Today’s reading: 2 Samuel 18; Ephesians 1
Ephesians 1 is densely packed with important theological truths. Paul goes on and on and on about all that is true of us and all that we now have in Christ. This chapter an incredible and exciting list of truths that would be easy to spend weeks or months just thinking about and meditating on. But because of that, there is one important thing that is easy, for me at least, to gloss over and completely miss: Paul writes all of this as praise to God.
After Paul introduces himself and his audience, his next statement is, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has…” Now go back and re-read Ephesians 1 and try to figure out where that line of thought ends. Where does Paul wrap up his reasoning for praising God? I would argue that it’s about halfway through the chapter when he gets to, “For this reason…”
My tendency is always going to be to focus on me. My sinful heart is very much more concerned about myself than I am about other people or God. So when I read through Ephesians 1 I am drawn to focus on all that I get and all that is true of me in Christ: I am blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, I am adopted as God’s son, I am forgiven, I have obtained an inheritance, etc. And while those things are all true and all worthy of getting caught up in and excited about, the end result for Paul was not personal excitement and encouragement, but praise to God.
That’s really all I wanted to say today, so I guess this will be a much shorter post than normal. I just wanted to remind us that while we are thinking about, studying, teaching, etc. these identity truths in Ephesians chapter 1, we need to make sure we don’t stop at ourselves, but allow and direct our excitement and encouragement to properly overflow in praise back to the One who has given us so much in Christ.
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