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Sermon preached on Ephesians 1:3 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 10/05/2025 in Petaluma, CA.
Sermon Manuscript
Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
I almost titled our sermon, “The Blessedness of Blessed Blessings,” but I thought that might be confusing. Yet, I wanted to highlight what you can clearly see in your English translations, that Paul uses three variations of the word “bless”. In the original Greek, the stem eulog- (as in eulogy) comes from eu, which means “good”, and logos, which means “word” or “speech”. Thus, it is literally “good words spoken.” In English we also inherit the Latin equivalent, bene-dictio (“good words spoken”), which gives us benediction. And of course, we know that benediction is a fancy word to describe a blessing, which brings us back to our English translation of this verse: three variations of the word “bless”.
The first reference is “blessed”, “Blessed be the God and Father”, an adjective used to praise God. The second reference is “blessed”, “[God] has blessed us”, a verb used to describe God’s action to us. The third reference is “blessing”, “every spiritual blessing”, a noun to describe what God has bestowed upon us. I will use these three references as our three points for today. First, I’ll have us consider how God has blessed us in Christ. Second, I’ll have us consider the specific blessings. Third, I’ll bring this back to the driving sentiment of this verse, that God is to be praised, declaring, blessed be our God. I hope you get excited by this verse. It wonderfully encourages us of what we have in Christ and how that spurs us to worship our God.
Let’s begin in our first point to consider how God has blessed us in Christ. Notice that this is in the past tense. We can surely think of future blessings that await us when Christ returns. But this letter begins with recognizing how God has already blessed us. We will be talking a lot in Ephesians of the difference between the already and the not yet aspects of our salvation. This is some of the already. Already God has blessed us.
Now I want to extend the little Greek lesson I gave you a moment ago. I said that the root for bless in the Greek meant “good works spoken”. But I want you realize that when God speaks such good words it is not just words. When God blesses us with such good words, his words are what we call “performative”. The speaking of them simultaneously performs an action. For example, if I were to tell somebody, “I hereby bless you with this brand new car,” those are performative words, assuming I was speaking truthfully and within my power, of course. But God always speaks truthfully and is all powerful. So, when God blesses us his words are performative. God’s blessings perform that which he speaks.
Look carefully here at verse 3 with me and notice that it says that God has blessed us in Christ. This further describes how it is that God has blessed us. His blessings come to us in Jesus. That refers to what we come to receive from God through being united to Christ through faith. When the gospel is preached, and our hearts are convicted, and we turn and believe in Jesus, at that moment we are united to Christ in faith. He becomes our covenant head in the new covenant. His righteousness is our righteousness. His suffering is our suffering. His death is our death. His resurrection is our resurrection. His ascension is our ascension. His victory is our victory. His Spirit becomes our Spirit, so that the Holy Spirit begins to dwell within us and bear much fruit. All blessing that we’ve already come to know is because of who we have become in our union with Christ Jesus. We will further consider this as we keep working through verses 3-14 in the following weeks. We will see there are some eleven references to “in Him” or other variations that all unpack what blessing we have in Jesus. Then as we keep going through Ephesians, we’ll see yet more references to what we have come to have and enjoy in Christ. Do you see why we emphasize preaching Christ? A Christian sermon must proclaim Christ because in Christ alone is our salvation and the blessings that accompany our salvation.
My application at this first point, then, is to remind us that we don’t save ourselves. The Christian faith is not first about what we do for God. It’s about what God has done for us. The law says do this in order to be blessed. The gospel says Christ has done this so you can be blessed. God has blessed us in Christ Jesus. Apart from this, we are all just dead sinners under God’s wrath having failed to keep the law sufficiently. The starting point for any service to God needs to begin with receiving God’s blessing in Christ. If you have already received Christ, be reminded today that our Christian faith is first and foremost about what God in Christ has done for you not about what you do for him. And if you have not yet received Christ, I urge you even today to believe on Jesus and receive divine blessing in Christ.
Let’s turn now in our second point to better understand the nature and kind of blessing that we’ve already received in Christ. Paul describe these blessings in several ways. First, he says that they are spiritual. That means they are not physical. A physical blessing could include things like money or health or good looks. Sure, God might also decide to bless you physically too, like he did with Job, for example. But the blessings he is talking about here in this verse are spiritual blessings. Don’t be disappointed, but recognize that these spiritual blessings are way better than any physical ones.
