Hallelujah, God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus (Eph. 1:3)!
We believers in Christ are a blessed people unde the blessing of God! May we choose life and reject death, and may we choose the blessing and be in a condition to receive God’s blessing so that we may not be under a curse!
Moses put a choice before the children of Israel: life and death, blessing and curse; and he charged them to choose life so that them and their seed may life.
On one hand we need to choose life and stay away from death, paying attention to our mingled spirit in all things and making sure we follow the sense of life in our spirit.
On the other hand, we need to be in the right condition to receive God’s blessing, for our God is a blessing God who wants to bless His people with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus!
Even from the creation of man, God blessed man to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it; when God saw man in His image and according to His likeness, a man who expressed God and represented Him, He fully blessed this man.
When God obtains a corporate man who expresses Him with His image and represents Him with His dominion, He blesses that man.
And when we say that God blesses man, this doesn’t relate merely to outward things or prosperity; the real blessing God gives us is nothing else but Himself!
We need to be those in the right condition and situation to receive God’s blessing; we need to be the kingdom of God as the realm, the sphere on earth for God to exercise His administration under His full, divine authority.
When we repent, turn to the Lord, and humble ourselves under His mighty hand, and when we judge in us anything that He judges and exposes in His light, we are in the right condition to receive God’s blessing.
God’s blessing is always spiritual – He wants to bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ!
May we give ourselves to the Lord so that in our daily living we would be in the kingdom of God, being kingdom people who both enjoy God and are filled with God, and who take God as their Lord, King, and Ruler, being under God’s authority so that we may both express God and represent Him!
May we in the church life be the reality of the kingdom of God so that He may be free to bless us with all that He is, and may we exercise our spirit to enjoy all of God’s blessing in the spirit!
God has Blessed us with Every Spiritual Blessing in the Heavenlies in Christ
Eph. 1:3-14 contains God’s blessing – He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ (Eph. 1:3)!
On one hand by believing into Christ and taking Him as the One who bore our curse, we are saved from the curse, and on the other hand we are brought under God’s blessing.
What is this blessing of God that we are brought under? God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.
God has blessed us with His speaking; all the speaking in Eph. 1:4-14 is God’s blessing.
The Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him in love.
The Father predestinated us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He graced us in Christ, the Beloved!
In Christ the Son we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offenses, according to the riches of His grace, which He caused to abound to us in all wisdom and prudence.
The Son made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself, unto the economy of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in Him!
In Christ we were designated as an inheritance, having been predestinated by the Father according to the purpose of the One who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we would be to the praise of His glory who have first hoped in Christ.
We were sealed with the Holy Spirit of the promise, who is the pledge of our inheritance unto the redemption of the acquired possession, to the praise of His glory.
This praise is deep and profound, encompassing the entire New Testament economy; here we have not only creation (denoted by God) but also incarnation (the God of our Lord Jesus Christ), Lordship (Lord Jesus), humanity (Jesus), redemption and salvation (Jesus), and anointing (Christ).
This is a high well-speaking of God, and it contains both a speaking well of God and God’s blessing for us.
We all need to speak well concerning God in His way of creation, incarnation, impartation of life, and transmission, with redemption, the Redeemer, the Savior, and the anointed One to accomplish God’s eternal purpose.
This wonderful God who is both One and Three is now blessing us with nothing else but Himself; He works in His Divine Trinity to bless us, His believers, with all that He is.
He works from eternity to eternity to give Himself to us, to work Himself into us, to work on us, and to bless us with all that He is so that we may enjoy the Triune God and become fully one with Him.
What a blessing!
Thank You Father for blessing us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ! Thank You for choosing us in Him to be holy and without blemish before Him in love. Thank You Father for predestinating us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Yourself, according to the good pleasure of Your will. Thank You Lord Jesus for through Your blood we have redemption in You, and we have the forgiveness of offenses, according to the riches of Your grace! Thank You Lord for making known to us the mystery of Your will according to Your good pleasure! Hallelujah, in Christ we were designated as an inheritance that we would be to the praise of His glory who have first hoped in Christ! Hallelujah, the Holy Spirit has sealed us and He is the pledge of our inheritance unto the redemption of the acquired possession to the praise of His glory! Praise our blessing Triune God!
