through no merit of our own. He accepts us based on Christ’s perfect work, not ours.
1:7a. In Him we have redemption. God places us in Christ and tells us, “You are mine.” That’s what redemption results in. God paid the blood price and bought us off the slave block for Himself. God said to Jesus at His baptism, “You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Those words are now directed to us in Christ!
1:7b. In Him we have all sins forgiven. Don’t miss this important point. First John 1:9 tells us that for the believer, the forgiveness of sins comes by confessing them. To confess means to say the same thing, to call it what God calls it: “Oh no, what have I done? I’ve sinned!” Instantly forgiven on the spot.
If you were like me, you would think forgiveness comes after much repentance and soul-searching and trying to be better. If we go that route then we reject the grace of God; we refuse His gift of forgiveness offered freely and insist that He accept us according to our works. He can’t do that.
Salvation is only through grace by faith. See the end of verse 1:7? “According to the riches of His grace.” Not according to our good deeds. How rich and free that grace is! What amazing grace, that God would lavish this on us!
Let’s dwell on the sufficiency of the cross of Christ for a moment. All have sinned and fallen short, and as a result, the wages of sin is death to us all. Jesus died that death for us. He died not only for the church’s sins but for the sins of the whole world.
With that in mind, consider John 3:16. This is how many of us practically read it: “For God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son, that whoever tries hard to be goodwill not perish.” We read it that way because that’s our experience. We believe our efforts matter.
Jesus finished the work of salvation with His death, burial, and resurrection. He already broke the power of sin in us. That’s why it reads, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.”
It doesn’t say the former because the issue of punishing us for our sins was already dealt with at the cross. It tells us to believe and enter into all the blessings. The banquet is already prepared. Enter through Jesus and sit down and enjoy!
You enjoy the blessing when you believe it is for you personally and not just for “everyone.” Jesus said that when you pray, “believe that you receive it, and you will have it.” That’s how you get all the blessings, the gifts God freely gives you — with grateful thanks. Read Ephesians 1–3 with your eyes alert to all the “in Christ” and “in Him” verses to see more blessings He holds out to you for free.
Throughout Paul’s epistles, Paul is showing us the difference between the old us and the new us so we can identify the old behavior where we judge ourselves and others by laws and ethics, reject it, and put on the new man which is free from the law. We reject the old behavior by simply surrendering to Christ again in faith. Just like when we first believed Him for salvation.
We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. They are free. We enjoy them as we accept them by faith, not by bribing God with good deeds or personal goodness. Come to Jesus as you need them and they are yours.
(Some of these ideas came from the 1922 book Grace, The Glorious Theme, by Lewis Sperry Chafer. To learn more about being in Christ, read about it in this free website book.)