Now when we talk about spiritual blessings, it’s not merely that they are spiritual in the sense that they aren’t physical. That is true, but as we study this book we’ll realize that they are spiritual also in that they come to us through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Recall last week we talked about the spiritual blessings of grace and peace that come from the Father and the Son. I asked pointed out how it didn’t mention the Holy Spirit, but that the Holy Spirit was implied, because that is how the grace and peace will actually come to our souls, it will be through the third person of the Trinity.
Now I just mentioned that grace and peace are two spiritual blessings that the Holy Spirit brings to us. But there are many more. It says here that we receive “every” spiritual blessing. Not just some, but all the spiritual blessings we need. Paul will go on between here and verse 14 and give us a long list of various blessings that we have in Christ. Today’s verse is the introduction to what he goes into detail through verse 14.
We will study through those detailed spiritual blessings as we work through these verses over the coming weeks. But for now, I want us to survey them to help us understand what type of blessings that Paul is talking about here. That will also help us see the big picture first before we delve into the details in following sermons. So then, observe with me these blessings. Verses 4-5 speak of being chosen and predestined for salvation. Those same verses also touch on our sanctification, justification, and adoption. Sanctification is about how God is making us holy. Justification is about how God has declared us righteous in his sight, so that we are seen as blameless in his sight. Adoption is how God has taken us to be his own children, with all the rights and privileges that come along with that, and so we rightly relate to him as our Heavenly Father. Verse 6 speaks of the glorious grace he gives us to bring all these blessings about. Verse 7 speaks of our redemption, which describes how Jesus’ blood bought us out of our slavery to sin. Verse 7 also speaks about our forgiveness of sins, which Jesus accomplished by dying in our place on the cross. Verse 8-9 speaks of how the grace he bestows upon are like riches that bring us wisdom and insight into understanding God’s will, making known mysteries to us about God’s cosmic plans. Verse 10 explains how these plans including the blessing of uniting us together in Christ. Verse 11 speaks of the blessing of us bequeathing to us an inheritance from God. Verse 13 speaks of how the Holy Spirit has been given to as a guarantee of that inheritance until we receive it. That is just a quick snapshot of the sort of spiritual blessings we have received from God in Christ Jesus. To summarize, we are predestined, forgiven, redeemed, justified, adopted, sanctified, endowed with the Holy Spirit, and made heirs of the coming riches of the age to come. God has indeed blessed us with so much grace and peace in Jesus, every spiritual blessing.
Verse 3 adds one further explanation about these blessings, that they are given to us in “the heavenly places”. To talk about the “heavenly places” is, at a minimum, a reference to a location. We can say these blessings are heavenly not earthly. But Paul has more in mind. He sees the heavenly places as the eschatological realm, something of the age to come. Remember, Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world but called it the kingdom of heaven. Jesus also said that he left this earth to go to the heavenly places to there prepare a place for us. Paul himself will continue to develop this understanding of the “heavenly places” in Ephesians. In 1:20, he will teach that the victorious risen Jesus has ascended up into the heavenly places, to the highest place. Then in 2:6, he’ll add that that we Christians, in our union with Christ, are also already there with him in the heavenly places. So, when Paul says in 1:3 that we have already received every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, he means that these blessings are anchored in the exalted and victorious Christ who has already inaugurated the age to come.
So then, when Paul speaks of the “the heavenly places” he has in mind the realm of the age to come that has already broken into history through Christ’s resurrection and ascension. In this present age, this earth is passing away. But in the heavenly places, the benefits of the age to come are already available. In our union with Christ, we live in this present age on earth already possessing the spiritual benefits of the age to come.
A contrasting example can help us further understand the glory of all of this. In the old covenant, God brought the people into the earthly promised land and promised them many physical blessings if they “faithfully obey… being careful to do all his commandments” (Deut. 28:1). Sadly, they broke that covenant and didn’t experience the full enjoyment of those physical blessings in that earthly promised land. But God made a new covenant with his people, one where we now already enjoy every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ who faithfully obeyed and carefully kept all God’s commandments on our behalf. While these blessings are currently spiritual and heavenly, we get to enjoy them here and now on earth. And when Christ returns, he will bring the heavenly places down to a renewed earth. That will be for us a New Jerusalem, and in that consummated kingdom we will enjoy even physical blessings in that new earthly promised land. That sums up the already and the not yet aspects of our salvation.
