“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.”
– Eph 1:3
At the end of this verse and many other verses in the bible is the small phrase, “in Christ.” That is a very important phrase because this phrase shows you why this particular verse of scripture applies to you and shows you why you get in on these blessings that the scripture is talking about.
The phrase, “in Christ,” refers to your position as a believer in the eyes of God. When you are saved you become ‘in Christ.’ Just like Noah was ‘in the ark’ and that’s why he was saved, so are we ‘in Christ’ and are saved from the wrath of God, and not only saved, but are able to receive all the blessings of God. When we confess Jesus as Lord and become born-again, we are now ‘in Christ.’ We have hopped aboard the ark and are in the boat were all the promises of God are poured out. The blessings aren’t ours because of who we are, but simply because we are in the right place.
This is very important to understand. The reason that this is important to understand is that many people think that they have to do this or do that to receive God’s blessing. Or they might think that they have not been good enough and so they don’t deserve the blessings of God. But this isn’t what the bible teaches us.
The bible teaches us that because we are in Christ these blessings already belong to us. It’s not based on our actions, but rather on faith. So knowing this, we should seek build up our faith so the promises of God can become a reality in our present world. We should also ignore the devil’s attempts to keep us in condemnation and guilt.
How do we build our faith? Two ways: Hear the Word of God (Rom 10:17), and Praying in the Holy Spirit (Jude 1:20).
Building up our faith is not hard, but it does take discipline and some time. We must be willing to separate ourselves and to wait upon the Lord. If we do this we will begin to live in the blessings that our God has in store for us.
Hal Chaffee 