Exercising our Spirit to Realize, Experience, and Partake of God’s Blessings in our Spirit
God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ; this shows the all-inclusiveness of God’s blessings.
The fact that these blessings are spiritual indicates the relationship of God’s blessings to the Holy Spirit; these are not physical blessings but spiritual blessings, which are related to the Holy Spirit.
All the blessings with which God has blessed us are related to the Holy Spirit; the Spirit of God is not just the channel but also the reality of God’s blessings.
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit are all related to the blessings bestowed upon us (Eph. 1:4-14; 3:16-17; 4:4-6).
The Triune God Himself who has been processed and is now consummated to be the Spirit, He is the reality of all the blessings.
God’s blessing is mainly the dispensing of the Triune God into us: the Father is the source, the Son is the springing up and overflow of the Father, and the Spirit is the flowing out of what the Father is and the Son has accomplished to flow the Triune God into us (2 Cor. 13:14).
These blessings from God are in the heavenlies; heavenlies indicates not only the heavenly place but also the heavenly nature, state, characteristic, and atmosphere of these spiritual blessings with which God has blessed us.
These blessings are from the heavens, having a heavenly nature, heavenly state, heavenly characteristic, and heavenly atmosphere.
We believers in Christ are enjoying on earth these blessings – every spiritual blessing with which God has blessed us in Christ; they are spiritual and heavenly.
These blessings are in Christ; Christ is the virtue, the instrument, and the sphere in which God has blessed us.
In Christ God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies; in ourselves we are pitiful and unqualified, but in Christ we are blessed.
When we’re in Adam, we’re under a curse; when we are in Christ, we are blessed.
If we are not in Christ, we may be a gentleman and the most righteous person, but we’re still under a curse; only when we’re in Christ we automatically have the all-inclusive blessing.
Since the nature of the blessings with which God has blessed us is spiritual, we need to exercise our spirit to realize, experience, and partake of them in our spirit (Rom. 8:4).
First we need to realize that all the blessings with which God has blessed us are in the Spirit, in the heavenlies, and are spiritual; when we realize this, we will exercise our spirit to enjoy these blessings!
Without the Spirit and apart from our mingled spirit we have no way to ascertain, realize, and enjoy the blessings God has blessed us with, for God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ, and all His blessings are in the Spirit!
May we exercise our spirit over the word of God and in our daily living to enjoy every spiritual blessing with which God has blessed us in Christ!
Lord Jesus, we exercise our spirit to realize, enjoy, and partake of all the spiritual blessings with which God has blessed us in Christ! Hallelujah, all the spiritual blessings are in the Spirit and are the Spirit, and this Spirit is mingled with our spirit to become our all-inclusive blessing! We praise the Lord that we are in Christ, who is the virtue, the instrument, the sphere, and the channel in which we have been blessed! Hallelujah, it is of God that we are in Christ Jesus, and through the exercise of our spirit we can realize and enjoy and partake every spiritual blessing with which God has blessed us in Christ!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. James Lee for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Ephesians, msg. 2 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Deuteronomy, week 12, Life and Blessing under the Government of God.
- Hymns on this topic:
– God as the Spirit is our true blessing. / He shepherds us to pastures, expressing / Both tender love and bounteous supply, / Blessings in Christ to multiply. (Song on, God is a God of Blessing and Glory)
– O gracious God, Thy pleasure / Is in Thy Christ made known, / And tells the boundless measure / Of blessing for Thine own. / He has Thy presence entered, / As Man in heav’n is known; / In Him Thy glory’s centered, / In Him Thy purpose shown. (Hymns #46)
– May God the Father’s love to us / In God the Son as grace be known, / Thru God the Spirit’s fellowship, / That God our portion we may own. (Hymns #610)