Blessing God by Blessing Each Other. (Eph 1: 3)

The Bible Project Daily Podcast is an in-depth, daily study of the entire Bible, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. 

Episode Notes: Blessing God by Blessing Each Other. (Eph 1: 3)

We now arrive at one of the most breathtaking transitions in all of Paul’s writings.

After the greeting — those gentle words of grace and peace — Paul takes a deep breath, lifts his eyes, and launches into a sentence so long, so rich, so overflowing with praise that in the original Greek it runs for 202 uninterrupted words.

And it all begins with this:

We are…. “In Christ.”

This is not a metaphor. Nor is it a poetic flourish or some sort of a spiritual slogan…. This is about the change of our humanity…..

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, friends. Welcome to the Bible Project Daily Podcast. Thank you so much for being with me today as we continue our study through Paul's Letter to the Church in Ephesus, the book we call Ephesians. Welcome whether you're here for the first time or you've been with me from the very beginning of our journey, together, well over 1,000 episodes in, a journey complete journey through the Bible, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. And today we arrive at one of the most breathtaking transitions in all of Paul's writings. After the greetings, we looked at yesterday, those gentle words of grace and peace. Paul takes a deep breath. He lifts his eyes and he launches into a sentence so long, so rich, so overflowing with praise that in the original Greek language it runs for 202 uninterrupted words. And it all begins with this praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. That is not just the verse, this is the doorway, the threshold we are about to step across, a sort of biblical porthole into the heart of our Christian identity. Paul tells us who we are, what we have, and where we stand. And he begins with the phrase that shapes everything that will follow. He tells us we are in Christ. From being in Adam, we now are in Christ. The Bible tells us that every human being begins life born in Adam, we inherit his nature, his brokenness, and we also inherited his mortality. We inherited Adam's separation from God. And Paul says this explicitly in the other of his famous and another of his famous letters, including Romans and Corinthians, and elsewhere even, he says many times that in Adam all die, but through one man sin entered the world, and by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners. To be in Adam is to be part of the old humanity, a humanity marked by sin, decay, and death. But now Paul says something astonishing has happened. You are no longer in Adam, you are in Christ. And this is not a metaphor, it's not some sort of poetic flourish or some sort of spiritual slogan. This is about a change of your humanity and your identity. And that's what we're going to look at today in today's episode of the Bible Project Daily Podcast. So wow, people, the passage today tells us we've been transferred from one spiritual realm to another, nothing less. From one identity to another, from one spiritual lineage to another. You are no longer defined by Adam's failure, you are now defined by Christ's victory. Now, Romans 6 is probably the deepest explanation of that union with Christ explained for us in the New Testament. Let me just read it for you. Paul explains it in the most detail in the first six verses of Romans chapter six. He says, What shall we say then to all this? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means. We who have died to sin, how can we live in it any longer? Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like this, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like this. For we know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. So all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We're buried with him, it says, but now we're raised with him, that we too may live a new life. This is massive, but in fairness it's also mysterious. But this is the heart of the Christian life. Paul is saying that when Christ died, as a believer, you died also, and when Christ was buried, you were buried with him spiritually, but most importantly, when Christ rose, you rose, and when he ascended, you ascended. And when Christ was seated in the heavenly places, you were taken and put there and seated with him. Which is why Paul uses this all-encompassing phrase, we're now in Christ. He uses it more than 160 times in his letter, and he does so because it is the central truth of our Christian identity. You are united to Christ, you are joined to Christ, you are hidden with Christ, it says in a poetic way. You are inseparable from Christ friends, and because you are in Christ, then everything that is true of him becomes true of you. Not because you've earned it, but because you are united and joined to him. Now Paul knows something about human nature that modern psychology only very recently discovered, being that people conform to the environment they live in. If you live in a prison long enough, you begin to think like a prisoner. Your life becomes shaped by bars, by locks, by routines and guards, restrictions, you begin to internalize that environment. But if you live and grow up in a loving home, you then have the opportunity to flourish. And if you live in a nurturing community, you can begin to grow and reach your potential. But if you live in a