Are You Saying I Can Fly?

Ephesians 1:3-4 (NIV)

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. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

Wow, I wanted to take this text seriously and started reading up on it. It’s dense! The Bible Knowledge Commentary gives almost a whole page to verse 3 and about half a page to verse 4.

It goes into a lot of Greek and forms of the words. Things like showing the “Praise” and “blessed” words have the same base. The first form is more of a “We should bless God’s name” as in praise to Him and the second more of an idea of “gift or gain” blessing from Him.

I was more thinking of the “every spiritual blessing” part. When I read things like that, I want to know what all they are and what special powers do I know have. Can I walk on water? Move mountains? Fly?

I think the “spiritual blessings” means no, I can’t fly (yet). The top spiritual blessing is life eternal forward with Him. God is the greatest of all greatness. The most wonderful of all wonderful. He is the very definition of good, right, true and love. The greatest spiritual blessing possible is to know Him, be known by Him, loved by Him, adopted by Him. That’s what I have. Better even than flying.

I believe verse 4 backs this up. It’s like saying “He’s given us everything in choosing us for salvation (holy and blameless).” That’s the spiritual blessing. And just to be clear, it’s qualified with “in His sight.” The only opinion that matters is His. If we are holy and blameless to Him, we are holy and blameless.

“Before the creation of the world” – that tells me: eternity past. The Bible starts with “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” If He chose us before earth, it was before the beginning. Before the beginning was just God. He had us in mind even then. Before there was a “then” in time. Before there was time.

That makes me feel quite loved.