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.

What You See Is Who We’ll Be (Rev 7)

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eschatology, reconciliation, Revelation

Reflecting on the text

Revelation often catches us by surprise.

Sometimes John surprises us by the shocking, explosive nature of his imagery. Other times he surprises us in more subtle ways.

For example, what should we expect at the end of chapter six?

I don’t know about you, but it sounds like everything is about to come crashing to one final end. I’m thinking that after 6.12-17 (which cannot be taken literal, mind you—there would be no “then” after verse 14) everything is over.

We expect more destruction, but we get…

What We Need Most (Revelation 1.9-20)

Tags

eschatology, new testament, Revelation

[This week we'll be looking into chapters 1-3 of the book of Revelation.]

Reflecting on the text

Have you ever asked the question, “Where is Jesus today?” Have you ever thought to yourself, “Okay, I know where Jesus was when he came to earth, and I suppose he is now in ‘heaven’ (whatever that means), but where is he now?”

This is one of the key questions John answers in this vision, but first he walks us through another even more crucial question, “Who is Jesus?”

There are certainly many “Jesuses” on offer these days. Think about some of the popular ideas about and conceptions of Jesus that exist in our world today.

One of the things that immediately comes to my mind is the “Jesus is my homeboy” clothing apparel. Now, I’m sure these people have great intentions and I’m all for seeing Jesus as our friend, but after this vision John records for us I’m not so sure he would think of Jesus as his “homeboy.”

Here’s how it went down. John was on Patmos, a sixty square-mile island thirty-seven miles off the coast of Asia Minor. He had been exiled there for refusing to stop talking about and worshiping Jesus. He very well may have been alone, but that wasn’t going to stop him from worshiping. After all, it was Sunday, and all the other followers of Jesus were meeting together to do the same thing. But today something was different. Today worship was particularly moving for John—he described it as being “in the Spirit.” We aren’t given many details, but he was probably meditating on Scripture, maybe singing a few songs.

And then it happened.