Spiritual Blessings
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,” (Ephesians 1:3–ESV)
Let us nitpick out two words: spiritual blessings. These are the things which Paul promulgates as given us in Christ. God’s gifts are ultimate. While a long list of spiritual blessings can be compiled for this lesson I will choose but 5. These I selected because they do something for our present, our now.
- Rescue from eternal punishment
- Eternal home
- Salvation from the effects of our sin
- Permanence
- Providence
Rescue from eternal punishment
Do you want to go to hell when you die? For most people, this is obvious to the point of being rhetorical. This week as I was charting in the medical record an individual stopped by and raised the subject of laser-assisted cataract surgery. As more and more data comes in doing cataract surgery this way does not really advantage the patient; it does cost them more though: a lot more. The person who raised the question with me said, “I would definitely go to hell…” by taking money from fixed-income elderly to boost my profits.
Medical economics and patient perception aside what is this individual implying? Fear of hell. I don’t know what they would say if I delved further into their thought processes here, but the issue of ethics, morality and eternal suffering must have been on the surface of their thoughts enough to rattle out in words.
I don’t want to go to hell and I have no fear of doing so. Why? Because of Jesus Christ. This is a spiritual blessing that feeds from the heavenly realm into my daily life. It is an offer that is on the table; available for the person sweating the connection between their ethics and their eternity. How does such a blessing fit into your moments? If you have been a Christian for a long time it has probably settled down around your psyche shoring you up. That is a spiritual blessing!
An eternal home
Not only are we saved from punishment, but also we are saved into a forever family. “In my Father’s house are many rooms,” said Jesus. He went on to say how he was going there to prepare a place for us. As if that were not enough assurance he tied it all together by saying that he would come and take us to be with himself.
This notion of heaven as a place where we live well, forever, with God, is a Christian one. Other religions have harvested their facets of it, but they are johnny-come-latelies. Mirrors of truth rather than possessors of them they are. Only in Christ are such concepts realities. The Christian has confidence in this. What hope this is to know that someday the now-deceased ill and elderly from your family are with God. Not only so, but here and now the same blessed hope gives us rest for our passage across death’s
river and entrance into the place where the dead in Christ wait for their new bodies and the new earth.
There may be fear of the process of dying, but there needs not be a fear of the other side. That is a spiritual blessing!
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