Ephesians 1
v.3
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.
God blesses us by gifts; we bless Him by words. The aim of His act of blessing is to evoke in our hearts the love that praises. We receive first, and then, moved by His mercies, we give. Our highest response to His most precious gifts is that we shall ‘take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord,’ and in the depth of thankful and recipient hearts shall say, ‘Blessed be God who hath blessed us.’
That is to say, he calls them ‘spiritual,’ not because they are, unlike material and outward blessings, gifts for the inner man, the true self, but because they are imparted to the waiting spirit by that Divine Spirit who communicates to men all the most precious things of God. They are ‘spiritual’ because the Holy Spirit is the medium of communication by which they reach men’s spirits.
‘In heavenly places.’ Now that does not merely define the region of origin, the locality where they originated or whence they come. It does do that, but it does a great deal more. It does not merely tell us, as we often are disposed to think that it does, that ‘every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down’-though that is perfectly true, but it means much rather that in order to get the gift we must go up. They are in the heavenly places, and they cannot live anywhere else
v.4-5
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—
The sanctified life is not the effect of our labors or achievements but of God’s love. It is not born of love alone or of our own virtue. For if it were from love alone, all ought to be saved. Again, if it were from our virtue his earthly appearing and the whole of his work would be unnecessary. But it is not from love alone or from our virtue but from God through God… Virtue would have saved no one had there been no love… For to become virtuous and to believe and to advance, this too was the work of the One who called us, even though it is something we can share.
v.7
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
v.10
to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to brings all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.
The fullness of time was the Son’s appearing. When, then, God had done all through angels, through prophets and through the law, yet nothing had improved, there was a danger that humanity had come into being for nothing. It was not going merely nowhere but to the bad. All were perishing together, just like in the days of the flood but more so. Just then he offered this gracious dispensation—to ensure that creation should not have come into being for nothing or in vain. The fullness of time is that divine wisdom by which, at the moment when all were most likely to perish, they were saved.
v.13-14
And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.
v.15
For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints,
v.16
I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.
v.17
I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.
v.18
I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
Faith-the reliance of the spirit upon the veracity of the revealing God-gives hope its contents; for the Christian hope is not spun out of your own imaginations, nor is it the mere making objective in a future life of the unfulfilled desires of this disappointing present, but it is the recognition by the trusting spirit of the great and starry truths that are flashed upon it by the Word of God. Faith draws back the curtain, and Hope gazes into the supernal abysses. My hope, if it be anything else than the veriest will-o’-the-wisp and delusion, is the answer of my heart to the revealed truth of God.
Do you ever pray-I do not mean in words, but in real desire-that God would help you to keep steadily before you that great future to which we are all going so fast? If you do you will get the answer. Seek for that Spirit; use it, and do not resist its touches. Do not fix your gaze on the world when God is trying to draw you to fix it upon Himself. Think more about Jesus Christ, more about God’s high calling, live nearer to Him, and try more honestly, more earnestly, more prayerfully, more habitually, even amidst all the troubles and difficulties and trivialities of each day, to cultivate that great faculty of joyful and assured hope.
The heart sees, and we must look with it, not only at it, if we are to see. When our eyes are healthy, we look with them, not at them; when they are diseased, we look at them or ask a doctor to look at them. We should do the same with the heart, our inner eye, our third eye. The psychiatrist looks at it when it is malfunctioning, but when it is functioning naturally, we look with it.
The activities of the heart are to believe, to hope, and to love. Each of the three has eyes. Take love. Look at the difference between looking at love and looking with love.
v.19
and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength
Once more we are back at the old truth which we can never make too emphatic and plain, that the one condition of the weakest among us being strong with the strength of the Lord is simple trust in Him, verified, of course, by continuance and by effort.
The measure of your faith is the measure of God’s power given to you.
The working measure of our spiritual life is our faith. In plain English, we can have as much of God as we want. We do have as much as we want. And if, in touch with the power that can shatter a universe, we only get a little thrill that is scarcely perceptible to ourselves, and all unnoticed by others, whose fault is that? If, coming to the fountain that laughs at drought, and can fill a universe with its waters, we scarcely bear away a straitened drop or two, that barely refreshes our parched lips, and does nothing to stimulate the growth of the plants of holiness in our gardens, whose fault is that? The practical measure of the power is for us the measure of our belief and desire. And if we only go to Him, as I pray we all may, and continue there, and ask from Him strength, according to the riches that are treasured in Jesus Christ, we shall get the old answer, ‘According to your faith be it unto you.’ #AlexanderMaclaren
v.22
And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church,
v.23
which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.