critical environment, you'll likely become a critical person. And if you live in a fearful environment, you'll become fearful. Environment really does shape identity. But Paul is saying effectively your environment has changed. It is now in Christ. You live in him, you breathe in him, you move in him, and you exist in him. Christ is the new atmosphere of your life, he is the environment of your soul, one in which you can be nourished and flourish. Christ is the context in which you now live. And if you truly grasp that, if you truly believe that, it will change everything about how you relate to others. Now I've met believers who over the years lived and worked in harsh environments. Maybe for some work for them was a dog eat dog workplace, or some grew up in very critical homes, or some went to very competitive schools. Some had families who where affection was rare and criticism was constant and abundant, and sometimes without realizing it, they can bring that environment into the church. But they are forgetting that they're no longer in that place, they're no longer in Adam. They forget that they're no longer in the world, and they forget that they are no longer shaped by their past. They need to understand and remember simply that they are now in Christ. People like that can still behave as though they're under constant criticism or in competition even with other people. They continue to live under a sense of dread and fear and insecurity. But Paul here is gently reminding all of us that our environment now has changed and we should begin to expect our identity to change with it. And if that's the case and all that's happening, then we might see our behaviour change as well. You see, the church, the community of faith, is now your environment, and you, living in that environment, should become more loving, more patient, more gracious, and more nurturing. But if the church, and sometimes it does, becomes a critical environment, people themselves will become critical. And if the church becomes a worldly environment, people within it will become more worldly, which is why Paul begins with our identity, because he knows that our behavior flows from our identity, and our identity actually grows out from the environment we place ourselves. And the early church definitely knew and recognized this, so they made that decision and taught that they needed to live differently. In the early church, believers lived with a constant awareness that they at any moment might even be called to die for the faith. Persecution for them was not theoretical, it was a very real thing. At times it was almost daily, it was real and it was potentially deadly, and because of that, early Christians really lived differently because they knew that they weren't of this world. They knew that they belonged to Christ, and they clung to the fact that they were citizens of heaven when facing persecution. They knew that they were in Christ and they weren't in Rome. And so they lived lives of radical generosity, sacrificial love, and real deep sense of unity. They had a sort of holy, set-apart distinctiveness. They did not blend in with the world around them. They stood out. So they didn't allow the world to soften the relationship between the church and the world. They embraced the fact that they were different. They did not say, oh, we just need to live a decent life and you're fine. They said you need to follow life and you'll be transformed. But I think today much of the modern church often makes a real tragic mistake in this area. We tend to downplay the differences between what we believe and what the world says. We soften the edges, we blur the line sometimes. And some even tell people that as long as they're a decent person, then you'll be fine. As long as you're respectable, then you're a Christian. You're good living, as some call it. And as long as you attend church, well, that means you're following Jesus. But that's not what Paul would say or says here. He would say, no, Christianity is not about respectability, it's about transformation. You're not simply taken out of the world, you're taken out and then placed back into the world in a new and different way. You're never called to blend in, you're actually called to stand out. You're not expected to behave like everybody else after you've become a Christian. You're expected to behave like Christ. And you're not called to think like the world, you're called to think with the mind of Christ. Paul fully expects that Christians should be recognizable everywhere they are and everywhere they go, whether that be in school, at work, in the office or in the factory, even if you're in hospital working as a medic or on the hospital board as a patient, in your home or in the neighborhood, not because you're sort of some self-righteous person, but because you appear Christ-like to other people. A Christian doctor or medic should never see a patient as just a case, but as a person made in the image of God. A Christian employer should ultimately care more about the people under his authority than even about prophets. And a Christian employee should work with integrity and do it even when no one's watching. And a Christian parent? Well, they should love, but they should also discipline, but discipline with love, never anger. A Christian teenager, wow, the pressure there is to conform, but they need to resist and live differently. And a Christian leader, they should serve, not dominate. And what about a Christian neighbor? We're meant to bless the people around us, not just live lives of isolation, ignoring other people. Why? Because you're in Christ. And that brings us back to Paul's opening declaration in this book. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we're called to bless God. But how do we bless God? We bless God ultimately by blessing each other's, and we bless God by living as people who are in Christ. We bless God by embodying the environment of Christ, the person of Christ in our relationship and in our communities. Because when we love one another with God's love, that means we bless God. And when we forgive one another, we bless God. When we encourage one another, we bless God. When we serve one another, we bless God. Even when we just simply speak kindly or act humbly or live graciously, we again bless God. Because we are living out the reality of who we are and we are living the way God wants us to live. But you know there's a second layer of identity to those who are Christians, because in Christ it tells us we are in the heavenly realms. Verse 3, he has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. So not only are you in Christ, did you notice you're also in the heavenly realms? Let's just settle on that for a moment. You don't actually exist in the place where your body happens to be sitting right now. You may be at your kitchen table, maybe in your car, your office, your favorite chair, maybe you're out for a run. As far as God concerned, you are at this moment active in the heavenly realms when you think upon him. The phrase in the heavenly realms will appear five times in this book of Ephesians. And Paul is not just being poetic here. He's not using hyperbole or exaggeration, he's not speaking even metaphorically, he's describing your actual, true spiritual location. Christ is in the heavenlies and it tells us, so are we. And Paul uses the phrase first to describe Christ. He says he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly realms. So after the resurrection, Christ was raised up, lifted up, exalted above every authority, every power, every ruler, every spiritual force in the universe, and he is now enthroned today in the heavenlies. That's the spiritual dimension where God's authority is fully expressed. But then says this something absolutely astonishing. Jumping ahead a few verses to chapter two, he will say, and God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. Not will seat us, not might seat us, not one day sometime in the future seed us. He has seated us with him in the heavenly realms. Past tense, it's a completed action, it's already true. You are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms if you're a Christian believer. This is not just about a future hope. This is our present reality. Our citizenship is already in heaven. Now, of course, Paul's not saying that you are physically in heaven right now. You're still obviously here, walking through this life. Unfortunately, paying your bills still, maybe raising your children or grandchildren, going to work every day, navigating the joys, sorrows, and the pleasure of this earthly life. But your citizenship is in heaven. Just as a British citizen visiting Spain would remain British, or an American temporary living or working in London, remains American, you remain a citizen of heaven even while you're residing on earth, wherever you are on earth. Your passport may say United Kingdom or wherever it is you come from, but your spiritual passport, if you like, says Kingdom of God. Your earthly address, well for me it's Lytham St. Anne's, but uh or wherever you currently live, but your heavenly address is simply in Christ, seated in the heavenlies. And that, my friend, should change everything. It changes how you see yourself, it changes how you see your circumstances, and it changes how you see your purpose. It also can help you change how you see your struggles and change how you see your calling in life. Paul will use this phrase again in chapter three, where he says he intended that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. Now that, my beloved, is one of the most mind-blowing statements in all of the New Testament. Paul is saying the church is God's message to the whole world and back to heaven itself. Think about that. The way we live, the way we love, the way we forgive, the way we worship, the way we endure suffering, and the way we walk in unity, all of it reveals the wisdom of God not only to other people on earth, but also back to the spiritual beings in the heavenly realms. That's just incredible to think about. Angels are watching the church, demons are watching the church, principalities and powers watch the church, and through the church, through ordinary believers like you and me, God is displaying his wisdom. Your life is a message, your obedience is a testimony, your faithfulness is a revelation to other people, and your love is a proclamation of God's love. And heaven is watching, and hell is watching, the whole universe is watching, and God is glorified when his people living here on earth are living out their calling. Which means all her actions on earth have an echo in heaven, which means your life is not a small thing. No matter how it may seem, your choices are never insignificance, and your obedience is never unnoticed. What you do on earth resonates in heaven. When you forgive someone who hurts you, heaven hears it. When you choose purity