chosen. blameless. blessed.
Ephesians 1:3-4
“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, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”
Chosen. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. We know that verse. Genesis 1:1. But what about what happened before that? Before the foundation of the world was placed. That’s where our story starts. Because that is where God is. In an infinite time before the earth we walk on ever came into the picture, we were chosen. God chose for us to be able to be in him, to be his own people.
Not as a club or a group but as a people set aside from the world. He had a plan before sin came, so that when it did, God wasn’t caught off guard by what Satan did. But he had a way for us to be separate from the world, to be a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession (1). He made a way that we could be holy and blameless– before him. Otherwise, we’d have had no hope of ever being with God. Satan made sure of that. That was his crafty and deceitful plan, one that we sadly fell right into and still do daily.
Blameless.
But that plan that God had before time has now, still to this day, given us a way out of that darkness. We have hope. We can be with God. Not because we somehow found a way to clean ourselves of all of the filth we squandered ourselves in. But because Christ loved us and gave himself up for us so he could make us clean. He allowed us to be like him, completely pure, so we could be without spot or even a wrinkle before God (2).
And being holy and blameless before God, we are able to be who we were created to be, in the image after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness (3).
Blessed.
This is why we are blessed with every spiritual blessing. It’s not a #blessed looking at our physical lives or even our friends and family, although they can all be beautiful blessings. But even if we didn’t have any of that, we are still blessed beyond measure. Because we have spiritual blessings in Christ. Because God sent the Savior we desperately needed.
And to us who are in him, we call him Lord because he is the one who we acknowledge as Master. We call him Jesus because there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we are saved (4). We call him Christ because he is the anointed one, the Messiah– the one God sent specifically to save us.
Back in that beginning before the world, Jesus was there. He was with the Father and God himself. We were made through him. And to bring us back to who we were meant to be, he came as flesh and lived among us (5).
But we don’t just have one spiritual blessing– we have every spiritual blessing! If we choose him, as he has chosen us, we live a life fully immersed in being God’s, chosen, blameless, and blessed.
We were chosen before the world began. We are blameless because of what Christ has done. And because of that, in every sense of the word, we are blessed.
1 - 1 Peter 2:9
2 - Ephesians 5:25-27
3 - Ephesians 4:24
4 - Acts 4:12
5 - John 1:1-3, 14
