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Spiritual Blessings


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. (Ephesians 1:3)
            This morning, I find myself wondering about how much God, the Father loves Jesus, the Son. We’re told that God is love, so the first clue to how much the Father loves the Son is that it is with all of His omnipotent power, with all of Himself, holding nothing of Himself back that is good to give.
           Someone (possibly Wayne Grudem) wrote that God’s being love supports the argument of God being triune since that which loves must have an object to love. The writer explained that God had no need to create us since His love is made complete and perfect in the love shared among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And yet, God created spiritual beings (angels at least) and physical beings. His doing so allows Him to demonstrate what has always been true, that He is capable of loving beings that aren’t Him. One of the reasons I believe He permitted us to sin is to show the vastness of His capacity to love. He was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice of His Son for our sakes. In fact, for Him to have done less would have shown His love to be imperfect. His love is even such that it required that He give at least most of us the right to refuse His love. If He did not, He would not be showing us love at all.
            So, again, His love requires that He bless us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. To do less would make His love a lie. The key here is the word “spiritual.” To give us physical blessings means little. Our preference for them is idolatry. We’d rather have things that make our life easier than to have Him. We would prefer to stick with what we know than to go beyond it for the sake of our love for Him, but He went beyond what He knew (experientially) for the sake of His love for us.

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