My application at this second point is to encourage you about all that you already have. These spiritual blessings are essentially about the age to come, but we get to enjoy them already now. When you face troubles in this life, remember what you have already in Christ Jesus. Indeed, these blessings will help you through those troubles. When you are tempted to think of things you don’t have in this life, remember what you already have in Christ Jesus. Indeed, these blessings are truly far better in light of eternity. If you remember these things, it will call you to live more heavenly-minded. It will cause you to prioritize spiritual things. It will get you to hope more for eternity and be less shaken in the momentary troubles of this world.
Let us turn now to our third point and consider how everything we’ve considered so far today should cause us to praise our great God! Our verse begins this way, saying “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It then gives us an overview of why we should praise God in the rest of the verse. It continues the explanation all the way through to verse 14. Verses 3-14 offers this extended praise to God. Yet, even though our verse started with the praise to God, I wanted our sermon today to end with it. I wanted us to first consider why we should say, “Blessed be our God.” Now we can conclude by how we should bless God through our praise.
I mentioned at the start that this language of blessed is in the Greek literally “good words spoken.” Indeed, this is where we get the English word of eulogy. Now in English, when we give a eulogy, we usually refer to a speech given at a funeral where you praise the deceased. Yet, this is a eulogy in the highest sense, where praise is directed to God in the form of a blessing. Now to call it a eulogy is to use the Greek term. But the Hebrew has a similar word, it’s berakah. The Hebrew word berakah is also translated as “blessed”. The Old Testament has many examples of praise put in the form of a blessing. Melchizedek in Genesis 14 said, “Blessed be God Most High.” King Solomon’s prayer to dedicate the temple started out saying, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel.” The first four books of the Psalter all end with a berakah praise, like Psalm 41:13, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen.” So many more examples could be given. By the time of the Apostle Paul, the Jews used a daily prayer that contained eighteen, “blessed be” statements. Paul would have grown up praying those “blessed be” prayers. But here, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he writes this “new song”, this “new prayer”, to bless our God in light of his redemptive work in Christ Jesus.
I love how Paul crafted the start of this song of blessing God. He blesses God by referring to God in two ways in which he is related to Jesus. Paul refers to God as the God of Jesus and as the Father of Jesus. This is some beautiful Christology. To call God the God of Jesus describes Jesus’ humanity. To call God the Father of Jesus describes Jesus’ divinity, Jesus is the eternally begotten Son of Father. But then Jesus is described as our Lord and Christ. In the traditional berakah blessings, the Jews didn’t vocalize the name of God, but instead replaced God’s name with the title “Lord”. They would say “Blessed be the Lord…” So Paul’s doxology here says, “Blessed be the God of our Lord”. So that exalts God the Father, but also exalts Jesus in calling him Lord, not to mention Christ. We could say that calling him Lord in this context also emphasizes his divinity, while calling him Christ in this context would emphasize his humanity. What a wonderful blessing to God to highlight the Father’s initiative in saving us, even in the sending of his Son to come into this world in the incarnation.
Earlier I mentioned that God’s blessings to us are performative, because what he says to us is what he is giving to us. He is faithful and able to give what he bestows upon us when he blesses us. But I would also like us to recognize that when we give this blessing to God, that there is also a sense in which it is performative. What I mean is that when we say with verse 3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” we are not just making a statement of fact. Nor is this verse a command, though elsewhere we are commanded to praise God. Likewise, when verses 3-14 go on to state God’s blessedness for all these blessings he’s given to us, it’s not merely some Bible lesson. When we from the heart say, “Blessed be God”, it is not mere words but it is performing divine worship. That is what I mean when I say that these words also become performative for us. We aren’t called to just say good things about God. We are called to worship God from the heart. That’s what we are doing when we say, sing, or pray these words.
My application from this third point to worship God for all that he’s done for us. The fact that Paul uses three variations of the word “bless” is to draw out this connection. God has blessed us with blessing. We bless God in response. Let us praise God for the marvel of our salvation. Let us glorify him because of it. May our hearts overflow with adoration.
Trinity Presbyterian Church, I hope you have been encouraged in how our God is saving us. I hope you’ve also been encouraged with all that we already have in Christ Jesus. And I hope that you are spurred on today in your worship of God. I would like to conclude with some final applications of the heart that we can take today. One, may today’s teaching stir up gratitude. Be thankful for God saving you and blessing you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Two, may today’s teaching stir up contentment. Whatever trouble comes, you have already every spiritual blessing. Three, may today’s teaching stir up hope. May you have the optimism of a biblical hope that knows victory is already the Lord’s and in Christ we are and will be victorious.
Blessed be our God!
Amen.
Copyright © 2025 Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
All Rights Reserved.
