“Walking Through Ephesians - Day 2”

Monday, February 05, 2024

Ephesians 1:1-14

I was never a big “gamer” growing up. Of the games I did play, my favorites were those that let me explore a vast landscape. Think less old school Mario where you move from left to right and more new school Mario where you can run around a 3-D world as you wish. In my opinion, the best part of the game was “unlocking everything. You could go anywhere you wanted, and you had all the perks of the game at your disposal. Everything was yours.

Making everything yours was quite the task though. It took hours and hours to beat a game and unlock everything. You had to unlock certain parts of the game before ever even getting a shot at unlocking other parts. You didn’t get everything at once.
 

When we jump into Ephesians 1, Paul is letting us know the blessings that come through Christ are nothing like those video games I used to play. They’re way better. In verse three, Paul tells us those in Christ have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. That’s the highest level! Did you think you had to level up your character to the max before getting all that stuff? Not according to Paul. He tells us that if we are a Christian, regardless of age, regardless of how long you’ve been saved, regardless of your past, if you are in Christ, you have unlocked every “perk” there is to enjoy.
 

It gets even better though. Not only do we have every spiritual blessing through Christ, we have those blessings because it was God’s will to give them to us. The Almighty God of the universe is a God that wants to bless you! How did He choose to do it? Through faith in His son. What way did He chose to bless you? By giving you the best and giving it all.
 

But wait, there’s more! One of the blessings Paul lists in verse seven is forgiveness. God didn’t desire to bless us with the best He has because we are so great. He did it despite the fact we aren’t so great. He blesses us by forgiving us. We didn’t unlock all the perks by being the best player. We simply come to God in faith and because of His amazing love for us, He chooses to forgive us and bless us in Christ. We have a word for this: grace. Paul says in verse eight that God lavished it upon us. I wouldn’t argue with that.
In the first half of this letter Paul wants to overwhelm you with God’s grace. This is the good news and it’s really good. However, because we are underserving of all of this and didn’t earn it ourselves, that points us in a direction. Praising God. It’s all to His glory. God is the hero.
 

On Monday morning at the office or late at night taking care of kids you might feel that your reality is more like old school Mario. Endlessly running and just hoping the next thing to pop into the screen is the finish line and not a man-eating plant. Paul wants you to broaden your horizon. See past the next thing coming at you and realize you are already blessed in the greatest way. We aren’t always given every physical blessing, but we are given every spiritual blessing.

If it sounds like Ephesians 1 is all rainbows and sunshine, that’s because it is. Enjoy it. Paul wants you to. Praise God, everything is yours.

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