over temptation, heaven sees it. When you speak kindly to someone instead of acting harshly, heaven celebrates that. And when you serve someone in need, heaven will honor it. And when you pray in faith, friends, heaven will respond to it. And when you bless someone who curses you, heaven rejoices in it. Your actions on earth bless God in heaven, and yes, your actions on earth, if they're not right, proper, and godly, can also grieve him. Not in a way that threatens your salvation, not in a way that puts you back under judgment in any way, but in the way a loving parent is grieved, is hurt when a child chooses to do something harmful. You cannot lose your salvations, friend. Let me be clear about that. But you can lose your joy in life, you can lose your peace, you can lose your sense of closeness to God, and you can grieve the heart of the one who loves you. Which is why Paul began with identity in this letter, because he knows our identity will shape our behavior. If you know where you are, you know how to live in that environment. Now, by way of illustration, let me tell you a little story about when I was a child. When I was young, my parents took me to a very exclusive event, a formal dinner, a five-course meal with an after dinner speech by the Anglican Archbishop of Ireland and all the local dignitaries. I was about 13, which meant, well, in all honesty, I was bored, very bored. So I started messing around. And my brother and I started rolling things across the table. I'd send them over to my brother and he'd roll them back. We were fidgeting, we were laughing, doing everything except behaving like someone who belonged in that room. My mother leaned across the table, looked me straight in the eye, and said in the tone that only a mother can use, she said, Remember where you are. And instantly everything changed. My behavior changed, my posture changed, my awareness changed because I remembered where I was. I was with the mayor of Belfast, all the religious hierarchy of the Christian church in Ireland were there to celebrate and honor the hundredth anniversary of the Christian Missionary Society for which my father worked. And Paul is doing that same thing my mother did that day in Ephesians. He's leaning across the table of your life, and he's looking in your eye, and with these words that are coming, he's saying, Remember where you are. You are in Christ, and you are in the heavenlies. You are seated with him, you are part of his body, you are a citizen of his kingdom, and you are a witness to his wisdom, and you are a blessing to his heart. Remember where you are and live accordingly. Now, if you feel like at the minute the way you live means you're just about managing, barely coping, living under the weight of your circumstances, then you need to stop looking around and start looking up. When we live under our circumstances and we live in that environment. That we've been taken out of, we see the bars, the barriers, the limitations, the impossibilities, the frustrations, and the disappointments. We can even begin to feel like we're trapped. Some feel they're trapped in a job, some trapped in relationships, some even trapped in church, or for many, the worst thing is being trapped in their own mind. And when you feel trapped, you might begin to see God as your dealer and other Christians as your guard. But Paul says you are never under your circumstances. And when you feel trapped, you might begin to see others as your dealers and other people as guards. But Paul says you are not under your circumstances. You are seated in the heavenlies. You are in Christ. You are not trapped, you're never confined, you're not imprisoned, you are now free, set free to love, free to forgive, free to bless others, free to serve and free to rise above the circumstances instead of living under them. So let me say it plainly. Remember where you are. You are in Christ, you are in the heavenlies, and you are seated with Him. You love by Him, and everything you do is watched by Heaven. And you are empowered by the Spirit, my friend, surrounded by grace and held safe by God. And because of that, you do not have to live under any of the circumstances of life you might face. You can live above them, you can live beyond them, you can live through them, and you can live differently because you now live in Christ. So look up, friends, not around, and don't look down, look up, because that is where your new life now is. That is where your new identity is, that is where your blessings are and will be received, and that is where your hope is frowned. And that is where Christ is, and you are with and in him. Thanks for being with me today. If you're finding it helpful, please share it with somebody else. This podcast has grown solely through the fact that people share it. It doesn't receive any advertising revenue. It doesn't pay to advertise itself, it simply has grown through people like you who listen to it and recommend it to others or who support this work through Patreon. Now you can sign up on Patreon and follow me for free over there, and you'll have early access to everything I produce, add-free versions of it, as well as some bonus material. And there's some people who believe God has called them to support me in this ministry. And without them, this would not be possible. So thanks to them, thanks to you for listening, and I do hope I'll see you back here again tomorrow on the Bible Project Daily Podcast. Bye-bye for now.