Ephesians 1.3 – Blessed be the God…

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ephesians, eschatology, jesus, new testmanet, paul, prayer, spirit, trinity, worship

Here is the TNIV translation of Ephesians 1.3: 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.

And here is mine: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the King, the one who has blessed us in the King with every Spirit-blessing in the heavenly realms.

With this verse we start the longest single sentence in the New Testament, one that begins here and doesn’t stop until the end of verse 14. Although in our English translations it is broken up into four or five sentences at least, in Greek it is all one. Which is crazy. It’s as if Paul wants to begin by overwhelming us with all that God has done in Jesus. As a matter of fact, Paul may be employing a literary tactic Aristotle called oratio perpetua or “perpetual speech,” the aim of which is just as we suspected: to overwhelm us with the ginormousness of the subject. Or maybe he’s just going off.

Today I want to make an observation about what Paul is doing and offer three thoughts about how he does it.

Ephesians 1.2 – Grace and peace to you…

Okay, so I want to resume blogging through Ephesians bit by bit. Keep in mind I’m not trying to write a commentary or answer all the textual and theological questions; rather in an effort to let Ephesians seep down into my skin, I’m thinking out loud, meditating on paper, reflecting on what the text says and how that resonates. Here is all of verse 1:

Ephesians 1.1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (TNIV)

Let me begin by making a very simple observation: words are capable of doing many different things. Sometimes we use words simply to refer to an object: table, coffee, paper, etc. Other words, such as names, identify not an object but a person: names like Gregg, Sue, Eric, Andy, or titles such as boss, wife, brother, barista, etc. But very often words do more than identify; to put it one way, they tell a story.